Property still too dear, says JPMorgan September 1, 2009 HOPES of an imminent recovery in the commercial property market were dampened yesterday after JP Morgan forecast further troubles for the sector. The bank slammed the recent property stock rally as mere “castles made of sand” and said the upturn was just “building a highly vulnerable property market with a small margin for error.” Commercial [...]
A poor economic backdrop will see UK stocks trail their overseas peers October 20, 2009 IT’S hard to be optimistic about Britain’s economy. It lags behind both France and Germany in exiting recession and a sharp contraction in industrial output in September cast doubt over how positive third quarter GDP data – released this Friday – will be. A slow and protracted recovery lies ahead, according to the Bank of [...]
Construction firms accused of bid rigging September 22, 2009 CONSUMER watchdog the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) yesterday dealt out fines adding up to £129.5m to some of the UK’s biggest building companies, punishing them for colluding while bidding for work on projects such as hospitals, schools and housing refurbishments. Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Connaught, Interserve, Kier and Galliford Try were among the 112 named [...]
Englishness and ethics the rebirth of luxe November 2, 2009 KEVIN Baker is getting extremely excited about a pair of leather eyeshades. You might think those crinkled polyester items you nab off the plane are all that’s needed to keep the light out, but those created by Baker’s company, Thomas Lyte, are another proposition all together. Made from fine, vegetable-tanned leather, lined with flower-patterned silk [...]
Englishness and ethics the rebirth of luxe November 2, 2009 KEVIN Baker is getting extremely excited about a pair of leather eyeshades. You might think those crinkled polyester items you nab off the plane are all that’s needed to keep the light out, but those created by Baker’s company, Thomas Lyte, are another proposition all together. Made from fine, vegetable-tanned leather, lined with flower-patterned silk [...]
SocGen ready to repay aid October 6, 2009 SOCIETE Générale launched a €4.8bn rights issue yesterday as it seeks to repay €3.4bn (£3.1bn) worth of state aid and build a war chest for possible acquisitions. The bank joined French rival BNP Paribas in seeking to exit government support, saying that the cash call would allow it to pursue “external growth opportunities”. However, SocGen [...]
Take a punt and profit from M&A recovery October 19, 2009 FOLLOWING a dearth of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in the wake of the financial crisis, returning confidence and cash to credit-constrained companies has seen a flurry of deals and bids over the past month. Yesterday, Stagecoach made a fresh all-share offer for its beleaguered rival National Express despite a consortium walking away from takeover [...]
Weak banks and miners pull FTSEdown by one per cent October 26, 2009 THE FTSE 100 share index ended 1 per cent lower yesterday, with mining and energy stocks suffering as the US dollar rose and commodity prices fell, while a sharp decline in ING put pressure on financials. The index ended down 50.83 points at 5,191.74, having risen as high as 5,281.12 earlier in the session. It [...]
The dragon that says the financial services industry is losing its fire September 8, 2009 THERE are over 20 photos of James Caan on the walls of his Mayfair office, excluding the three caricatures. One shows him alongside former President George W Bush and Colin Powell while there is also the obligatory snap of him accepting an honorary degree. Another has him pictured with his co-stars in BBC 2’s Dragons’ [...]
Good soft skills are key to turning grads into good employees September 23, 2009 IN India right now, a British training firm called Speak First is running a series of “finishing schools” to improve Indian graduates’ soft business skills and increase their chances of gaining employment. The schools address the fact that the academic and intellectual excellence of many Indian graduates is not matched by abilities in areas like [...]