IRELAND PASSES AUSTERITY PLAN AS IT LOWERS GROWTH OUTLOOK December 6, 2011 Ireland’s coalition government yesterday announced €1.6bn (£857m) worth of tax increases in the second part of what it hopes will be the toughest budget of its five-year term of office. Minister for finance Michael Noonan (left) aimed the government axe at social welfare payments, the health sector and education, with fuel and rent allowances, disability [...]
Osborne aims to reward the risk-takers December 6, 2011 BRITAIN’S entrepreneurs will have to prove their risk exposure to take advantage of a series of new tax breaks, according to draft rules published yesterday. The Treasury will allow larger firms to apply for venture capital trust and enterprise investment scheme (EIS) benefits from April next year, providing the plan meets European Union rules on [...]
A £2bn tax cut shouldn’t be sniffed at December 6, 2011 CREDIT where credit is due. We are always quick to criticise the fiddly micro-measures so beloved by the Treasury, mere baby steps that do nothing to boost the competitiveness of UK Plc. But when it comes to corporation tax, the coalition has made great strides. By 2015-16, the exchequer will collect some £2bn less in [...]
DRAFT FINANCE BILL: KEY POINTS December 6, 2011 ● R&D TAX CREDIT: HM Treasury has introduced a “patent box” – a reduced corporate tax rate of 10 per cent for earnings from patented products, which is aimed at encouraging innovation in science and tech. ● NON-DOMS: Non-doms will get tax relief on cash they bring into the country to invest in UK companies, [...]
Airlines say air tax talks were a sham December 6, 2011 AIRLINES lined up to condemn the government’s stance on air travel yesterday, calling the government’s consultation on air passenger duty “a sham and a waste of taxpayers’ money”. The Treasury confirmed yesterday that the levy on passengers would jump by eight per cent in April, despite a massive lobbying effort by the airlines, who argue [...]
Auditors hit by Olympus probe verdict December 6, 2011 KPMG AZSA’s reputation took a hit yesterday when the independent investigation into Olympus released a report naming substandard external auditing as one of the central factors in the scandal. The report censured the Japanese auditing firm, of which Olympus was a long-standing client, for issuing unqualified clean opinions without in-depth evaluation and for neglecting to [...]
SNAPSHOT OF A SCANDAL December 6, 2011 THE EXECUTIVES Masatoshi Kishimoto (far right) President 1993 – 2001 Tsuyoshi Kikukawa (right) President 2001 – 2011 Hisashi Mori former executive vice president – left Nov 2011 Hideo Yamada ex-internal auditor – left Nov 2011 “The core of management was corrupted and the surrounding portion was contaminated,” the report found THE WHISTLEBLOWER Michael Woodford Ousted [...]
Deutsche wins broking tie-up with Barclays December 6, 2011 BARCLAYS has ditched JP Morgan Cazenove as one of its broking advisers, replacing it with Deutsche Bank. Deutsche, which has been building up its UK broking business in recent months, has a strong financials team that is already advising Phoenix, the life assurance group, and Bank of Ireland. The German bank has also picked up a [...]
CITY SNAPS UP FLATS IN DELAUNAY NEIGHBOUR December 6, 2011 NO PRIZES for guessing who was first through the doors of The Delaunay: restaurant reviewer AA Gill, who was yesterday spotted having breakfast with the new brasserie’s co-owner Jeremy King. Of course, Gill was followed closely by The Capitalist, who caught up with King as he studied the architects’ plans for his next opening Brasserie [...]
Aegon to hit 2015 targets despite crisis December 6, 2011 DUTCH insurance group Aegon has reassured investors that it had not been blown off course by the Eurozone debt crisis and will meet its financial targets to 2015, as it kicked off a two-day investor conference in New York yesterday. Aegon, which received a €3bn (£2.6bn) bailout in 2008 and has sold off non-core assets [...]