NOMURA QUITS CANARY WHARF July 5, 2009 Japanese bank Nomura has decided to ditch Canary Wharf and locate 3,600 UK employees, including 2,000 former Lehman Brothers staff, in the City. Nomura will today sign an exclusivity deal for the new riverside complex Watermark Place, following months of internal debate about where to locate its London staff. The bank will pay around £40 [...]
Biden: Obama misread crisis July 5, 2009 JOSEPH Biden, the US Vice President, has admitted President Barack Obama’s administration underestimated the scale of the recession and failed to foresee unemployment levels nearing double digits. He said the Obama team “misread how bad the economy was”, and admitted the unemployment figure of 9.5 per cent released last week was “much too high”. “There [...]
Chrysler completes new board July 5, 2009 Failed US automaker Chrysler has named the final five bosses on its board of directors. Chrysler, which emerged from bankruptcy last month by selling most of its assets to a group led by Italy’s Fiat Spa, named bosses including former Northwest Airlines head Douglas Steenland and Tristone Capital chairman and president George Gosbee.
Sir John Bond weighs in to Kleinwort bid July 5, 2009 KLEINWORT Benson, one of the oldest and most august banking names in the City, appears to have a future. Germany’s Commerzbank is on the very brink of sealing a deal to sell off the 150-year-old private bank to a tripartite consortium of management and City and private equity backers, it has emerged. City sources said [...]
STANLEY FINK TO BRING ARK GALA DINNER GLITZ OUT OF HEDGIE SHELL July 5, 2009 WHAT a coup for former Man group boss Stanley Fink at the weekend, as he stepped into hedgie philanthropist Arki Busson’s shoes as the chairman of children’s charity Absolute Return for Kids (ARK). Busson is best known for his engagement to actress Uma Thurman and his hefty contribution to the hedge fund social circuit with [...]
The property boss who can see the light at the end of the tunnel July 5, 2009 The airy offices of Knight Frank chairman Nick Thomlinson are as good a place as any to survey the wreckage of the property market over the last two years. So it can only be good news that the head of the UK’s largest privately-owned property business shows no sign of panic as he holds court [...]
No sustained rally for FTSE 100 this half July 5, 2009 WHATEVER the second half of 2009 holds for equity markets, it can only be better than the last six months of last year. But market analysts are not expecting the FTSE 100 to rally strongly through the third and fourth quarters, despite the blue-chip index’s strong rally since the depths of 3,500 back in March. [...]
BILL OF THE WEEK July 5, 2009 THESE may be recessionary times, but there’s no stopping us girls when we just wanna have fun. These ten ladies popped down to Old Spitalfields Market on Wednesday evening “from a nearby major bank” (no prizes for guessing which one), to celebrate one of their 28th birthdays. They ordered four bottles of Perrier-Jouët Belle Epoque [...]
Luxury retailers set to face six per cent sales drop worldwide July 5, 2009 SALES of luxury items are set to fall by six per cent across the globe, according to an exclusive report by Verdict Research. Global luxury expenditure is expected to fall to €211bn (£180bn) in 2009. In particular Japan is expected to suffer a 14.6 per cent drop and the US a 12.1 per cent drop. [...]
Rural homes near London see price rise July 5, 2009 PRIME country properties around London saw prices rising by 0.7 per cent in the second quarter of 2009 after five consecutive quarters of falls, according to the Knight Frank/ City A.M. prime commuter property price index. For the UK as a whole, the average value of prime country property fell by 0.9 per cent over [...]