Is the US Jobs act a dud for alternative investment managers? April 7, 2014 The Jumpstart Our Business Startups (Jobs) act came into law in the US heralding what many believed would be a watershed moment in the notoriously secretive and guarded world of hedge funds. The law, passed exactly two years ago this month, lifted restrictions on hedge funds and other alternative investment managers to market their funds [...]
Why don’t Britons identify with Canadians? April 7, 2014 There's some pretty predictable stuff in Ipsos Mori’s new poll on how Britons are becoming less nationalistic, but feel a greater sense of connection on a local and global level. Social media, easy travel and sharing networks (to name but a few) mean that, on the one hand, people feel closer to those immediately around them, but [...]
Fast-drying concrete cost Victoria Line passengers 100,000 hours, says TfL April 7, 2014 The spillage of some fast-setting concrete saw London's Victoria Line halted in January this year, as a signal room was flooded with the stuff. “We understand that a foot of concrete burst into the control room having been poured into an escalator void,” a spokesman for the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, [...]
Why Game of Thrones is now the most important show on TV April 7, 2014 Tonight’s broadcast of Game of Thrones isn’t just the start of another fantastic season of bloodletting, beheading and gratuitous violence, it’s actually the most important thing happening on TV. For Sky, it’s the payoff from a £150m bet it made on HBO (the US channel behind Game of Thrones) in 2010 for exclusive UK access [...]
Gehry and Foster unveil Battersea Power Station designs April 7, 2014 Architects Frank Gehry and Norman Foster unveiled their designs yesterday for the next phase of development at Battersea Power Station that will include 1,300 homes on either side of new high street forming the gateway to the landmark building. It will be the first building in London for the Canadian-American Gehry, whose best known works [...]
EU Commission accused of blocking whistleblower clause April 7, 2014 Transparency at the European Union has taken a blow after the European Commission refused to apply the same rules it requires of national statistical offices to the Commission's own agency, Eurostat. In 2012, MEPs had agreed to extend the rules governing national statistics offices to apply to Eurostat and wanted to insert a "whistleblower clause" [...]
What you need to know before the US open April 7, 2014 Last week was rounded off with a late selloff on US markets, following the latest, and disappointing, jobs report. Fed chair Janet Yellen has been trying to persuade investors that the central bank intends to keep interest rates low, taking into account a jobs market that’s “not back to normal health”. Be that as it may, [...]
Brits hate Easter but Lindt is top of the chocs April 7, 2014 Easter may be bouncing towards us faster than you can say “oh goodness I’ve eaten five packets of chocolate buttons,” but it seems most of us don’t give a toss. Some research from Webloyalty has detected vast disillusionment, 79 per cent of respondents to the survey said Easter was not important to them, 66 [...]
The Eurozone’s most powerful finance ministers are tiptoeing around their big division April 7, 2014 This morning veteran German finance minister and new French finance minister Michel Sapin met in Berlin, giving an amicable press conference that did little more than hint at perhaps their biggest split on policy Sapin is not as outwardly radical as incoming economy minister Arnaud Montebourg, but is nonetheless tasked with pushing for less stringent [...]
Pope gives Vatican bank changes his blessing April 7, 2014 Pope Francis has approved recommendations on the future of the Vatican bank, saying the scandal-hit lender will stay open. The See of Rome has put out a statement disclosing that the Holy Father has said yes to a proposal on the future of the Works of Religion (IOR), as the bank's formally known. The proposal will [...]