L&G sales up but capital fears persist May 13, 2009 INSURER Legal & General (L&G) reported above-consensus first-quarter sales of £382m yesterday and said the worst of the crisis appears to be over, but fears over the firm’s capitalisation levels continued to dominate. L&G revealed a 3 per cent global sales rise, from £372m a year ago, which was massively bigger than analyst expectations of [...]
Allianz profits plummet amid more Dresdner pain May 13, 2009 GERMAN financial services group Allianz announced a 97 per cent net profit decline, as aftershocks from its disastrous ownership of Dresdner Bank continued to erode gains. Chief financial officer at the firm Helmut Perlet said net income was just €29m (£26m) in the quarter, compared with €1.2bn (£1.07bn) in the same quarter a year ago, thanks [...]
Gloomy Bank cuts outlook May 13, 2009 THE BANK of England yesterday said growth will recover more slowly than previously predicted but raised its forecast for future inflation to about 1.5 per cent in a gloomy assessment of the outlook for the UK economy, suggesting monetary policy may need to remain loose for some time. In its quarterly inflation report the BoE [...]
Unicredit hit but still bullish on East Europe May 13, 2009 ITALY’S UniCredit, the biggest lender in central and eastern Europe, is more upbeat about the recession-hit region as asset deterioration there slows, the bank said yesterday. Its optimism came in spite of a dramatic drop in first quarter pre-tax profit which fell 58 per cent to €447m on lower fees. And sales were also down [...]
Barclays bounces back to lead the market rally May 13, 2009 BARCLAYS is sitting pretty at the top of the UK’s rebounding stocks over the last three months, new figures from Motley Fool (Fool.co.uk) showed yesterday. The bank’s share price has soared from 61p on 9 March to 281p as of Monday’s closing price, a gain of 360 per cent, as UK lenders began to claw [...]
Rising profits on the menu for Compass May 13, 2009 COMPASS Group, the world’s largest catering group, yesterday posted a 40 per cent jump in first half profit, driven by new high-profile contract wins and the positive impact of currency movements. Group revenue grew 23.9 per cent to £6.9bn over the six months to March, while operating profit soared 40.7 per cent to £453m. Compass [...]
Dire drop in Eurozone first quarter GDP expected as output plummets in March May 13, 2009 EUROZONE industrial production plummeted by more than a fifth year-on-year in March, data yesterday showed, setting a record and indicating first quarter economic output could have contracted more than expected. Industrial production in the 16 countries using the euro fell two per cent month-on-month and 20.2 per cent year-on-year, the European Union’s statistics office, Eurostat, [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS May 13, 2009 WELLSTREAM HOLDINGS“It’s grim up north” said analysts at Citigroup, as they reduced their earnings per share estimates for Wellstream by 19 per cent for 2009. The broker said that the most solid and consistent part of the business has suffered over recent months, which will lead to earnings of £7-8m this year. Citi recommends investors [...]
CITY MOVES WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS May 13, 2009 Frontier IP GroupTim Cockroft, chief executive of broker Singer Capital Markets, has joined the board of the university IP commercialisation specialist as a non-executive director. Cockroft was formerly chief executive of KBC Peel Hunt. In 2006, he became head of capital markets at Kaupthing, owner of Singer & Friedlander, and bought back the business from [...]
Current account surplus boosts outlook for Japan May 13, 2009 JAPAN’S current account surplus fell by a smaller-than-expected 48.8 per cent in March from a year earlier, a sign that export demand may be stabilising after a slump in the wake of the financial crisis. The country is enduring its worst recession since World War Two but exports and output have shown some signs of [...]