Deutsche loses its key G4S adviser February 1, 2012 TOBY Clark, one of the key advisers on the aborted £5.2bn takeover of the services group ISS by G4S, has left Deutsche Bank, the bank that led the advice on the deal. City bankers say they became aware of his departure from Deutsche earlier this week when his email account was closed down. Friends say [...]
MPs overturn welfare reform made by Lords February 1, 2012 MEMBERS of Parliament last night reinstated parts of the new welfare bill that had been defeated in the House of Lords. The House of Commons voted in favour of the £26,000 a year benefit cap, including child benefit, despite protests last week from the upper house of parliament. The government secured a majority to overrule [...]
Duke Street shelves plan for €850m fundraising February 1, 2012 THE PRIVATE equity house behind Japanese restaurant chain Wagamama and payments network Payzone has pulled a €850m (£706.5m) fundraising as global market turmoil shows little sign of easing. Duke Street now wants to raise cash for every one or two deals it carries out, although it is set to receive payments to cover operational costs [...]
UK’s factories bounce back February 1, 2012 MANUFACTURING output jumped in January, taking the UK out of the stagnation experienced in December, purchasing managers’ index (PMI) figures from Markit showed yesterday. Output rose, registering a PMI of 52.1, up from 49.7 in December and hitting its highest level since May 2011, with new orders at their highest since March. Any figure above [...]
Belgian double dip sparks worries over euro growth February 1, 2012 BELGIUM yesterday confirmed its unenviable title as the first non-bailed-out Eurozone member to fall back into an official recession. GDP in Belgium, the bloc’s sixth largest economy, shrank by 0.2 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2011, following a quarterly contraction of 0.1 per cent in the July to September period. Belgium is often [...]
IFS: A budget giveaway will risk disaster February 1, 2012 PUBLIC borrowing is likely to come in around £2.9bn below the latest official forecasts in 2011-12 and £9bn lower by 2016-17, analysis published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimated yesterday. However, chancellor George Osborne should be wary of indulging in a spending splurge in next month’s budget – spending would have to be [...]
Efficiency drive is not enough – NAO February 1, 2012 CENTRAL government departments are successfully finding efficiency savings – but they have not paid enough attention to the reorganisation needed to sustainably cut costs on a larger scale in coming years, the National Audit Office (NAO) warned in a report published today. Spending fell by 2.3 per cent, or £7.9bn, in real terms in 2010-11, [...]
America boosts output as China and Eurozone lag February 1, 2012 FACTORY output expanded strongly in the US in January, according to figures published yesterday by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM). However, manufacturing output declined in China and the Eurozone, according to data from Markit, though German production increased. The ISM purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for the US came in at 54.1 – up from [...]
FACEBOOK: A TIMELINE OF THE SOCIAL NETWORK February 1, 2012 SEPTEMBER 2003 Mark Zuckerberg – then a 19-year old psychology and computer science student at Harvard – launches Facemash, a site where fellow students can rate their classmates JANUARY 2004 Zuckerberg starts writing code for Facebook and registers the domain name thefacebook.com. Six days after the site is launched, Harvard seniors Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss [...]
Facebook IPO to give birth to billionaires February 1, 2012 FACEBOOK yesterday submitted papers to become a publicly traded company later this year, putting an end in the week of its eighth anniversary to months of heated speculation. In a rare insight into the mind of the usually tight-lipped social network creator, celebrity geek Mark Zuckerberg included a letter in the filing. “We often talk [...]