Balfour Beatty completes $1.24bn sale of Parsons Brinckerhoff to WSP Global October 31, 2014 Balfour Beatty has completed the sale of its design arm Parsons Brinckerhoff to Canadian firm WSP Global for $1.24bn (£753m). The deal, which derailed merger talks between the construction firm and Carillion, gained shareholder approval earlier this week. Balfour Beatty expects to spend the proceeds on returning £200m to shareholders through a share buyback programme [...]
Save money when buying overseas October 31, 2014 Whether it’s a villa in the sun-kissed Côte d'Azur, a chalet in the Alps or a pied-à-terre in Paris, France has long been a favourite destination for second home owners. And that desire shows no sign of abating, as trends in the French capital are showing: “In Paris, foreign buyers are now accounting for nearly [...]
How much have RBS, Barclays, JP Morgan, Citigroup, UBS and HSBC set aside for potential costs from the FCA forex market rigging probe? October 31, 2014 RBS is the latest bank to set aside a hefty pot of cash for the potential costs of settling with the City regulator after a major investigation into the manipulation of forex markets. The bank revealed that figure stands at £400m in its third quarter results today. It’s a large sum, but by no means [...]
Game Group “pay as you stay” appeal rejected by Supreme Court October 31, 2014 Game Group's appeal against a landmark decision forcing retailers to pay rent even after they have filed for administration has been rejected by the Supreme Court. The test case was brought by landlords British Land, Hammerson, Land Securities and Intu, and the February ruling in their favour paved the way for so-called “pay as [...]
ECB council member Ewald Nowotny: We cannot rule out quantitative easing in the Eurozone October 31, 2014 We cannot rule out quantitative easing in the Eurozone: that was the message European Central Bank governing council member Ewald Nowotny gave CNBC today. "I think that we have all learned in life that we should never say 'never',” Nowotny told the channel. Nowotny is generally considered a hawk, preferring the austere German methods of [...]
“Amazon is like IS” terrorist group says Andrew Wylie, literary agent of Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie October 31, 2014 One of the most powerful people in the publishing world has compared Amazon to the Islamic terrorist group IS. Andrew Wylie, agent to literary stars such as Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie, called the online retailer a “sort of Isis-like distribution channel” in a speech at the International Festival of Authors on the future of [...]
Eurozone unemployment stays flat at 11.5 per cent October 31, 2014 It is a reflection of the economic times that a flat unemployment figure inspires a sense of relief, but today analysts breathed a sigh of relief as EU unemployment remained stable at 11.5 per cent in September. Although it was the fourth consecutive month the rate had stayed the same, the total number of unemployed [...]
Eurozone inflation hits expectations – but it’s still in the ECB’s “danger zone” October 31, 2014 Inflation in the Eurozone ticked up a tenth of a percentage point in October, which will do little to allay fears about the state of the economy in the single currency zone. According to the latest flash estimate (which will be confirmed next month) the rate was 0.4 per cent in October, compared with 0.3 [...]
Russian central bank hikes interest rate by 1.5 percentage points to stave off rouble slide October 31, 2014 So much for the softly-softly approach to monetary policy taken by most central banks at the moment. Russia has hiked interest rates by 1.5 percentage points to 9.5 per cent, in an effort to stave off further slides in the rouble. The value of Russia's international reserve stockpile has fallen more than $30bn since the [...]
London property prices: More million-pound properties have been sold in London this year than ever before October 31, 2014 London house prices might be cooling, but things are certainly hotting up at the premium end of the market. Sales of properties costing more than £1m have reached record levels in the UK with 6,143 houses sold in the first half of the year- 70 per cent of which were in London. That’s nearly 2,000 [...]