Deutsche Postbank moves into profit November 11, 2010 BONN-based retail lender Deutsche Postbank unveiled a dramatic recovery in its third-quarter results yesterday, with pre-tax profit moving from a €29m (£24.5m) loss to a €71m gain. The bank is 41 per cent owned by Deutsche Bank. Nine-month earnings per share were up 25 per cent to €1 and the bank posted an improved tier [...]
FTSE 100 falls after gloomy import data and debt worries November 10, 2010 BRITAIN’S top share index fell to a one-week closing low yesterday, pressured by miners on fears over softening demand from China after downbeat import data, with worries about Ireland’s debt also darkening the mood. The FTSE 100 closed down 58.25 points, or one per cent, at 5,816.94. The index ended up 0.4 per cent on [...]
Tax dispute forces Tullow Oil to abandon drilling in Uganda November 10, 2010 EXPLORER Tullow Oil said a dispute with the government of Uganda had forced it to abandon drilling at two oil-rich blocks near Lake Albert and that it was unsure when this would recommence. The London-based company added that the government was wary of agreeing to a plan to decouple Tullow’s dispute from another, potentially lengthier, [...]
Stupid policies have destroyed Eire November 8, 2010 IT is starting to look truly grim for Ireland, which is moving ever closer to the abyss. An article yesterday by Morgan Kelly, a professor of economics at University College, Dublin, added fuel to the fire. By next year Ireland will have run out of cash, Kelly claimed, and the terms of a formal bailout [...]
Focus on EMI trial November 4, 2010 JUDGE JED RAKOFF Jed Rakoff provoked the ire of Wall Street when he rejected Bank of America’s $33m attempt to settle a dishonesty probe last year, describing such offers as “half-baked justice at best”. He redeemed himself in the eyes of one American bank yesterday, though his merciless courtroom treatment of long-winded witnesses gained him [...]
Bus and train gains push up profits at FirstGroup November 3, 2010 TRANSPORT company FirstGroup credited a surge in passengers and tighter cost control for its 14.3 per cent rise in underlying profit for the first half of the year yesterday. The group’s pre-tax profit nearly trebled to £82m, while profit from continuing operations gained more than 14 per cent to £77.7m during the six months to [...]
US is where it all happens this week October 31, 2010 IT used to be the case that the most important market-moving news for the FTSE 100, sterling and the UK fixed income markets often came from the US. While that remains largely true – London traders become fixated with Wall Street the moment it opens – Chinese statistics have now become almost as important for [...]
The kids will be alright with a Junior Isa October 28, 2010 WHEN the coalition government revealed in May that it would be scrapping Child Trust Funds (CTF) from January 2011 to save £500m a year, there was an outcry from fund managers, financial experts and think tanks alike, who argued that the CTF had instilled a savings culture in children from an early age. More than [...]
Investors: You have nothing to lose but your premiums October 27, 2010 BACK in 2002, covered warrants were launched on the London Stock Exchange with grand fanfare. And nobody cared. The products turned out to be something of a flop, with only £886,000 changing hands in the first week of trading. There is nothing intrinsically bad about covered warrants, however. In fact, they are quite remarkable – [...]
We’ve had the cuts – now it’s time for growth October 24, 2010 So we’ve had the cuts, now it’s time for the growth. That’s the message at today’s annual CBI conference and it’s the right one. George Osborne may have hinted at some pact with the Bank of England whereby more QE offsets the government’s austerity drive, but what we really need is a supply side transformation. [...]