SOVEREIGN SCORES A COUP AS IT NETS BANK GRANDEE BOB WIGLEY December 16, 2009 MY MY , but hasn’t it been an eventful few months for Aim-listed home equity release firm Sovereign Reversions? Back in August, Countrywide chairman Harry Hill and a couple of fellow dissident shareholders caused a touch of controversy by trying to oust Sovereign’s board and put the company into run-off by sending out pre-ticked proxy [...]
Government first-class travel up December 6, 2009 The government’s Insolvency Service has more than trebled its spending on first-class rail travel over the past two years, the Conservatives claim. The Tories said the agency spent £600,265 on first-class rail travel in 2008-09, compared with £174,618 in 2006-07. Spending on first-class tickets rose to 45 per cent of all rail travel expenditure, from [...]
Boom-town Qatar is becoming the New York City of the Middle East November 18, 2009 WHEN chancellor Alistair Darling announced the introduction of a 50 per cent tax on all income over £150,000 from April 2010, there was immediately talk of a mass exodus from the City. High earners, said the chancellor’s critics, would look to preserve their wealth and firms try to attract the best talent. Some were expected [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING November 12, 2009 FINANCIAL TIMES NATIONAL EXPRESS FACES EUROSTAR BILLNational Express could be saddled with a bill of up to £32m to cover losses made by Eurostar, the cross-Channel rail service. The indebted transport group, which gives up its lossmaking East Coast rail franchise tonight, is the leading shareholder in a consortium that manages the UK end of [...]
CHOOSING SURVIVAL OVER LITIGATION November 11, 2009 MARCUS MCCAFFREYPARTNER, FORENSIC SERVICES, BAKER TILLY WHERE previous recessions have seen problems of funding, this time round global financial liquidity has shrunk to unprecedented levels. There are still few re-financing options and what is available is only on offer to those entities with strong balance sheets or guarantees. One result of this is that international [...]
DIRECTORS: PREPARE FOR INSOLVENCY November 10, 2009 JULIAN TURNERPARTNER, REED SMITH LAST week the Insolvency Service released its statistics for the third quarter, showing that the number of company insolvencies – including liquidations, administrations and receiverships – were slightly lower than they were for the second quarter of the year, but significantly higher than for the same period in 2008. There were [...]
CFOs still trust bankers November 10, 2009 INVESTMENT banks may have lost the trust of their clients, but bankers themselves have managed to maintain client confidence and loyalty, according to a new survey. More than a quarter of chief financial officers, treasurers and mergers and acquisitions bosses quizzed said they had lost trust in the banks, mainly due to fears of insolvency. [...]
A Tobin tax would destroy London without making the world safer November 8, 2009 It is imperative that Gordon Brown’s proposals to levy a Tobin tax on financial transactions be defeated. Such a tax would be a disaster: it would endanger Britain’s economic interests and do nothing for ordinary taxpayers or the stability of the financial system. Championing such a scheme reflects a failure to engage with the real [...]
Personal insolvency on the rise November 5, 2009 The Insolvency Service is today expected to reveal that the number of people filing for personal insolvency in the third quarter of the year topped 30,000 for the second successive quarter as rising unemployment takes its toll on individuals’ bank accounts. Louise Brittain, a partner at Deloitte, said: “This figure is staggering, and unfortunately the [...]
Car sales get a boost from scrap scheme November 5, 2009 THE government’s “cash-for-bangers” sweetener scheme helped boost new car sales by nearly a third last month, compared to the same time last year. The incentive programme contributed to a 32 per cent rise in new car sales to 168,942 in October against 128,352 a year ago – the fourth monthly increase in a row and [...]