Spanish debt auctions revealed little about finances April 22, 2012 WHO ever said that debt auctions from Club Med countries were boring? Certainly nobody who follows the markets closely – these days, they are often the central economic event of a week. Take last week’s Spanish debt auctions, which ended up raising more questions than they answered. On Tuesday the precursor was an auction of 12 [...]
FTSE 100 turns to chiefs who know numbers April 22, 2012 THE NUMBER of chief executives in the FTSE 100 with financial backgrounds has leapt since the recession began four years ago. Fifty-one per cent of chief executives in London’s top stock index come from financial backgrounds, compared to 31 per cent in 2008, showing a jump of 67 per cent. Data from the Robert Half [...]
UBS CHIEF ERMOTTI HITS OUT AT ATTACKS ON SWISS TAX SECRECY April 22, 2012 Attacks on Switzerland as a tax haven constitute an “economic war” by rivals who want to hurt the country’s big banks and its strength as a financial centre, UBS chief executive Sergio Ermotti said in an interview. Ermotti told SonntagsZeitung recent international clampdowns on tax avoidance are intended to hurt his bank.
Stratford skyscraper to get Games ads April 22, 2012 The Stratford Tower, one of Europe’s tallest residential skyscraper at 43 storeys, has been granted planning permission to be wrapped in advertising ahead of this summer’s Games. Located 200m from the Olympic Park, the building’s adverts could be seen by 55m people per day during the Games.
Lufthansa set to cut airline staff April 22, 2012 Lufthansa admitted yesterday new plans to improve results at its passenger airline unit by almost €1bn (£806m) could include enforced job cuts. “Lufthansa has a tradition of dealing with employees in a fair way when it comes to job cuts but we cannot rule out compulsory redundancies,” a spokesman said.
CITY MOVES WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS April 22, 2012 Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Alan Ryan has been appointed global co-head of the law firm’s infrastructure and transport sector group. Ryan succeeds finance partner Nick Bliss in the position on 1 May. He will work alongside current infrastructure and transport sector co-head Nils Koffka. Berwin Leighton Paisner The law firm has announced that Robert MacGregor has [...]
BEST of the BROKERS April 22, 2012 MEGGITT Investec rates the global engineering group as a “buy” with a target price of 430p, saying it exited 2011 with good order and sales momentum and that trend is likely to be repeated when it reports for the first quarter on Thursday. STANDARD LIFE Panmure Gordon rates Standard Life as a “hold” ahead of [...]
FTSE shored up by banks April 20, 2012 The FTSE 100 was broadly flat this morning as investors turned their attention to an IMF meeting later today and French Presidential elections at the weekend. IMF leaders gathering in Washington want a big boost in funding to handle the Eurozone dent but Brazil has called for more power in the organisation for emerging nations. [...]
Retail sales in surprise jump April 20, 2012 Warm weather and fears of a fuel shortage helped drive the biggest increase in British retail sales in more than a year in March, raising chances that recovering consumer spending may have helped the economy to avoid recession. The unexpectedly strong figures will come as a relief for policymakers as they try to boost fragile [...]
One Savings Bank plans to double revenues April 20, 2012 One Savings Bank, a new British lender backed by US private equity firm JC Flowers, aims to double its assets to £4.5bn and could make acquisitions to boost lending to small businesses. The company was created in February 2011 after JC Flowers injected fresh capital into the mutually owned Kent Reliance Building Society, a casualty [...]