Mortgage loans up sharply at Leeds mutual February 19, 2013 THE LEEDS Building Society hiked mortgage lending on the back of rising savings deposits and support from the Bank of England’s Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS), the mutual announced yesterday. Pre-tax profits came in at £52.4m for 2012, up four per cent on the year, while capital and reserves rose seven per cent to £614m. [...]
German investor sentiment roars up in 2013 February 19, 2013 GERMAN investors were more upbeat in February than at any point since the end of 2009, according to a prominent survey out yesterday. Economic sentiment climbed 16.7 points to hit 48.2, ZEW said, a 38-month high after three successive months of improvements. “The financial market experts have made their peace with the weak fourth quarter [...]
CLEAN SWEEP AS MINE BOSS QUITS February 19, 2013 BHP Billiton’s Kloppers is fourth industry giant to go in six months THE MINING industry was shaken by its latest change at the top last night, as BHP Billiton chief executive Marius Kloppers announced his retirement. The departure, the latest in a string of shake-ups among the FTSE 100’s mining giants, will see Andrew Mackenzie, [...]
PROFILE: THE MAN MINDING SWISS EXEC PAY February 19, 2013 THOMAS Minder’s campaign against executive pay packets began almost exactly five years ago at a UBS shareholder meeting in the sleepy Swiss town of Basel. Until then Minder was best known for his family’s traditional herbal toothpaste, Trybol, but he was flung into the spotlight when he attacked then-UBS chairman Marcel Ospel over the subprime [...]
France pledges privatisation and tourism help for Greece February 19, 2013 FRENCH President Francois Hollande yesterday told Greece that austerity alone could not bring the country out of its crippling recession, and that he would help the stricken state with privatisations, economic reforms and improving tourism numbers. “We must make sure that growth and jobs come back in Greece,” Hollande said after meeting Greek leader Antonis [...]
Danone to cut 900 jobs in EU February 19, 2013 DANONE said yesterday it plans to axe around 900 jobs to cope with the downturn in southern Europe that is hurting its core dairy business and aims to return to more profitable growth next year. Danone yesterday reported sales of €20.1bn (£17.3bn) in 2012, up 5.4 per cent from a year earlier. It warned margins [...]
New York Report: M&A activity lift shares near record levels February 19, 2013 US STOCKS rose yesterday as this year’s ongoing surge in merger activity suggested investors were still finding value in the market even as indexes closed in on all-time highs. Office Depot Inc surged 9.4 per cent to $5.02 after a person familiar with the matter said the number two US office supply retailer was in [...]
Construction output heads to record low February 19, 2013 EUROZONE construction output sank further in December, putting it at the lowest level since early 1996, excluding two apparent blips. Eurostat’s construction output index fell 1.7 per cent to reach 80.1 in December, which is the lowest since February 1996, excepting two one-off sharp drops last February and in December 2010. Over the whole year, [...]
TSYS to snap up NetSpend February 19, 2013 AMERICAN payment processor TSYS said last night it will buy prepaid debit card provider NetSpend Holdings for about $1.4bn (£907.4m) in cash to expand its presence in the prepaid processing market. TSYS offered to pay $16 per share for NetSpend – a premium of 30 per cent to the stock’s closing price yesterday. NetSpend shares [...]
Best of the Brokers for 20 February 2013 February 19, 2013 STANDARD CHARTERED Shares in the bank rose 2.3 per cent as analysts at Morgan Stanley upgraded it from “equal weight” to “overweight” and upped its target price from 1656p to 1924p. Morgan Stanley said it was “switching our preference from HSBC to Standard Chartered due to the improvement in the Asian economic environment (a positive [...]
