City watching MPC for clues on rate hikes September 6, 2009 WHILE the outcome of this week’s monetary policy meeting is, bar any major shocks, a done deal, there is no doubt that the City will closely watch the Monetary Policy Committee’s (MPC) decision on Thursday. After surprising the markets last month with an extension of quantitative easing (QE), the Bank intimated in both the accompanying [...]
ANALYST VIEWS: WHEN MIGHT THE MPC START TO TIGHTEN POLICY? September 6, 2009 HOWARD ARCHER IHS GLOBAL INSIGHTWe suspect that divisions will remain within the MPC on whether or not to extend QE, and to what extent. While we do not expect any change in QE this month, we certainly would not rule out an eventual further extension. What is much clearer is that interest rates will remain [...]
Six myths about the financial crisis September 6, 2009 A comfortable, corporatist consensus is building up about how to deal with the financial crisis. Led by Alistair Darling and his French and German counterparts at the G20 finance ministers’ summit on the weekend, this consensus is essentially that the financial crisis “proves” that global free market capitalism has “failed” and that everything is the [...]
Dating gets personal September 6, 2009 I FEEL like I’ve stepped into a scene from Sex and the City, where Carrie is investigating a new dating technique. Indeed, right now I am the Carrie figure, here to observe how exactly a new matchmaking service does its business. The women I am meeting – all glossy and stylish in sharp designerwear – [...]
BESPOKE SERVICE BEATS NET DATING September 6, 2009 THE online dating experience tends to involve browsing endless pictures of strangers before plumping for someone based on a mutual interest in alcohol. This is not always a successful recipe. I’ve had one date spill an entire pint of beer over me, while another informed me very loudly that she’d slept with her previous date [...]
Swapping blue chips for poker chips September 3, 2009 IN LAS VEGAS the locals have a new term for betting. It’s not gambling, it’s a “contributory anti-recession programme”. Even the bell-boy who attends to your special-price Palazzo suite says not “have a nice day”, but “thank you for contributing to our economy”. They said Vegas would be recession-proof, that even in a downturn people [...]
BORIS ‘CIRCUS’ TAKES A HIT FROM TREASURY RINGMASTER MYNERS September 3, 2009 BORIS Johnson’s visit to Brussels yesterday looks to have ruffled quite a few feathers in the austere halls of the Treasury, which is now claiming it should be hogging the glory for defending the City’s hedge funds against the EU’s evil draft directive on alternative investment fund managers. Lord Myners, the City minister, yesterday got [...]
At last: some competition for the BBC’s iPlayer September 3, 2009 WHEN the BBC released its iPlayer at the tail-end of 2007, few expected it to be such a runaway success. But according to Ofcom, a staggering 15 per cent of consumers with a broadband connection – or some 5.2m people – now regularly use the iPlayer to catch up with BBC shows. To put these [...]
Go-Ahead on track despite profit slump September 3, 2009 TRANSPORT group Go-Ahead said yesterday that it does not expect the economy to recover until 2011, but that its business is healthy enough to keep it on track until then. The firm, which operates bus companies and runs three London rail franchises, saw full year pre-tax profit fall 60 per cent from last year, to [...]
HIGH SPIRITS September 3, 2009 DRINKS maker Pernod Ricard yesterday posted a 12.5 per cent rise in annual profits to €945m (£829m), boosted by its acquisition of Vin & Spirit, the maker of Absolut vodka. Sales increased by nine per cent to €7.2bn. The world’s second biggest drinks maker, known for its anise flavoured liquor, warned of a tough 2009 [...]