Five weird and wonderful things to get trading November 14, 2011 1 The Vix index The Vix, also known as the fear index, allows traders to bet on the expected volatility of the stock market in the next 30 days. Mike van Dulken, the head of research at Accendo Markets, says: “It’s great if you’re long stocks or commodities. It’s a great hedge.” 2 Lumber Trading [...]
Finance firms better than rest at slashing pension deficits to zero October 25, 2011 FINANCE firms are sitting on far smaller pension deficits than their peers in other sectors after spending a year right-sizing their schemes, research out today shows. More than half of FTSE 350 financial firms now hold negligible deficits and most could pay their deficits off with just six days of earnings, pensions specialist Hymans Robertson [...]
Finance firms better than rest at slashing pension deficits to zero October 25, 2011 FINANCE firms are sitting on far smaller pension deficits than their peers in other sectors after spending a year right-sizing their schemes, research out today shows. More than half of FTSE 350 financial firms now hold negligible deficits and most could pay their deficits off with just six days of earnings, pensions specialist Hymans Robertson [...]
UK’s CSR in £200m Samsung deal July 17, 2012 BRITISH microchip firm CSR has sold its mobile phone technology division to South Korean electronics giant Samsung for $310m (£198.2m). The Cambridge-based company said its Bluetooth, WiFi and GPS location technology – which features in Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones, as well as Apple’s iPhone and iPad – is cutting edge. But the firm decided to sell because it was [...]
Why prejudice cannot pay off in the long run January 17, 2012 OVER the last year, the number of executive directors of FTSE 350 firms who are women has decreased from 45 to 43, about 5 per cent of the total. The revelation of this fact on Monday prompted complaints about “under-representation”, “glass ceilings” and “boys’ clubs”. The Liberal Democrat peer, Lord Oakeshott, even claimed that “British [...]
Heritage spends £541m on oil assets in Nigeria July 1, 2012 HERITAGE Oil is spending $850m (£541m) on assets in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, the firm announced yesterday. The firm will buy a 45 per cent in the OML 30 fields from Shell, Total and Eni in a bid to diversify. The firm has endured frustratingly slow progress at its Kurdistan wells, which has weighed [...]
FTSE enjoys some breathing space as bargain-hunters prompt gains May 24, 2012 BRITAIN’S benchmark share index recovered yesterday from stinging losses during the previous session as bargain hunters snapped up beaten-down financial and commodities stocks, although traders said any rally could prove short-lived. The blue-chip FTSE 100 index closed up 83.64 points, or 1.6 per cent, to 5,350.05 points. It fell 2.5 per cent on Wednesday to [...]
Shortfalls in benefit plans hit new highs December 4, 2011 RISING inflation expectations and lower corporate bond yields helped to push up pension deficits at the UK’s biggest companies to the highest level seen this year, new data today shows. The funding gap in defined benefit schemes for all companies in the FTSE 350 rose to £80bn at the end of November, up by 25 [...]
Crunch time as firms seek women directors October 11, 2011 FORTY-FOUR per cent of the UK’s top 350 companies still have no women representatives on their boards, despite a recent push to improve boardroom diversity and encourage the appointment of female executives. Over the past decade, the proportion of women on the boards of the UK’s biggest 350 public companies has increased from five to [...]
Cable’s boardroom reforms get cautious support from companies January 23, 2012 VINCE Cable’s plans to reform boardroom pay received a cautious backing from the City, although it was thought unlikely that the business secretary’s proposals would have a meaningful impact on actual pay levels. John Cridland, director-general of the CBI, said “executive pay must always be fair and transparent, and that high pay must be for [...]