The Festival of Words: From Gyles Brandreth to Anthony Scaramucci – all you need to know about the Fleet Street Quarter festival
Nama appoints loan sale advisers January 16, 2012 Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency has appointed a panel of advisers from the financial services sector as it ramps up its efforts to sell its property loans. The “bad bank”, set up during Ireland’s banking crisis, holds about £64bn of debt. At least 13 banks, lawyers, accountants and property consultants including CBRE have been appointed [...]
Egypt asks for IMF support January 16, 2012 A delegation from the International Monetary Fund is due to visit Egypt later this month after the country asked the IMF for $3.2bn (£2.09bn) in support. Egypt’s interim cabinet seeks to fill a budget gap pushed wider by almost a year of political and economic turmoil. The previous army-backed government turned down an offer of [...]
E.ON latest to join price war with 6pc cut January 16, 2012 ENERGY company E.ON is the latest provider to reduce its customers’ household bills to reflect lower wholesale prices. E.ON yesterday became the fifth of the big six energy companies to announce price cuts for either gas or electricity in the past few days. E.ON said the cut to electricity would benefit three quarters of its [...]
Olympus panel says auditors not to blame January 16, 2012 ACCOUNTING groups KPMG and Ernst & Young have been cleared of any responsibility for a £704m accounting fraud at Japan’s Olympus, one of the nation’s worst corporate scandals, in a report issued this morning by a panel of lawyers appointed by the company. The panel said five current and former individual auditors were responsible for [...]
Bovis builds a solid profit in southern UK January 16, 2012 HOUSING group Bovis has laid the foundation for a strong 2012 after reporting significant profit growth last year, largely fuelled by family homes in the south of England. The house-building company, which is based in Kent, expects to improve returns further in 2012 after a year that saw 2,045 homes legally completed – an eight [...]
ANALYST VIEWS: WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM BOVIS IN 2012? January 16, 2012 SIMON BROWN | NORTHLAND CAPITAL PARTNERS The group will achieve faster profit growth in 2012 due to stock specific attributes and a regional bias to southern England. We believe over 50 per cent of the sites in 2012 will be higher margin outlets. Coupled with improved cash flow, the new sites will yield a higher [...]
BALFOUR BEATTY WINS £100M IN DEALS January 16, 2012 BALFOUR Beatty has won construction contracts in the commercial sector worth £100m. In the City of London, the company has secured a £57m contract, to build AXA Real Estate’s Sixty London prime office development (pictured). The company has also won a £25m deal to deliver an 11-storey office building in the City for Viridis Real [...]
Ebooks lead to growth at Bloomsbury January 16, 2012 THE CHRISTMAS boost in e-reader sales led to a strong quarter for Bloomsbury, the London-based publisher, which reported significant growth in its digital department. For the September to December period inclusive, Bloomsbury saw a 38 per cent increase in ebook sales compared to the same quarter the previous year. Over a million electronic reading devices [...]
Samsung sides with Intel OS January 16, 2012 SAMSUNG is merging its Bada operating system with Tizen, an Intel-backed mobile operating system, in a bid to increase its stake of the smartphone market. The move could be seen as a response to Google’s $12.5bn (£8.2bn) acquisition of Motorola Mobility last year which has hinted that software giants could eventually hold in-house hardware departments. [...]
Hackers strike Israeli bourse January 16, 2012 HACKERS disrupted online access to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, El Al Airlines and three banks yesterday in what the government described as a cyber-offensive against Israel. The attacks came just days after an unidentified hacker, proclaiming Palestinian sympathies, posted the details of thousands of Israeli credit card holders and other personal information on the [...]