Bond issues help out at Moody’s October 29, 2009 MOODY’S, parent of Moody’s Investors Service, reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings yesterday on a pickup in bond issuance, and raised its outlook for the full year. Moody’s, whose main business is providing ratings for debt, and its main rival McGraw-Hill’s Standard & Poor’s, were hit hard by a slump in debt issuance during the recession, but [...]
Mobile broadband future is bright for Orange but fixed-line looks dim October 29, 2009 ORANGE said yesterday it broke through the 17m customer barrier in its third quarter, despite haemorrhaging fixed-line broadband subscribers. France Telecom’s UK operation said fixed-line broadband customers dropped by 12.2 per cent to 899,000 during the three months to September, from 1.023m last year. But mobile broadband subscriptions rose 64 per cent year-on-year to a [...]
Cond Nast profits slump October 29, 2009 Condé Nast’s London-based international arm saw its profits fall 12 per cent to £33.5m in 2008, as both advertising and subscriptions were hit by the recession. The Vogue publisher’s annual accounts filed at Companies House showed that its UK magazines subsidiary, Condé Nast Publications, saw profits drop by 14 per cent to £18.9m in the [...]
BAE announces 500 job cuts October 29, 2009 Union leaders expressed their "bitter disappointment" yesterday as defence giant BAE Systems announced plans to cut over 500 jobs in its Land Systems division. News on the job cuts comes just days before the company is due to submit a bid which would allow it to supply the British Army with a new scout vehicle. [...]
Kentz wins contract in Qatar October 29, 2009 Kentz said yesterday it had received a multi-million dollar contract for the engineering, procurement and construction of a project for Laffan Refinery in Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar. The contract included full site development of the main fuel truck distribution point for the Laffan refinery tank farm. Qatar Petroleum holds a 51 per cent stake [...]
Lufthansa forecasts grey skies October 29, 2009 Deutsche Lufthansa provided a gloomy outlook for the airline industry yesterday, saying any green shoots of recovery were being swamped by pricing pressures in both passenger and cargo services. It said it was still too early to give the all-clear for the air cargo industry. Drops in volumes were not as severe as in prior [...]
NOMURA PREPARING FOR OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE VARSITY CLASH October 29, 2009 THE City’s rugby aficionados and former Oxbridge contingent are already gearing up for this year’s Varsity match, which is being sponsored for the second year running by Japanese bank Nomura. Nomura stepped in at the last minute to save the day after it rescued the European operations of failed bank Lehman Brothers, the event’s former [...]
Standard Life hit as market woes return October 29, 2009 INSURER Standard Life yesterday reported a 15 per cent fall in sales for the first nine months of the year. The drop reflected weak financial markets and was broadly in line with forecasts. Britain’s fourth-biggest insurer by market value, revealed that life and pensions sales for the nine months to 30 September were £10.5bn – [...]
Qinetiq chief executive quits one day after critical RAF Nimrod crash report October 29, 2009 THE chief executive of defence research business Qinetiq, Graham Love, stood down yesterday – a day after the company was heavily criticised in a report into the fatal RAF Nimrod aircraft crash in 2006. Love, who was with Qinetiq for eight years, will leave on 30 November but remains as a consultant to the group. [...]
MetLife posts its third quarterly loss in a row October 29, 2009 METLIFE, the largest life insurer in the US, yesterday posted a quarterly loss, hurt by investment losses, some of which were tied to improvement in the company’s own credit spreads. The group’s operating results in the latest quarter matched Wall Street expectations and the results showed growth in sales across most of MetLife’s business operations, [...]