Vanish chief cleans up with £90m packet April 7, 2010 RECKITT Benckiser chief executive Bart Becht took home almost £90m after the company had a strong financial year. According to the company’s 2009 annual report, which was published yesterday, most of the sum came from share options that Becht cashed in. His base salary rose to £987,000 last year. After pocketing a £3.5m bonus, his [...]
Sly Bailey gets a healthy pay rise at Trinity Mirror April 7, 2010 TRINITY Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey took home £1.43m last year after profits at the newspaper group fell from £124.2m to £72.7m. Bailey’s package included a £671,000 bonus for reaching certain targets and is well up on last year’s £757,000. A spokesman for Trinity Mirror told City A.M. last night that the company’s operating profits were [...]
SEC bolsters rules on loan securitisations April 7, 2010 WALL Street regulators yesterday proposed issuers of mortgage-backed securities and similar instruments disclose more about the underlying loans and keep five per cent of the credit risk in some circumstances, in an effort to avoid a repeat of the financial crisis. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule responds to the debacle involving securities packed [...]
Divisions in Shadow MPC but rates held April 7, 2010 RIFTS are appearing within City A.M.’s Shadow Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) with two members calling for an interest rate hike of 0.25 per cent this month and one saying he would be happy to see another £25bn of quantitative easing (QE). The shadow MPC’s decision to keep rates and QE unchanged comes ahead of the [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS April 7, 2010 Nomura The Japanese investment bank has appointed Mikael Dahl as co-head of its Nordic investment banking team, based in London. Dahl was previously a partner at EQT Partners and brings with him over 20 years of investment banking experience. He previously worked at Citigroup/Salomon Brothers from 1994 to 2008, latterly as European co-head of the [...]
Services data disappoints but firms are confident and hiring April 7, 2010 ACTIVITY in Britain’s services sector expanded at a slower pace last month according to a leading survey while official statistics confirmed the impact of adverse weather conditions on the sector in January. The CIPS/Markit business activity index fell to 56.5 from February’s three-year high of 58.3, disappointing the markets which had expected little change. However, [...]
CITY A.M. | SHADOW MPC April 7, 2010 ALLISTER HEATH | CITY A.M. “The Bank should hike rates by a symbolic 0.25 per cent to show that it is serious when it comes to fighting inflation and that it is confident the economy is growing again. The UK is weak but no longer in recession.” SIMON WARD | HENDERSON “Raise rates by 25 [...]
Bernanke: US economy is not out of the woods yet April 7, 2010 THE US economy still faces significant headwinds, including a housing sector that has yet to recover convincingly and an ailing employment market, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said yesterday. In a speech that suggested the central bank chief was in no rush to begin raising interest rates, Bernanke outlined a number of challenges to the [...]
Heritage Oil shares slip on Iraqi fears April 7, 2010 HERITAGE OIL shares fell more than six per cent yesterday after it revealed that it needed to drill deeper in one of its wells in Iraq. The Miran West-2 appraisal well in Kurdistan will need to be deepened to 4,600 metres from its current 2,627 metres in order to explore its potential. Chief executive Tony [...]
Employment tribunal claims to jump after parliament passes Equality Bill April 7, 2010 EMPLOYERS in the UK are bracing themselves for a jump in employment tribunal claims after parliament yesterday passed the Equality Bill. The Bill is expected to be turned into law by October and brings together a number of equality laws to form a single Act. “The new law has been a long time coming and [...]