House swapping and geopolitcal disaster February 23, 2011 BEFORE I KNEW YOU BY AMANDA BROOKFIELD PENGUIN, £6.99 MID-Atlantic at 35,000 feet, two couples pass in opposite directions. They are on the seemingly perfect credit crunch vacation, an international house swap with suitably affluent, never-to-be-seen hosts. Sophie and Andrew Chapman leave their Victorian family home in south-west London, their teenage daughters and Sophie’s recent [...]
Catlin shakes off cat loss February 10, 2011 LLOYD’S insurer Catlin returned solid full-year results yesterday despite taking a $218m (£136m) hit from catastrophe-related losses. Catlin saw pre-tax profit fall by a third to $406m from $603m last year, but beat analysts’ forecasts of $382m. Underwriting profits grew five per cent to $683m, as it added ten per cent to the net premiums [...]
PERSONAL FINANCE NEWS February 9, 2011 42 PER CENT PREFER DOG TO PARTNER It is a sad day for British romance when 42 per cent of British people prefer their dog or cat to their partner. A survey conducted by M&S Pet Insurance shows that when it comes down to the “me or the dog” question, 42 per cent would always [...]
Alchemy for the digital age: turning charts into profits February 7, 2011 TO ACADEMIC economists, technical analysis is a pseudoscience, rather like water divining, or alchemy. The academics contend that traders are in fact not using technical analysis at all, at least not exclusively, or else are not actually profitable. One particular study described technical traders as “noise traders”, as opposed to “news traders”, concluding that technical [...]
Keeping it thin and funky in smart Chelsea February 3, 2011 ONE way to really be the envy of your neighbours is to live in a house that’s fundamentally much more stylish, fun and unusual than theirs. That’s one thing you could be sure of if you lived in the Studio House on Edith Grove in Chelsea. Almost certainly, any guests turning up at the Victorian [...]
Chief reformer Witty stays down to earth February 3, 2011 WHEN chief executive Andrew Witty took the helm at the world’s third largest pharmaceutical company in May 2008, GlaxoSmithKline was looking for change. After eight years with Jean-Pierre Garnier at the top – during which the Frenchman improved the company’s fortunes while attracting controversy for refusing to provide discount HIV drugs to Africa – Witty [...]
Why Ed Balls is a flawed economist January 20, 2011 LIKE the cat who got hold of the cream, Ed Balls, the new shadow chancellor, could hardly conceal his delight yesterday. But in addition to being the culmination of a colourful tale of personal intrigue, Alan Johnson’s shock resignation will have an electric effect on Westminster. Out goes an amiable, reasonable but incompetent and innumerate [...]
The rotten luck of the Irish January 13, 2011 RUGBY UNION LONDON IRISH forward Nick Kennedy insists spirit in the camp is as healthy as it’s ever been despite a run of 10 consecutive defeats. That miserable sequence of results stretches back to the beginning of November, before when the Exiles had won six of their previous seven matches and put themselves in healthy [...]
Your car, sir January 11, 2011 HAVING a baby has turned me into a chauffeur. As my wife embeds in the back in a pre-emptive strike against impending infant in-car seat boredom meltdowns, I invariably sit alone in the front like a sort of North London Jeeves, taking radio station requests and having to grudgingly take sole responsibility for figuring out [...]
Four of the best resorts for a wild and wicked break January 3, 2011 BEST FOR CRAZY PEOPLE REVELSTOKE, CANADA WANT to go somewhere genuinely new and yet nonetheless outrageously awesome? Try Revelstoke. Deep in the Canadian Selkirks, this remarkable resort only opened in Winter 2007. It is still, partially, a work in progress, but when it’s complete, it will be North America’s largest ski area, with a colossal [...]