Lloyds Banking Group to axe another 650 jobs June 30, 2010 LLOYDS Banking Group is to shed a further 650 jobs, it has confirmed. Insurance and back office-based staff in Nottingham and Chester would bear the brunt of the latest cuts, the bank said. It will also close its network of Halifax-branded agencies which are “no longer integral to its business model”. Cath Speight, Unite national [...]
Posen: Economy could lurch back into recession June 30, 2010 THE economy is in a tentative recovery but could still switch back to recession, Bank of England policymaker Adam Posen has warned. In a speech in London, Posen said the economy was trapped between two outcomes – the austerity in Europe and the recovery in the rest of world. “If we are fortunate, our present [...]
Stan Chart to invest $500m in AgBank listing June 30, 2010 Standard Chartered Bank will invest $500m (£332m) in Agricultural Bank of China’s floatation in Hong Kong, as it tries to strengthen its position in Asia. AgBank’s initial public offering is aiming to raising $23.2bn Standard Chartered chief executive Peter Sands said: “This investment is a natural next step in our long-standing relationship and it underpins [...]
HMV profit up 18 per cent June 30, 2010 HMV met forecasts with an 18 per cent rise in year profit and said its plan to transform the business into a broad-based entertainment brand is making progress. The music, games and DVD group, which runs over 400 stores under its own name as well as 314 Waterstone’s bookstores, made an underlying pretax profit of [...]
House prices rise 0.1 per cent in June June 30, 2010 HOUSE prices rose by 0.1 per cent in June, according to the Nationwide building society. The average property price in the UK is now more than £170,000. Prices have risen by three per cent since the start of the year, the lender’s house price index showed. But the rate of annual house price inflation fell [...]
Markets slump on fears of double-dip June 29, 2010 MARKETS on both sides of the Atlantic plummeted yesterday as doubts over the strength of the global recovery and the possibility of a Europe-wide cash crisis triggered fears of a re-run of the 2008 recession when investors sold all but the safest assets. The FTSE 100 crashed 3.1 per cent, closing at 4914.22 – its [...]
More banks face EU stress tests June 29, 2010 A SECOND round of banking stress tests will examine more than 120 institutions in Europe, and could also include checks on each bank’s exposure to debt from at-risk countries. Analysts have warned that the EU risks further unsettling investors by treating bonds from Greece and other countries as liable to failure, even in tests. The [...]
Spain fights ECB loan plan June 29, 2010 SPANISH banks are bracing themselves today as the European Central Bank prepares to call back €442bn (£358bn) of one-year loans. Senior bankers in the country have described the central bank’s plans to end long-term loans as “absurd.” While the ECB will today offer unlimited loans for three months to lessen the blow to banks across [...]
World trade still driving the recovery June 29, 2010 INVESTORS are right to be worried about the Eurozone. It is the most dangerous part of the world economy, a flawed and failing construct which poses a great threat to the financial system and to the recovery. A Chinese collapse looks much less likely, however, though it is clear that anything that were to derail [...]
Greek bank bid rumoured June 29, 2010 GREECE’S National Bank was said to be in talks with Qatar over selling a small stake to the Gulf state yesterday, though a source close to the issue later denied the reports. “National Bank never had talks about selling a five to seven per cent stake in a non-pre-emptive rights basis,” the source in Greece [...]