WINDFALL TAX PROFS WON’T BE FOBBED OFF August 13, 2009 THE City may have slammed ideas of a windfall tax on bonuses yesterday, but the group of university professors who originally mooted the idea in a letter to The Guardian are far from deterred. The dusty academics’ plans, which would see the money from the tax injected back into public services, were labelled “gratuitous”, “impossible” [...]
The big kick-off is a blackout for some August 13, 2009 WITH the football season starting in earnest tomorrow, ESPN, the Disney-owned broadcaster, is proudly trumpeting its coverage on all four pay television platforms, BSkyB, Virgin Media, BT Vision and Top-Up TV. ESPN, which has taken over the rights to 46 live Premier League matches from the now defunct Setanta, agreed deals with all the main [...]
Sky Digital Media terminates sales contracts with 23 sports websites August 12, 2009 BSkyB’s digital sales house said yesterday that it will stop selling ads for 23 third-party sports sites as it moves to focus its resources on increasing revenues. The sites due to be terminated comprise mainly of small rugby, gymnastics and niche fan sites, and make up just 1.8 per cent of Sky Digital Media’s (SDM) [...]
Gunning for the glorious grouse August 11, 2009 THE City can hardly be short of people who consider themselves pretty crack shots when it comes to hitting clay pigeons or scoring the odd pheasant on a hospitality jaunt to the countryside. But true game shooting aficionados will say that you really can’t claim expertise until you’ve mastered the art of downing the fastest [...]
FSA’s Sants: Not my job to set bonuses August 9, 2009 HECTOR Sants, head of watchdog the Financial Services Authority (FSA), will this week refuse to bow to pressure to bring in rules to cap City bonuses.Sants has said it is not the regulator’s job to set company pay levels, only to ensure pay does not encourage risk in the financial system. In the FSA’s guidelines [...]
CITY VIEWS: FOLLOWING POOR RESULTS, WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS ON ITV? August 6, 2009 BENJAMEN PAGE WILLS & CO“They need to commission better programmes if they want to improve but to be honest I think digital is too great a competitor to them these days.” JAMIE MACKINNON BROKER“I think they will be around forever and I still watch their programmes. I’m a big Corrie fan so I won’t give [...]
Easyjet rides financial storm August 6, 2009 BUDGET airline easyJet, the orange-branded carrier founded by Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, yesterday said its aircraft were fuller and that it saw an increase in its airline traffic last month, as demand for bargain flights holds up despite the slump. The company flew 4.66m passengers in July, up from 4.47m in the same period last year. [...]
Top Up TV signs deal with ESPN to broadcast Premier League football August 4, 2009 TOP UP TV, the media group that offers premium content to Freeview, yesterday signed a carriage deal with ESPN to show top football this season and signalled that it hoped to offer subscribers Sky Sports 1 & 2 by the end of the first half of next year. Top Up founder and former BSkyB stalwart [...]
Ex-Ford boss named as the new chairman of BHP Billiton August 4, 2009 BHP Billiton, the world’s largest miner, yesterday said that ex-Ford chief executive Jac Nasser would be its new chairman. Nasser, who has been a non-executive director at BHP since 2006, will step into incumbent Don Argus’ shoes when he steps down next year after a decade at the helm. He beat off competition from John [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS August 3, 2009 COOKSONDeutsche Bank has upgraded its forecast in metal products supplier Cookson from “Hold” to “Buy”. Despite previous cuts, due to the brokers’ belief that Cookson may breach its covenants on its debt in December. It says it still regards the firm as a high-risk recovery play but has upped its target price to 500p, from [...]