General Electric chief eyeing growth and dividend increase April 28, 2010 General Electric is returning to “good, solid” earnings growth and plans to raise its dividend “at least” by 2011, chief executive Jeffrey Immelt told investors yesterday. “The clouds are breaking and the forecast ahead of us is promising,” Immelt told the annual meeting of the largest US conglomerate in Houston. The world’s largest maker of [...]
Goldman boss Blankfein says he has not thought about resigning April 28, 2010 Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein yesterday said he has not thought about resigning amid accusations the firm helped inflate the housing bubble and then made billions off the market’s collapse. Blankfein was asked in an ABC interview aired on Good Morning America whether it had ever crossed his mind to resign. “No it hasn’t”, [...]
Nomura fails to compete with US rivals April 28, 2010 Nomura’s inability to take advantage of an upswing in the US credit market led to modest quarterly profits and raised questions as to just how quickly it can become a global powerhouse. Nomura Holdings posted a fourth straight quarterly profit on the back of recovering stock markets, but Japan’s top broker failed to match the [...]
Franklin sees huge investment surge April 28, 2010 Franklin Resources quarterly profit more than tripled as investors put billions of dollars into the money manager’s global portfolios. The company, which manages the popular Franklin Income Fund and Templeton Global Bond Fund, took in $17.4bn (£11.5bn) in new cash during the quarter, significantly more than rivals such as T Rowe Price Group, which pulled [...]
Kraft boss tops female pay elite April 28, 2010 Irene Rosenfeld of Kraft Foods was the highest paid female executive in 2009 and one of 15 women chief executives on the annual list of the heads of the 500 biggest companies in the US, according to Forbes.com. Rosenfeld, 56, jumped to the top slot by nearly tripling her compensation package to $16.7m (£11m). She [...]
ANZ posts 20pc growth in profits April 28, 2010 Australia and New Zealand Banking, Australia’s fourth-largest lender, posted a 20 per cent rise in core half-year profit yesterday, driven by a sharp fall in bad-debt charges. ANZ posted a profit before one-off items of A$2.3bn (£1.4bn), up from A$1.9bn a year earlier, and raised its interim dividend by 13 per cent to 52 cents [...]
Spain: don’t lump us along with Greece April 28, 2010 SPAIN’S finance minister Elena Salgado insisted her country’s economic situation bore little similarity to the problems in Greece, just hours before Standard & Poor’s (S&P) yesterday issued an audacious downgrade on Spain’s sovereign credit rating. Addressing the Spanish parliament, Salgado said Spain’s economic data has been showing an “improvement” in recent weeks, adding: “[This] is [...]
Barclays clocks largest UK exposure to Greece April 28, 2010 BARCLAYS is likely to be hit the hardest of all the UK banks in the event of a Greek debt default, according to estimates released yesterday. Analysts at Evolution Securities calculated Barclays’ exposure to Greek bonds at €4.6bn (£4.0bn), or 10 per cent of tangible net asset value (tNAV), due to Barclays Capital’s position as [...]
ANALYST VIEWS: WILL GREECE BE KICKED OUT OF THE EUROZONE? April 28, 2010 BILL BLAIN | MATRIX CORPORATE CAPITAL I believe that in three or four weeks’ time the composition of the euro will look very different to how it does today. The internal debate will now be about how to exit Greece from the single currency and quarantine it from destroying the euro, by putting it into [...]
EXPLAINING THE EUROZONE’S SOVEREIGN DEBT CRISIS April 28, 2010 Q. WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO CAUSE THE GREEK DEBT CRISIS? A. Having rashly spent its way through the past few decades, Greece’s national debt now stands at around 115 per cent of GDP – exacerbated by a culture of tax evasion in the country. Now that the yawning gap between government income and spending has [...]