Bank salaries jump to cancel out bonus cap January 23, 2014 EUROPE’S bank bonus cap will not bring down payment to staff, as lenders will simply increase fixed salaries to compensate, ratings agency Fitch said yesterday. Instead the bigger effect of the raft of incoming regulations will be to drive up banks’ costs overall, forcing them out of low-margin businesses. “Compensation costs of five large European [...]
Dimon says settlements unfair January 23, 2014 JP MORGAN chief executive Jamie Dimon has said legal settlements against the firm were not fair. Speaking at The World Economic Forum in Davos, Dimon told the US network CNBC: “I think a lot of it was unfair, but I am not going to go into the details,” adding that court battles could have taken [...]
Pearson shares suffer as firm’s US sales slump January 23, 2014 PEARSON yesterday warned that 2013 earnings will miss expectations due to poor demand in North America and restructuring costs, causing the publisher’s share price to fall 8.2 per cent. In a trading update it said it expects earnings per share after restructuring charges to be around 70p, compared with forecasts of around 76p. “With trading [...]
Retiring Lloyds chairman to join the Financial Reporting Council January 23, 2014 THE OUTGOING chairman of Lloyds Banking Group has been picked to chair the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), the accounting regulator said yesterday. Sir Win Bischoff, who retires from Lloyds in April, will replace Baroness Hogg at the FRC on 1 May. He was chosen for the job after an eight-month search for Hogg’s replacement, conducted [...]
SSE earnings to rise 8.8pc after energy bill hike January 23, 2014 BIG SIX energy supplier SSE yesterday said it expects profits to rise to £1.54bn this year, just two months after increasing bills by 8.2 per cent. This equates to an 8.8 per cent jump in pre-tax profits, despite SSE losing 250,000 customers in the last nine months of 2013. The FTSE 100 firm raised its [...]
Metro Bank cuts losses as it plots stock flotation January 23, 2014 METRO Bank reported growing loans and falling losses in the final quarter of 2013, as the new lender begins looking to float on the stock market. The bank, which was established in 2010, lost £10.8m in the three-month period, it revealed yesterday. The losses are down from a loss of £11.5m in the previous quarter. [...]
Inside Track: Don’t fret: there’s no doubt the deals are on their way January 23, 2014 ONE banker told me the pipeline for new issue deals is as big as he has seen it over the past decade. While another deal-maker says he’s been getting up at 4.30am every morning. And that’s not to watch re-runs of The Wire or Mad Men. It’s the only way to get his work done. [...]
Shoppers rein in spending after splashing out in run up to Xmas January 23, 2014 SHOPPERS reined in their spending in the early weeks of January, a survey has suggested. Slightly more retailers said that they had experienced poor sales than good sales during the first two weeks of 2014, according to the CBI’s distributive trades survey. However, just 14 per cent more firms reported an expansion than a contraction [...]
Ministers delay pension rate cap change to 2015 January 23, 2014 MINISTER Steve Webb has announced that a cap on pension charges for workplace pensions will not be announced until at least April 2015, a year later than planned. The government is seeking to give employers at least 12 months to prepare for changes to the way auto-enrolment pensions are provided, Webb said in a written [...]
US judge bars Big Four China units January 23, 2014 CHINESE units of the global Big Four accounting firms should be suspended from auditing US-listed companies for six months, a judge in the United States ruled, in an escalation in a long-running dispute over regulators’ access to documents. In a harshly worded 112-page ruling, Securities and Exchange Commission administrative law Judge Cameron Elliot censured the [...]