Obama nominates trio to Federal Reserve board April 29, 2010 PRESIDENT Barack Obama yesterday nominated Janet Yellen as vice chairman of the US central bank. Yellen, the current president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, is renowned as a monetary policy “heavyweight”. He also nominated Sarah Raskin, Maryland’s financial regulation commissioner, and MIT economist Peter Diamond, who has written extensively about pensions and fiscal [...]
Forth Ports bidders get put up or shut up order April 29, 2010 A trio of Forth Ports’ shareholders has just under five weeks to make a formal offer for Britain’s only listed ports company or must walk away for six months, the Takeover Panel said yesterday. Forth on Wednesday rejected a new £640m takeover approach from the Northstream consortium – made up of AEIF General Partners, Peel [...]
Hobbycraft bought out for £100m April 29, 2010 THE private equity firm Bridgepoint Capital has bought Hobbycraft, the family owned arts and crafts retailer, in a deal worth around £100m. Bridgepoint beat off competition from private equity firm Exponent and retailer Halfords. Blackstone had expressed interest, but did not submit a bid in time for the deadline. Hobbycraft started out as one store [...]
Google wins trademark April 29, 2010 A federal judge yesterday dismissed a trademark infringement lawsuit filed by language software maker Rosetta Stone against Google. In a suit first filed in 2009, Rosetta claimed Google profits by allowing rivals that pirate its technology to buy the top “sponsored link” ad on search results pages. Consumers who search for “Rosetta Stone” on the [...]
Taylor leaves Citi April 29, 2010 Richard Taylor, head of European equity research at Citigroup, is expected to join Jefferies & Co as head of European equity research. The global securities company hired Taylor away from Citigroup as top banks fight it out to hire the world’s best stock analysts. Taylor, said that while volatility remained low and the trading range [...]
SPQR correction April 29, 2010 On 23 January we wrote that investors in the hedge fund SPQR lost £1.3bn in the pre-pack administration of Greek telecoms group Wind Hellas. In fact SPQR was only one of a number of investors in Wind Hellas, who together lost a combined total of £1.3bn. SPQR itself only lost a small amount which we [...]
Tighter fiscal policy needed for weak UK April 29, 2010 BESET by fiscal troubles and subdued consumer spending, the UK economy will only manage to grow by one per cent this year before picking up slightly in 2011 and 2012, the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (Niesr) will say today in its latest raft of forecasts. The think-tank expects that four-fifths of this [...]
CITY VIEWS: WILL GREECE’S DIFFICULTIES LEAD TO THE COLLAPSE OF THE EURO? April 29, 2010 OLIVER SADLER | ALLSOP “I think the IMF will stand in to stabilise Greece and prevent the contagion from spreading to other European countries. I don’t think the euro will collapse as a result of the Greek crisis.” JAMES BURGESS | TEMENOS “Its a positive thing that all of the nations in Europe are working [...]
British consumers remain cautious over year ahead April 29, 2010 BRITISH consumers are still cautious about the future for both their personal finances and the general economic situation, the latest consumer confidence survey from GfK NOP will show today. The overall consumer confidence index dipped by one point in April to -16, but is still well above last April’s figure of -27. The uptick in the [...]
HOUSE PRICES RISE FURTHER IN APRIL April 29, 2010 HOUSE prices rose one per cent in April according to Nationwide, in spite of concerns about a double-dip slump in the UK housing market. The upwardly-revised March figure of one per cent fully offset the dip in February. The annual change is now at 10.5 per cent, the first double-digit annual rise since June 2007.