Oil and drugs dominate in UK as third quarter results begin October 25, 2009 FOCUS will turn away from economic data and bank profits this week, with the spotlight now on oil titans, who will dominate the corporate reporting this week. FTSE 100 life assurance group Friends Provident kicks the week off today with a trading update, but industry giants BP, BG Group and Shell will be the big [...]
BUSINESS LUMINARIES TOAST THEIR SUCCESS November 10, 2009 IT’S one thing to see the chancellor of the exchequer give up an entire evening to sit through a business awards ceremony, but quite another when he manages to have the audience in stitches during his speech as well. That’s right, folks: it seems that 18 months of surviving on a few hours sleep a [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING December 6, 2009 THE SUNDAYSThe Sunday TelegraphBRITISH GAS AIMS TO BECOME TOP INSURANCE PROVIDERBritish Gas is gearing up to become one of the UK’s top 10 insurance companies and the provider of choice to its 4.5m customers. The Centrica-owned utility has been granted approval by the FSA to underwrite its own household and warranty products and is in [...]
AB InBev sells nine breweries for $3bn October 15, 2009 BEVERAGES giant Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) sold nine Central European breweries to buyout house CVC in a deal worth as much as $3bn (£1.8bn) yesterday. The sale, under which CVC will get the rights to sell brands like Stella Artois, Becks and Hooegaarden in the region, is the third by the firm in recent months. [...]
There is no such thing as a free lunch in banking November 25, 2009 IT came as a bit of a shock. Britain’s new Supreme Court, which has just been spun out from the House of Lords, dealt the Office of Fair Trading a bitter blow yesterday by ruling against it in its test case against high street banks. Their Lordships ruled unanimously that deciding whether overdraft charges – [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING October 21, 2009 FINANCIAL TIMES MACQUARIE MOVING TO DRAPERS GARDENSMacquarie has agreed a deal to occupy one of the largest developments in the City of London, raising expectations of a surprise shortage of new office space in the Square Mile. The Australian financial group will move into the majority of the Drapers Gardens scheme near the Bank of [...]
US Beige book sees recovery September 9, 2009 HALF of the Federal Reserve’s 12 districts saw evidence that the US economy had improved by the end of August, although labour markets remained weak and retail sales were flat, a Fed report said last night. Dallas, Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Richmond and San Francisco noted gains. “Most districts noted that the outlook for economic activity [...]
BARGAIN BANKER October 28, 2009 THE government confirmed that it had hired one of the City’s top deal-makers yesterday – on an income believed to be no more than a tenth of what he earned at UBS. Robin Budenberg joined UK Financial Investments (UKFI) for a bonus-free, pension-free bargain salary of just £155,000. Friends said the banker, who they described [...]
BARGAIN BANKER October 28, 2009 THE government confirmed that it had hired one of the City’s top deal-makers yesterday – on an income believed to be no more than a tenth of what he earned at UBS. Robin Budenberg joined UK Financial Investments (UKFI) for a bonus-free, pension-free bargain salary of just £155,000. Friends said the banker, who they described [...]
House prices still going up September 10, 2009 HOUSE prices rose 0.8 per cent in August, reducing the annual decline to 10.1 per cent, new figures from mortgage lender Halifax revealed yesterday. This marks the second successive monthly increase and the fourth so far this year, supporting the now widespread belief that the UK housing market has stabilised. More encouragingly, the less volatile [...]