London house asking prices turn positive July 19, 2009 AVERAGE asking prices for properties in London are higher now than they were a year ago, while the yearly decline for England and Wales was trimmed to 3.1 per cent, according to property website Rightmove. Rightmove figures show that the average asking price for a UK house rose by 0.6 per cent in July on [...]
Boardroom bonuses remain attainable July 19, 2009 BRITISH board members are still receiving bonuses worth a third of their salaries, despite the general trend for pay to be frozen. According to the latest Executive Compensation Review survey by employment research firm Incomes Data Services, the amount board directors receive in bonuses fell by 25 per cent on 2008 when they could expect [...]
PartyGaming buys rival July 19, 2009 PARTYGAMING yesterday confirmed that it has clinched a £100m deal for the owner of bingo website foxybingo.com, Cashcade. Partygaming is believed to be paying £75m upfront for Cashcade, with £25m to be paid at a later date depending on the group’s performance this year and in 2010. In April Partygaming reached an agreement with US [...]
ECONOMIST VIEWS: WHAT IS THE OUTLOOK FOR THE UK HOUSING MARKET? July 19, 2009 SEEMA SHAH CAPITAL ECONOMICSIn our view there are more falls to come, although recent falls have been slower than seen previously. The problem is that just by looking at a couple of months rise you forget how far they have fallen from the peak. The outlook is slightly more positive than it was but we [...]
SEEING IS BELIEVING AS 6,500 RUNNERS HIT THE CITY OF LONDON July 16, 2009 THE CITY was out in force last night for the fifth annual Standard Chartered Great City Run, and The Capitalist was impressed that as many as 6,500 of you tackled the five kilometre race in the name of the official charity, Seeing is Believing (SiB). The square mile closed to traffic so that teams from [...]
JP MORGAN REPORTS BUMPER EARNINGS July 16, 2009 JP MORGAN Chase, the investment banking giant, said earnings soared 36 per cent in the second-quarter, boosting hopes of a recession-defying earnings season for Wall Street. The bank unveiled bumper revenues yesterday of $27.7bn (£16.9bn) in the three months to the end of June, thanks in part to strong investment banking revenues. Earnings rose to [...]
US LENDER CIT TEETERS ON THE BRINK July 16, 2009 CIT Group, the US bank that lends to a million small- and medium-sized businesses, was on the brink of collapse last night after President Obama’s administration refused to come up with an emergency bailout. Shares of the 101-year old firm slid as much as 80 per cent to 31 cents amid fears that CIT would [...]
Google profit fails to excite July 16, 2009 GOOGLE’S quarterly profit beat Wall Street expectations, but the weak economy and slump in advertising spending took a toll on sales growth and the price of its search ads. Shares in Google, led by chief executive Eric Schmidt, fell 3 per cent after the results which exceeded average forecasts but failed to live up to [...]
Walker’s way: evolution, not revolution July 16, 2009 WHENEVER anything goes wrong in British business, governments wheel out the corporate governance experts. Most of the time, this achieves absolutely nothing. Yesterday’s report by Sir David Walker, which is far from revolutionary, will achieve some – but not much – good. There are two main reasons why Walker won’t satisfy the ridiculously high ambitions [...]
Paulson holds his ground July 16, 2009 HANK Paulson, the former US Treasury Secretary, defended his role in pressuring Bank of America (BofA) executives to complete the takeover of Merrill Lynch that saved the investment bank. In a second gruelling day at a hearing over the deal Paulson once again stood firm, stating that allowing BofA to back out of the takeover would [...]