Strong home sales cheer US investors July 27, 2009 US stocks rose slightly yesterday in a late rally as investors rotated into financial shares, which had lagged in the recent two-week run-up. Upbeat data on new home sales underpinned financial stocks, the session’s strongest sector, and prompted investors to snap up the shares of several regional banks, which had been among the worst hit [...]
Canny traders should look to buy crude oil on the correction July 27, 2009 CRUDE’S inexorable rise over the past few weeks in line with rallying equity markets pushed September Brent through the $70 a barrel mark in intraday trading yesterday, touching a session high of $71.28. Signs of an improving world economy and resilient Chinese GDP growth as well as relatively upbeat second quarter earnings in the US [...]
CHINA LOOKS OVER-COOKED RIGHT NOW July 27, 2009 DAVID MORRISONSENIOR DERIVATIVES TRADER, GFT YESTERDAY saw the result of the first Chinese initial public offering (IPO) in over a year since Chinese regulators suspended IPOs in September 2008 after worries that too many companies were anxious to tap investors for funds. And what a success the debut was. On the first day of trading [...]
Upturn for corporate credit July 27, 2009 BRITISH corporate credit conditions improved in the second quarter of the year, partly as a result of asset purchases by the Bank of England (BoE), the central bank said yesterday. Market contacts reported improved liquidity and price transparency for corporate bonds, and short-dated commercial paper issuance declined because firms were able to find longer-term finance, [...]
Pearson rises as education arm thrives July 27, 2009 PEARSON helped the FTSE 100 book gains for the eleventh day in a row yesterday, after the owner of Penguin Books and The Financial Times said it would match last year’s profits. The world’s biggest publisher of text books said that half year pre-tax profits at the firm, which makes the majority of earnings in [...]
Wolseley says there will be no pick up until 2010 July 27, 2009 BUILDING supplies company Wolseley yesterday said that the market would not pick up for the rest of 2009, as it announced that pre-tax profits for the 11 months to the end of June were down 60 per cent. The firm, which shed 30,000 of its 80,000 workers in the past two years, said while there [...]
Tata hires KPMG to help cut costs at Jaguar as its earnings in India surge July 27, 2009 JAGUAR LAND ROVER’S (JLR) owner, Tata Motors, has hired KPMG and Roland Berger Strategy Consultants to advise it on cost-cutting at the struggling car firm. The carmaker will be given advice on how to break even and on how to manage its cashflow more effectively. “We are going ahead with their proposals and this is [...]
Ryanair pledges to continue cutting fares at the expense of yearly profits July 27, 2009 BUDGET airline Ryanair saw its shares slump eight per cent yesterday after it told the market it would continue to slash fares to win passengers during the downturn. The Irish carrier also said its net profits in the first quarter rose sixfold to €136.5m (£100m), thanks to falling oil costs, and that it expected passenger [...]
IMA hails record retail sales July 27, 2009 Retail investors are re-entering investment funds in force, after scaling down their investments to prevent losses during the credit crunch, with net retail sales over the second quarter the highest on record. The Investment Management Association (IMA) said the industry booked net retail sales of £2.5bn in the month of June. IMA head Richard Saunders [...]
BC Partners writes up fund value July 27, 2009 Private equity firm BC Partners, which has estate agent Foxtons as its largest investment, wrote up its current fund by almost a quarter in the first half, returning it to par value, a person familiar with the matter said yesterday. The markup is one of the first signs that European buyout houses, who took steep [...]
