Commerzbank profits bounce back May 6, 2010 COMMERZBANK posted better than expected first-quarter results thanks to strong trading and lower risk provisions but still lagged the stellar earnings of investment banking peers. Germany’s second-biggest lender has only a small-scale investment banking business, leaving it unable to benefit from some of the stimulus measures that pushed Deutsche Bank Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley [...]
Diageo sees rebound in drinks market May 6, 2010 DIAGEO beat forecasts with a big sales rebound in the first three months of the year as the recovery kicked in led by strong emerging market growth. The London-based maker of Smirnoff vodka and Captain Morgan rum said it had seen signs of fragile recovery in its mature markets such as North America and a [...]
Morrisons customers up but warns over slowdown May 6, 2010 SUPERMARKET giant Morrisons has seen record numbers of customers in its stores but the new financial year has been hit by a slowdown, it said in a trading statement. The Group has continued to grow share in the first quarter with sales, excluding fuel, up 5.9 per cent in the 13 weeks to 2 May. [...]
Goldman boss in crunch vote May 5, 2010 LLOYD Blankfein, the embattled chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, is facing a demand to separate his two top roles at a meeting of the investment bank’s shareholders tomorrow. Shareholders, who have been shaken by a civil fraud suit brought against the bank by the Securities and Exchange Commission, will be asked to vote [...]
Markets fear Greek disaster May 5, 2010 FEARS Greece’s debt crisis could spread to other countries continued to hit markets yesterday fuelled by a threat by Moody’s rating agency that it may downgrade Portugal. The FTSE 100 crashed 1.3 per cent, while the euro plummeted to $1.2801 – its weakest level against the dollar since March 2009. The cost of insuring Spanish [...]
Tories best to tackle our fiscal crisis May 5, 2010 AT first sight, there are few similarities between Greece, a tiny and desperately mismanaged economy on the fringes of Europe, and Britain, one of the world’s largest economies – and for all the Labour party’s blunders and mismanagement, still an astonishingly prosperous country. Thanks to what turned out to be virtually the only good decision [...]
Freddie Mac seeks $10.6bn more from US May 5, 2010 FREDDIE Mac is to ask for $10.6bn (£7bn) in state aid, as the stricken US mortgage lender saw a loss of $8bn during the first three months of 2010. Part of the mammoth losses incurred by Freddie Mac account for $3.1bn in dividends paid to the Treasury Department. Freddie Mac said it would have to [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING May 5, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES XEROX CHIEF SETS OUT THE BIG PICTURE Ursula Burns, chief executive of Xerox, has been working overtime to justify an acquisition designed to transform one of the most famous names in corporate America. The $6.4bn purchase last September of ACS, an IT services company, was guaranteed to get Wall Street’s attention. Coming only [...]
FSA calamity piles pressure on Prudential May 5, 2010 PRUDENTIAL’S audacious takeover of AIA in Asia is teetering on the brink after the City watchdog blocked the insurer’s plan to raise $21bn (£14bn) through a bumper rights issue. The FTSE 100 company was humiliatingly forced to delay the publication of its cash call prospectus yesterday following a veto from the Financial Services Authority, which [...]
The man from the Pru blunders again May 5, 2010 ONE error – letting the news of the largest rights issue attempted in the UK so it can pay £23bn for the Asian business of American Insurance Group leak out before it could talk institutional investors around – could be considered careless. A second – group chief executive Tidjane Thiam planning to join the board [...]