B&B suffers on loan losses June 1, 2009 BRADFORD and Bingley will lose up to £700m on mortgage defaults this year and expects an increase in the rate of loan losses, its chief executive Richard Pym said yesterday. Pym said the number of borrowers more than three months behind on their mortgage had grown from the 4.6 per cent figure it announced in [...]
DESPERATE DARLING FIGHTS FOR HIS JOB June 1, 2009 ALISTAIR DARLING was left clinging to his job last night after Prime Minister Gordon Brown pointedly refused to give his chancellor his full backing after he was involved in another expenses row. Darling was forced to apologise “unreservedly” over a £1,004 expenses claim he made on a south London flat which he moved out of [...]
Building businesses is like a highly addictive drug June 1, 2009 YOU had me at “hello”, says Renée Zellweger’s character to Tom Cruise after he proclaims his love for her in Jerry Maguire. Love at first sight should be savoured; I fall in love once decade and relish it. But, like most entrepreneurs, I fall in love with my business too – only every day. Like Zellweger, I [...]
Rio Tinto settles iron contracts June 1, 2009 Mining giant Rio Tinto, the world’s second-biggest iron ore producer, said yesterday it had settled supply contracts with most major Asian customers on its iron prices. The deal comes about a week after a deal was reached with Japanese manufacturers. Rio’s Hammersley Iron unit also struck a deal with Taiwan’s Dragon Steel company. Negotiations continue [...]
SEATWAVE’S NEW FANS June 1, 2009 SEATWAVE, Europe’s largest fan-to-fan ticket exchange, has raised $17m (£10m) in fourth-round funding led by Accel Partners, which is joined by existing investors Fidelity Ventures, Atlas Venture, Mangrove Capital Partners and Adinvest. Co-founder Sonali De Rycker will return to the Seatwave board as part of Accel’s investment. The company plans to invest in its core [...]
HOME RETAIL CHIEF MISSES OUT ON BONUS June 1, 2009 TERRY Duddy, the chief executive of Argos-owner Home Retail Group, saw his pay packet fall by over £900,000 last year after he failed to hit performance targets. According to the firm’s annual report, Duddy’s total remuneration in the year to end February was £858,000, down from £1.77m a year earlier. No other executives at the [...]
Berlin set to buy out HRE June 1, 2009 The Germany government is set to buy out property lender Hypo Real Estate, in a move seen as a big step towards resloving its banking crisis. Berlin insists that HRE – which is said by by authorities to pose a systemic risk to the banking system – needs to be taken into state control.
Citigroup and GM booted off DJ June 1, 2009 Citigroup and General Motors (GM) have been evicted from the Dow Jones industrial average, in the index’s quarterly reshuffle. Cisco Systems and Travelers, the insurer that was once a division of Citicorp, will take the companies’ places.
PINEWOOD TAKES ON HOLLYWOOD June 1, 2009 PINEWOOD Studios, where the Dark Knight and Quantum of Solace films were made, yesterday submitted its final planning application to double in size, in a bid to rival Hollywood and cheaper rivals elsewhere. It plans to invest £200m to develop permanent state of the art film facilities – including a Parisian square and a Venice [...]
WPP facing vote on bonus scheme June 1, 2009 WPP could today be the latest FTSE 100 company to feel shareholder backlash against bonuses, as it asks investors to approve a new scheme that could see chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell bank around £60m. Concerns that such a large sum could be paid to a single executive prompted the Association of British Insurers (ABI) [...]