RBS share price rises after it sells off portfolio of Irish real estate loans December 7, 2015 The Royal Bank of Scotland's (RBS) Ulster Bank today has sold off a portfolio of Irish real estate loans for £360m, as part of a drive to decrease its capital needs. The assets were bought by a subsidiary of Cairn Homes and an affiliate of Lone Star Funds, and the sale is expected to complete by the end of this [...]
House prices in City fringe areas of Shoreditch, Clerkenwell and Hoxton have surged by 62 per cent since 2008 December 7, 2015 House prices in London’s City fringe have surged since the crisis to outperform the wider London market, new research shows, thanks to the booming popularity of areas such as Shoreditch, Clerkenwell and Wapping to live as well as work. According to property advisory firm CBRE, average residential property prices in the City fringe have soared [...]
What got us tweeting in 2015: JeSuisParis, Refugees Welcome and The Dress top the bill December 7, 2015 When it came to the last 12 months, there were plenty of big hitting topics that got us talking – or rather, tweeting – in 2015. The hashtag #JeSuisParis was Twitter's top “influential moment” of 2015, trending last month after Islamic State carried out a number of terrorist attacks in Paris, killing 129 people. It came on the [...]
Oil prices could stay under $50 as defiant Opec fails to reach agreement on production levels December 7, 2015 Oil prices could remain stuck under $50 amid one of the worst supply gluts in history, as a defiant Opec failed to agree new production levels at an acrimonious meeting at the end of last week. Global benchmark Brent crude fell two per cent to $42.93 a barrel after the Vienna meeting and has stayed around that [...]
Morgan Stanley preparing to axe up to a quarter of staff in its fixed income division December 7, 2015 Morgan Stanley staff are bracing themselves for another week of redundancies as the banking giant wields the axe at its fixed income division. City A.M. understands that the US investment bank could axe more than a quarter of its fixed income staff across worldwide operations. Disgruntled employees in London have taken to social media to voice [...]
Dame Colette Bowe on her plans for the Banking Standards Board December 7, 2015 Sitting in a small office around the corner from the Bank of England, former Ofcom chair Dame Colette Bowe says that her new job barely resembles her earlier days as a regulator. “We’re very different from being a regulator,” Bowe tells City A.M. “Regulators have statutory duties, as well as statutory powers. Regulators can say: [...]
Bankers’ bonuses could drop by 10 per cent due to reduced number of IPOs December 7, 2015 Bankers are being warned that bonuses could plummet by almost 10 per cent as the annual salary-sweetener season kicks off, with zero-bonuses expected to make a comeback in 2016. Investment bankers working in mergers and acquisitions and in fixed income, currency and commodities (Ficc) are most at risk of seeing their bonuses slashed, according to [...]
Permanent placements rocket up at their fastest rate for seven months while pay also increases December 7, 2015 Permanent job placements rose at their fastest rate for seven months in November, while pay also increased. According to a survey out today by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG, 38 per cent of recruiters said they had placed more permanent staff during November than they did the month before, compared to 27 [...]
Almost half of firms failing to meet corporate governance standards, and not enough attention being paid to culture and values December 7, 2015 Almost half of FTSE 350 companies failed to measure up to all the standards in the Financial Reporting Council’s (FRC) UK Corporate Governance Code. In a report out today by professional services firm Grant Thornton, only 57 per cent of the 312 FTSE 350 companies with years ending between June 2014 and June 2015 studied [...]
EEF: Manufacturers are suffering their sharpest contraction in six years December 7, 2015 Manufacturers are going through one of their worse periods of growth since the 2009 recession, according to survey figures released by EEF, a trade body, today. The percentage of manufacturers that said output had fallen over the last three months outweighed the percentage who reported an increase by 12 percentage points. It marks the sharpest contraction [...]