News
AVERAGE London house prices have breached the half a million pounds level for the first time, a leading website announced this morning.
ONE of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs has hit out at the City for failing to back technology firms, saying London’s funding community is seen as dysfunctional.
A SHOCKING study by UHY Hacker Young has revealed that Elmbridge, Surrey, pays nearly £300m more in income tax than Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city.
IF you want to know why a wealth tax should not be adopted in Britain, look no further than France.
GOOGLE’S executive chairman Eric Schmidt yesterday defended the tax status of the online giant, urging MPs to change the law if they are upset with the firm’s practices.
EUROPE’S planned financial transaction tax will push up governments’ borrowing costs, hurt pension savers and fail to raise the promised amount of revenues, according to a new report out today.
SIR ROGER Carr, the chairman of Centrica and president of the Confederation of British Industry, is believed to be leading the race to become the next chairman of defence giant BAE Systems next year.
YAHOO’S chief executive Marissa Mayer has made her biggest purchase to date, agreeing to buy the blogging website Tumblr in a deal worth around $1.1bn (£725m).
BRITAIN is likely to increase its opposition to the EU’s planned bank bonus cap as detailed plans of the scheme are published this week, extending the scope of the cap dramatically.
A BOUTIQUE London-based hedge fund has smashed into the top three best performing funds in the world this year, breaking the dominance of US hedge fund managers, according to a poll.
DAVID Cameron was left fighting opposition on all sides yesterday as Tory divisions widened over Europe and the gay marriage debate.
MARTIN Gilbert will step down as chairman of FirstGroup this morning after 27 years at the transport group, as it presses ahead with a £600m rights issue.
THE EU was ridiculed yesterday for introducing a ban on olive oil jugs that will require restaurants to serve it in non-reusable packaging.
LONDON has retained its crown as the hedge fund centre of Europe after a surge in EU-compliant fund launches helped prop up the capital’s dominance of the sector, a new report shows.
AN INDEPENDENT Scotland would find it difficult to guarantee savers deposits in banks, the Treasury has claimed in a new report out today, leaving bank and building society customers vulnerable.
CAPITALISM is in trouble and is failing to offer the best outcomes for society, incoming Co-operative chief Euan Sutherland told the group’s annual general meeting over the weekend, despite the mutual itself struggling with a weak bank unit.
More than 8,000 French households’ tax bills topped 100 per cent of their income last year, the business newspaper Les Echos reported this weekend, citing Finance Ministry data.
AFTER THE fanfare of last week’s crucial autumn-winter clothing launch, Marks & Spencer will this week highlight the size of the turnaround task it faces by announcing stagnant annual profits.
TAKING extra money from customers’ contactless payment cards as they stand near a till is presumably not Marks & Spencer’s new strategy to make up for falling sales.
THE UK’s leisure industry is being offered £150m in fee-free loans to stop it falling further behind in investment.
THE BILLIONAIRES bidding for FTSE 100-listed mining group ENRC gave the firm a tentative price tag of £3.3bn, which the board rejected as a low-ball offer, the suitors said in a statement over the weekend.
MICROSOFT will become the last of the world’s three big console gaming companies to shed light on plans for its next-generation system this week, with the firm set to present the new Xbox as more than a games machine.
AN INFLUENTIAL American senator has called for the US authorities to join Europe’s probe of possible price-fixing in the oil markets.
THE OBAMA administration opened the door to a new era of US energy exports on Friday, approving the first liquefied natural gas project since the start of a heated debate over how best to benefit from the shale energy boom.
FORMER City minister Lord Myners is overseeing plans for a multi-million pound swoop on businesses after launching a second buyout venture with investor Nicolas Berggruen.
German Economy Minister Philipp Roesler yesterday said the European Commission made a “grave mistake” by agreeing to impose punitive import duties on solar panels from China and urged the Commission to work to prevent the eruption of a trade confl
Sci-fi movie Star Trek Into Darkness journeyed to the top of weekend box office charts, pulling in $70.6m (£46.5m) at US and Canadian theatres. It beat Iron Man 3, which grossed $35.2m, to second place.
ROYAL Mail is expected to reveal that annual profits have almost doubled this week as it gears up for a £3bn flotation.
THE OWNER of high street restaurant YO! Sushi has emerged as a potential suitor to snap up hamburger chain Byron after submitting a bid for the company, it is thought.
BRITAIN’S small firms could increase spending by tens of billions of pounds if they fully take advantage of alternative finance options, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) claimed in a report published today.
NORFOLK-based turkey farming firm Bernard Matthews is poised to open up ownership of the family-controlled business under fresh plans to boost the company.
TESCO is looking to growth in Middle Eastern markets as it plans to open more than 50 new franchise stores worldwide over the next five years for its clothing brand F&F, Britain’s biggest retailer announced yesterday.
THE PLANNED cut in national insurance payments for employers is making one in three small- to medium-sized companies more optimistic about hiring staff, according to figures out today.
SOUTH Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers has said it will seek pay rises of up to 60 per cent from gold and coal producers, raising the prospect of fresh strikes as firms battle higher costs and falling prices in an already heated labour clima
THE OWNER of Tyrrells, the crisp company, is planning a sale of the snack maker after appointing advisers to handle bidding for the firm.
DESPITE rising pay from employment, most households still say their finances are being squeezed by soaring prices, according to data out today from Markit.
WARY recruiters are unlikely to raise starting salaries in graduate jobs, new forecasts showed today, with businesses instead spending extra cash on hiring more staff.
HIGH street shops saw more business in April, with footfall up 3.4 per cent on the same month last year, mostly at the expense of shopping centres, which saw a three per cent fall.
GREECE’S bank rescue fund will aim to sell Hellenic Postbank and Proton by mid-July with big banks continuing to absorb small lenders as part of plans to revive the battered sector, the country’s foreign lenders said in an inspection review.
Dell’s Neil Hand sees sales recovering
CONSTRUCTION in the Eurozone fell 1.7 per cent in March, adding further doom and gloom to the region’s economic outlook.
The largest decline came from Portugal, down 10.7 per cent on the previous month.
THE NIKKEI rose to a five and a half-year high today, benefitting from yesterday’s promising GDP growth.
The index gained 0.7 per cent to 15,138.12, the highest closing since December 2007.
DUTCH bank ABN AMRO today announced that it plans to slash 400 jobs after first quarter profits plunged 17 per cent.
The state-owned bank is looking to cut costs and streamline its commercial and merchant banking operations.
SUPERMARKET chain Morrisons and online grocer Ocado today announced that they have entered a 25-year deal, following weeks of discussions which investors were uncertain would come to fruition.
BORIS Johnson has failed to convince Whitehall that he should be given control over suburban rail services in London, with civil servants in the Department for Transport fighting a rearguard action to block his bid for control of routes into Liver
ULTRA-LOW interest rates risk harming rather than helping the economy, top central bankers and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned yesterday, in stark contrast to the Bank of England’s view that loose policy is still best.
LLOYDS should make a profit this year, its first since the bank collapsed and was bailed out at the height of the financial crisis, the group’s chief told shareholders in Edinburgh yesterday.
