Let’s stop whining about tight credit August 2, 2010 How unfair. I have a great idea for a new website but my bank doesn’t want to lend me the £50m I need to start it up. It claims not to like my business plan but that can’t possibly be right. What can I do? Oh, I know, I’ll tell my MP. It’s perfect timing: [...]
Treasury star to join JPM August 2, 2010 JP MORGAN Chase is today expected to announce Daniel Zelikow, a former US Treasury official, is to supervise a new drive to secure more commercial banking business for the group. Zelikow, who served under Robert Rubin in the Clinton administration, will look to win work from governments around the world and particularly in faster-growing economies. [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING August 2, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES LIVERPOOL FC AUCTION ATTRACTS GLOBAL INTEREST Global interest in the auction of Liverpool Football Club intensified on Monday with prospective bidders emerging from Hong Kong and the Middle East. Chinese sports entrepreneur Kenneth Huang has made an approach to Liverpool’s bankers Royal Bank of Scotland and US-based Wachovia seeking support for a deal, [...]
Intertek ups profit guidance August 2, 2010 UK testing and quality control firm Intertek yesterday upgraded its full-year guidance, underpinned by an improving trading outlook, as it reported first-half results, sending its shares to the top of the FTSE 100 index. “With the trading outlook improving, we now expect to achieve 2010 organic revenue growth of mid single digits,” Intertek said. The [...]
Genzyme receives $18bn letter August 2, 2010 Drug company Sanofi-Aventis has sent Genzyme a private proposal letter indicating its interest in buying the company for about $18.4bn (£11.6bn) and the two sides are discussing the offer, a source familiar with the situation said yesterday. Earlier in the week, Genzyme was said to be reluctant to accept a deal under $21.4bn. Sanofi had been [...]
HSBC profits soar as loan losses halve August 2, 2010 FALLING toxic loan charges, booming growth in Asia, and the second best ever performance by HSBC’s investment banking division have lifted the bank’s profits more than twofold since the first half of 2009. HSBC smashed expectations yesterday with a 121 per cent rise in first-half pre-tax profit to $11.1bn (£6.98bn), comfortably above forecasts of a [...]
Lehman ruling favours hedgies August 2, 2010 UK HEDGE funds celebrated yesterday after the Court of Appeal ruled that their money, held by the European arm of Lehman Brothers Holdings, was not protected when the bank went bust in 2008. The ruling will see a number of hedge funds gain access to a $2.1bn (£1.3bn) pool of cash, which was segregated by [...]
HSBC August 2, 2010 ACTIONS speak louder than words, but numbers are even louder. For all the talk of Eastern promise, as demonstrated by Michael Geoghegan’s recent emigration to Hong Kong, yesterday’s impressive results were more about dealing with the mistakes of the past. It was in the US, home of HSBC’s disastrous Household venture, where the recovery was [...]
BlackBerry is expected to shrug off ban August 2, 2010 THE BlackBerry ban in the UAE is unlikely to have a major impact on the firm, according to analysts. The row over its encryption of users data escalated yesterday, with Saudi Arabia indicating it would follow suit and block the firms Messenger, email and web browsing services. An estimated 1.2m users – or 2.6 per [...]
Enel eyes IPO of renewables unit as it hires bank advisers August 2, 2010 Enel, Europe’s most indebted utility, has picked three banks to coordinate floating part of its renewable energy unit, sources said, a sign this is the group’s preferred sale route to help cut debt. Italy’s largest utility aims to raise as much as €4bn (£3.33bn) from an initial public offering (IPO) of a minority stake in [...]