Report says NHS culture to blame for healthcare failures August 6, 2013 THE NHS requires “wide systemic change” to ensure it is a world-class healthcare system, according to a major report released yesterday that says individual staff should not be blamed for care failings. Professor Don Berwick, a US academic who has advised President Obama, was commissioned by David Cameron to examine NHS England following a series [...]
Help to Buy unlikely to spur new house building August 6, 2013 THE PRICE of housing is being driven upward by the government’s Help to Buy policy, but may not stimulate new building, according to ratings agency Fitch. Though the intention of the scheme is to get more people a place on the housing ladder, Fitch expects that chancellor George Osborne’s mortgage guarantees will mostly push up [...]
What the other papers say this morning – 7 August 2013 August 6, 2013 FINANCIAL TIMES TPG looks for time to spend key fund TPG, one of the world’s largest private equity companies, has taken the unusual step of asking investors in its $19bn flagship fund if it can have an extra year to spend $3bn of undeployed capital, underscoring the difficulty finding good deals in the aftermath of [...]
India picks IMF expert to head its central bank August 6, 2013 INDIA picked the former chief economist at the IMF to head its central bank yesterday. Raghuram Rajan, known for predicting the credit crunch two years before it began, will start a three-year term at the Reserve Bank of India in September. Rajan served as the IMF’s top economist from 2003 to 2006, during which time [...]
US sues Bank of America for alleged fraud August 6, 2013 THE US government yesterday filed two civil suits against the Bank of America for an alleged fraud against investors, involving $850m (£553.5m) of mortgage-backed securities. The Justice Department and the US Securities and Exchange Commission filed the parallel suits in US district court in Charlotte, according to the court filings. The securities date to about [...]
Royal Mail eyes retail investors August 6, 2013 STOCKBROKERS will today be invited to take part in the privatisation of Royal Mail, as part of a push to ensure ordinary members of the public can buy shares in the forthcoming IPO. City A.M. has learned that business minister Michael Fallon will this morning send details of the offering to traditional brokers and online [...]
Half of all short-term borrowers happy with payday loan service August 6, 2013 ALMOST half of people resorting to payday loans would describe their experience as positive, new research showed yesterday. The poll of 2,000 Brits, carried out by comparison site uSwitch.com, also said that one in three of these borrowers would take out payday loans again, while 29 per cent regret taking out the loan. Short-term lenders [...]
Growth helps UK’s bad bank repay £1.9bn August 6, 2013 RISING house prices and the improving state of the economy helped increase profits at the so-called bad bank made up of the remains of Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley, UK Asset Resolution said yesterday. In the first half of the year UKAR repaid £1.9bn to the government, with underlying pre-tax profits jumping 10 per [...]
Osborne told the time is right for him to sell stake in Lloyds August 6, 2013 LLOYDS has recovered sufficiently that the government could sell its stake in the bank imminently, officials told George Osborne yesterday. City A.M. understands that UK Financial Investments, the agency responsible for handling the taxpayers’ stake in the bailed out banks, is in the final stages of assessing the possibility of a sale. But Treasury sources [...]
UBS hit with $50m bill to settle mortgage bond claim August 6, 2013 SWISS bank UBS yesterday agreed to pay $49.8m (£32.4m) to settle claims it misled investors in a mortgage bond product, and kept money which should have gone to benefit investors. The bank has not admitted wrongdoing in the settlement, which ends the probe into the collateralised debt obligation (CDO) created in 2007. The Securities and [...]