CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS January 12, 2010 KBC Peel Hunt The mid and small cap corporate broking firm has made three senior hires. Stuart Duncan joins Peel Hunt’s equity research team from The Royal Bank of Scotland. Mark McGuinness, previously co-head of sales trading at Numis Securities, joins as a director in the sales trading team. Duncan and McGuinness join Andrew Chapman [...]
Cadbury chief’s plea: ‘Don’t let Kraft steal your company’ January 12, 2010 CADBURY has launched a renewed attack on Kraft’s unwanted bid for the company and issued upbeat trading figures to back its case. The British chocolate maker accused the US food giant of dramatically undervaluing the company. Revenues grew by 6 per cent in the second half of 2009 at Cadbury according to the figures issued [...]
Tesco sales surge after Clubcard bonus January 12, 2010 TESCO has had its best Christmas in three years after slashing prices and offering double Clubcard points to get customers through the door. Britain’s biggest supermarket chain reported that like-for-like sales at its UK stores jumped by 4.9 per cent during December and early January. Tesco saw a 35 per cent surge in sales of [...]
RBS is a ‘prisoner of the market’ on bonuses January 12, 2010 Royal Bank of Scotland is forced to pay large bonuses because it is a “prisoner of the market” chief executive Stephen Hester has told a parliamentary committee. Facing the cross party group of MPs he said that RBS was paying “the minimum we can get away with in the market place”. Hester also claimed that [...]
Debenhams sees slim sales rise January 12, 2010 DEBENHAMS has reported a marginal rise in Christmas trading figures – and vowed to step up its store refit scheme. The chain said the 0.1 per cent rise in like-for-like sales for the 18 weeks to 2 January was in line with internal forecasts. Debenhams said growth was limited by its decision to move away [...]
High street celebrates Xmas boost January 11, 2010 SNOWY weather and economic gloom could not deter British shoppers from hitting the high streets in their droves last month, giving retailers their best December performance in four years, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) will say today. Total retail sales values increased by an astonishing six per cent last month on December 2008 and 5.4 [...]
Obama considers a special levy on Wall Street titans January 11, 2010 WALL Street’s investment banking giants face a fresh headache in the run-up to bonus season as the US government considers a special levy. The Obama administration was last night planning an unexpected fee for top institutions in an effort to recoup more of the taxpayer funds pumped into the industry. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley [...]
Clegg calls for break-up of biggest City banks January 11, 2010 LIBERAL Democrat leader Nick Clegg will try to break up large banks like Barclays and HSBC if he finds himself in government after the next election. “The age of universal banking has to come to an end,” Clegg said as he launched his general election campaign yesterday. Asked if he was making an implicit threat [...]
Goldman may give to charity January 11, 2010 GOLDMAN Sachs could force its top brass to donate a portion of their salaries to charity in a move to quell public anger over bonus payouts. The investment bank, which is due to hand out year-end remuneration deals next Thursday, would ask many of its 5,100 London-based staff to sign up to the programme. It [...]
The real reason for London’s prosperity January 11, 2010 AT least three times since the 1960s, the City has been saved by the stupidity of others. London’s economic prominence is partly home-grown, of course, not least thanks to the free-market reforms of the 1980s. But a key driver of the City’s survival and subsequent triumph has been its ability to mop up industries fleeing [...]