Deutsche Bank posts third quarter loss October 27, 2010 Deutsche Bank posted a third-quarter loss, weighed down by an expected 2.3bn euro (£2bn) charge on Deutsche Postbank, and stuck with a cautious outlook for 2011. By 2011, Germany’s flagship lender aims to achieve 10bn euros pre-tax profit at group level. “While some of the environmental variables are in line with or ahead of our [...]
Virgin media nets more money per user October 27, 2010 Cable operator Virgin Media added fewer net new customers in the third quarter than expected but managed to extract record sums from each user. Virgin Media, which competes in Britain with BT and BSkyB in the provision of broadband, telephony and pay-TV, said it had added 14,100 net new customers in the period ending September, [...]
Defective directive October 26, 2010 As controversial EU rules on alternative funds were finally agreed in Brussels yesterday, fears are mounting that they will cripple the private equity industry THE private equity industry yesterday railed against an EU directive which will subject alternative investment funds to draconian new rules. While the compromise deal won’t be as bad for hedge funds [...]
Strong GDP growth dashes chances of further QE October 26, 2010 THE UK’s unexpectedly strong growth last quarter will mean the Bank of England will keep the presses off and delay any restart to quantitative easing (QE), according to City economists. Preliminary growth figures released yesterday showed that the economy smashed consensus forecasts of 0.4 per cent to surge 0.8 per cent from July to September. [...]
Court drama over EMI deal October 26, 2010 CITIGROUP banker David Wormsley yesterday testified that he could not remember specifics of any of the phone calls that are at the heart of a civil fraud trial over Terra Firma private equity chief Guy Hands’s $6.4bn (£4.2bn) purchase of EMI in 2007. In the first full day of court battle between the two former [...]
Strong recovery requires a rate hike October 26, 2010 So much for the merchants of doom and all of those who, desperate for another fix of cheap money, have been calling for a resumption of quantitative easing. They have all been proved completely wrong. Yesterday’s excellent GDP growth numbers confirm what I have long been arguing: that far from being on the brink of [...]
Ex-insurance boss is jailed October 26, 2010 A FORMER chief executive of a City firm who admitted paying bribes to win contracts overseas has been jailed for 21 months. Julian Messent, 50, resigned in 2006 as chief executive officer at insurance firm PWS – founded by former UKIP leader Lord Pearson – after admitting to funnelling £1.2m worth of corrupt payments to [...]
Indonesia facing double disaster October 26, 2010 Indonesia is facing the double disaster of a volcanic eruption and a tsunami. Yesterday’s eruption of Mount Merapi killed at least 18 perople and forced thousands to flee their homes as the volcano spewed burning ash above the island of Java. About 1,300 km west, rescuers raced for Indonesia’s Mentawai islands, which was hit by [...]
PayPal expects $1bn payments October 26, 2010 Online payments system PayPal said yesterday that $1bn (£631m) in transactions will flow through its developers’ platform this year, driven largely by payments made over cellphones. PayPal opened its platform to outside developers last year and has so far attracted 50,000 worldwide. Some 1,000 outside applications have been launched for use on the platform, said [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING October 26, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES CHINA AND US CLOSER ON TRADE TARGETS China and the US have the basis for an agreement at the summit of the Group of 20 leading nations next month on setting targets to cut trade imbalances, according to an adviser to the Chinese central bank. Li Daokui, a member of the central bank’s [...]