Galleon founder attempts to get bail conditions reduced in US insider case October 29, 2009 THE head of hedge fund Galleon yesterday appealed for his bail in connection with insider trading charges to be slashed by $75m (£45m). Tycoon Raj Rajaratnam faces claims that he made $20m through illegal tips from companies including IBM and Intel. The 52-year-old billionaire asked a US judge to reduce his bail to $25m from [...]
LLOYDS PUSHES ON WITH PLAN TO RAISE 21BN October 29, 2009 LLOYDS Banking Group will retain a 25 per cent share of domestic current account customers under restructuring plans agreed with the European authorities to avoid the government’s asset protection scheme (APS). The European Commission and the Treasury last night gave the bank the go-ahead to market a £20.5bn capital raising programme, consisting of a £13bn [...]
MARKETS SURGE AS US EMERGES FROM SLUMP October 29, 2009 Markets surged as the US economy emerged from the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression, expanding at an annual rate of 3.5 per cent in the third quarter according to figures released yesterday. The main Dow Jones index closed up 200 points to 9,962.58, while the technology-laced Nasdaq jumped 38 points to 2,097.55. [...]
Founder of K1 under arrest October 29, 2009 GERMAN authorities placed Helmut Kiener, founder of Germany’s K1 hedge fund group, under arrest yesterday in a multi-million-dollar corruption probe of a Caribbean- registered fund he ran. His arrest warrant said Barclays and BNP Paribas may have lost millions of dollars in the case, which prosecutors say spanned the Atlantic and featured lavish personal spending [...]
Plus a change, plus c’est la mme chose October 29, 2009 IT is becoming increasingly clear that the current crisis is much more similar to previous booms and busts than is usually understood. London’s secondary banking crisis of the 1970s, for example, saw a number of financial institutions that raised funds on the money markets go bust after the Bank of England hiked interest rates and [...]
Peter Norris to chair Virgin October 29, 2009 SIR Richard Branson has appointed Peter Norris, the former Barings boss, as chairman of the Virgin Group, the holding company that owns Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Rail. Norris, 54, as Virgin’s first non-executive chairman, will oversee the management of the group. He will step down as chief executive of Scottish investment bank boutique Quayle Munro. [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING October 29, 2009 FINANCIAL TIMES ASIAN SHIPPING LINES SUFFER FURTHER LOSSESTwo of Asia’s biggest shipping lines announced major losses for the June-September quarter in a further sign of the unprecedented severity of the crisis battering the industry. Singapore’s Neptune Orient Lines said that it would lose money at least for the first half of 2010 as it announced [...]
Fed should lose bailout powers October 29, 2009 The Federal Reserve should lose its authority to bail out financial firms under proposed reforms aimed at limiting the damage from failures, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said. “Any firm that puts itself in a position where it cannot survive without assistance from the government must face the consequences of failure,” Geithner said. The Fed [...]
P&G posts strong third quarter October 29, 2009 Consumer goods firms Procter & Gamble (P&G) and Colgate-Palmolive posted better-than-expected results yesterday, fuelling hopes of a global economic recovery. P&G, the world’s largest maker of household goods, said its first quarter profits fell by 1 per cent from a year ago to $3.35bn (£2.02bn). Colgate-Palmolive, the toothpaste-to-soap maker, reported an 18 per cent rise [...]
Bankers think bonuses will break records October 29, 2009 DESPITE protests from politicians and taxpayers against multi-million pound payouts, bankers expect this year’s bonus payments to break records, according to a new poll. One in ten executives expect their best ever payout this year while the majority of traders, analysts and fund managers believe their bonus will either increase or not change. And despite [...]