Cowdery gets nod from UKFI August 16, 2009 RESOLUTION, the buyout vehicle headed by Clive Cowdery, is confident the Treasury would not bar it from bidding for the life insurance assets of Lloyds Banking Group due to its controversial tax-haven status. Cowdery has been given the green light and is now considering a bid for the Lloyds’ Clerical Medical unit, after dispatching an [...]
London retail sales continue growth despite July washout August 16, 2009 LONDON’S retail sales growth continued to outpace the rest of the UK last month but with the narrowest lead in nine months, figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) will show today. The capital’s like-for-like sales increased by 2.2 per cent in July compared with the same month a year earlier when same-store sales were [...]
Havens leave blacklist as OECD removes Virgin Islands, Cayman August 16, 2009 TAX HAVENS the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman islands have been removed from an official “grey list” of countries that disregard tax secrecy laws. Homes to countless hedge funds due to their low taxes and secrecy, the nations are now on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) white list. Both nations signed [...]
IRON ORE WOES August 16, 2009 MINER BHP Billiton yesterday called for greater transparency in iron ore pricing, and slammed the current system of negotiation. The comments come after China detained four workers at BHP’s rival Rio Tinto, which has been accused of bribery. BHP’s chief financial officer Alex Vanselow said a pricing mechanism used for negotiating a copper price could [...]
M&A deals in Europe halve August 16, 2009 EUROPEAN mergers and acquisitions have plummeted by 51 per cent so far this year compared with 2008, amid the ongoing liquidity drought and fears about the economy recovery. In 2009 to date, Europe has seen a some $356.6bn (£215.6bn) worth of deal activity. Excluding government bailouts in struggling companies, this figure falls to just $239.1bn [...]
Private sector shrivels under Labour, says Policy Exchange August 16, 2009 BRITAIN’S private sector will be smaller in 2010 than when Labour was returned to office in 1997, according to figures calculated by the Policy Exchange think tank. The economic output of the private sector will have slipped to around £706.1bn – below the inflation adjusted £708.9bn it amounted to in the first year of Tony [...]
Shake-up talks at Network Rail August 16, 2009 RICK Haythornthwaite, the chairman of Network Rail, is holding meetings with the company’s members throughout September and October to discuss changes to the group’s corporate governance. Among the changes being discussed is a motion to slash the number of members from 106 to around 30, to make the company more manageable.Network Rail doesn’t have investors, [...]
Keydata set to break bad news August 16, 2009 INVESTORS are preparing for bad news today from a creditors’ meeting at failed structured product firm Keydata, with the firm expected to say they will only get back “pennies in the pound” of their outlay. The 5,500 investors in Keydata’s Secure Income Bond products, which stopped making payouts after it emerged £103m that was supposed [...]
EMPLOYERS BEWARE AS CV FIBS ARE ON THE RISE August 16, 2009 READERS who have ever been tempted to “embellish” their CV will probably remember the story of disgraced hotel executive, Patrick Imbardelli, who lost everything he had worked for because of such an indiscretion. Imbardelli was forced to resign from his role as head of Asia Pacific at InterContinental Hotels in 2007, just weeks before he [...]
BILL OF THE WEEK August 16, 2009 OUR BILL this week comes from four diners who sampled the Chino-Latino delights at St Martin’s Lane Hotel’s Asia de Cuba restaurant this week – though you wouldn’t envy them the rum-induced headache the next day. After warming up with Latino cocktails and starters – including fusion-themed tuna, calamari and duck dishes – they moved [...]