Green spending to double in Europe within five years May 31, 2010 SALES of environmentally friendly products are set to double in Europe by 2015, but will still only account for five per cent of total retail sales, with shoppers deterred by higher prices, a study said yesterday. The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) and Kelkoo forecast the price premium on “green” products would shrink from 46 [...]
POSITIVE FEEDBACK May 31, 2010 FORMER eBay chief executive Meg Whitman recovered a wide lead over her rival for the Republican nomination in California’s governor race, a poll showed yesterday. With less than two weeks before the 8 June primary, Whitman led state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner by 53 per cent to 29 per cent, according to a poll organised [...]
The grocer who says this year will test retailers as well as shoppers May 31, 2010 Much like the rest of the country, the chief executive of the country’s third largest supermarket group is trying to make up his mind about the coalition government. At the start of the election campaign Sainsbury’s boss Justin King was one of many who backed Tory plans to scrap national insurance hikes for employers, a [...]
IHG eyes Asia as business trips return May 31, 2010 BUSINESS travel is making a welcome comeback for the hotels sector while an Asian boom is transforming the business, according to InterContinental Hotels Group finance director Richard Solomons. The executive, speaking to City A.M. at the company’s flagship Park Lane hotel, is ebullient about the prospects for the company which has pumped millions into overhauling [...]
CBI: caution hits service sector firms May 31, 2010 SERVICE sector firms saw their profits and sales tumble during the first three months of the year, according to a quarterly survey from the CBI published today. In a further disappointment for the sector, which has struggled to recover after the recession, the survey shows that firms selling services to consumers saw their volumes of [...]
WHAT DO YOU EXPECT FROM THE SERVICE SECTOR’S PURCHASING MANAGERS’ INDEX? May 31, 2010 JONATHAN LOYNES | CAPITAL ECONOMICS” “Service sector underperformance will probably continue for a few months yet. Service sector output fell less sharply than in these sectors during the recession, limiting the potential for a strong period of growth. The May survey is hard to predict, but it should edge up slightly.” PHILIP SHAW | INVESTEC [...]
Capital rules will not stifle banks: BIS May 31, 2010 NEW bank capital rules would likely not hit growth and banks are exaggerating their potential effects, an economist at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said. “The net impact of the Basel committee reforms on growth will be negligible,” said Stephen Cecchetti, chief economic adviser to the BIS. “Our preliminary assessment is that improvements to [...]
China delaying credit default swaps project May 31, 2010 CHINA has delayed a pilot project to trial credit default swaps (CDS) in its domestic bond market after the national banking regulator expressed concerns over their side-effects. CDS, derivatives that provide insurance against a bond defaulting, have been blamed for amplifying the financial crisis as their use spread from hedging credit portfolios to speculating. It [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS May 31, 2010 UNILEVER UBS has upgraded its rating for Unilever from “neutral” to “buy” and said that since the start of April, Unilever has underperformed its US peers. UBS suspects partly this reflects investors seeing Unilever as a proxy for the Eurozone, yet it estimates Unilever ’s exposure to the Eurozone to be only marginally higher than [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS May 31, 2010 Sainsbury’s Finance The supermarket personal finance business yesterday said interim chief executive David Fisher has been appointed as its new permanent chief. Fisher, who has been in the interim role for five months, joined the group in January from Lloyds Banking Group, where he was group HR director for HBOS. He spent a total of [...]