Rise in Taylor Wimpey sales lifts margins September 19, 2011 HOUSEBUILDER Taylor Wimpey said yesterday that sales rates in recent weeks have been encouraging, as the industry has benefited from a seasonal surge in home buying activity. The FTSE 250-listed firm added it is on track to deliver on margin targets this year. The country’s second largest builder by market value said net sales rates [...]
Markets hoping for economic decisions November 13, 2011 WEDNESDAY’S sharp sell-off across major global stock indices showed just how skittish markets are currently. The slump in Italian bond prices did the damage as yields flew higher. The situation calmed down towards the end of the week as the political situation in Greece and Italy became clearer. Former ECB vice president Lucas Papademos was [...]
GOLF RETURNS TO THE BOARDROOM AS CITY FIRM TEES UP TENANTS January 9, 2012 PLAYING golf in the office has gone the same way as four-hour lunches and six-figure bonuses in the austerity City. Or has it? Teeing up deals on the putting green will be business as usual at the new City offices run by serviced office provider Co-Work, which is looking for 101 tenants for its latest [...]
A credit crunch movie that doesn’t hate bankers January 9, 2012 IF you had to guess where J.C. Chandor’s sympathies lie, you’d probably go with “anti-banker”. Had I met him without having watched a pre-release DVD of Margin Call, his art-house credit crunch thriller, I’d take one look at his skinny jeans, luxuriant black hair and air of New York cool and think: no way is [...]
DRAGHI TAKES A NEW APPROACH TO BACKING THE EURO IN ECB PROMO December 1, 2011 AS European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi stood in front of the European Parliament yesterday and delivered a gloomy outlook on the future of the euro, a very different Draghi was doing the rounds on YouTube, in the latest piece of pro-euro propaganda released by the ECB. In a video introduced by soft focus images [...]
Property prices drop in August September 7, 2011 DESPITE rising in May, June and July, house prices fell in August, according to the figures from Halifax released yesterday. The data shows a 1.2 per cent fall last month, taking prices down 2.6 per cent compared with the second quarter of 2010. Nationally, average prices now stand at £161,743, meaning the price-to-earnings ratio has [...]
House prices fall more than expected in August September 7, 2011 UK house prices fell 1.2 per cent in August, mortgage lender Halifax has said, after an 0.5 per cent fall in the second quarter, reinforcing views that current prices cannot be sustained by cash-strapped UK buyers. The fall is about twice the 0.6 per cent fall posted in the rival Nationwide measure of house prices. [...]
TAXPAYERS PETITION FOR PRIVATISATION OF THATCHER’S FUNERAL December 22, 2011 WHICH investment bank will underwrite the ticket sales at Margaret Thatcher’s privatised funeral? The Capitalist only asks because, as of last night, more than 14,000 people had signed up to the e-petition posted by Scott Morgan declaring that the Iron Lady’s state funeral should be funded and managed by the private sector. After all, Baroness [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING May 31, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES UK CONSUMER RECOVERY SET TO BE SLOWEST IN 180 YEARS The UK economy is set to experience the slowest pick-up in consumer spending of any post-recession period since 1830, according to a Financial Times analysis of official forecasts. Families are expected to spend just slightly more by 2015 than they were before the [...]
House prices slip in August September 13, 2011 House prices in England and Wales fell in August and transactions slipped to levels last seen during the recession in 2009, a survey showed on Tuesday. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ seasonally adjusted house price balance inched down to -23 from -22 in July, in line with the median forecast in a Reuters poll. [...]