VIRGIN ATLANTIC CUTS ROUTES AND JOBS July 1, 2009 VIRGIN Atlantic, the airline majority-owned by Sir Richard Branson, said yesterday it will cut seven per cent of its winter services and axe up to 600 jobs due to falling passenger demand. Virgin said its daily Heathrow to Chicago service will not fly this winter and it would suspend one of two daily London to [...]
Factory data shows easing contraction July 1, 2009 BRITAIN’S manufacturing sector shrank at its slowest pace in June in more than a year according to the CIPS/Markit UK manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) published yesterday. The PMI survey hit a 13-month high in June, rising to 47.0 from 45.4 in May but it is still below the critical 50 mark that separates contraction [...]
RBS Asia to be sold in chunks July 1, 2009 ROYAL Bank of Scotland’s Asian assets look set to be divided up between Standard Chartered and Australia’s ANZ, despite the bank’s desire to offload the unit in one go. Standard Chartered, led by chief executive Peter Sands, is in talks to wrap up a deal for RBS’ units in China and India and is also [...]
Banks’ leverage needs limits July 1, 2009 MUCH stricter system-wide limits on banks’ leverage are needed, the Bank of England’s executive director for financial stability Andrew Haldane said yesterday. “These ratios will need to be state-dependent, rising as the temperature rises across the financial system as a whole.” Haldane stressed there is a need for more focus on returns on assets rather [...]
M&S has best performance in two years July 1, 2009 MARKS & SPENCER (M&S) said yesterday that its 125th anniversary celebrations, a late Easter and the arrival of summer had all helped drive it to the best quarterly performance in nearly two years. M&S reported a drop in UK like-for-like sales of 1.7 per cent for the first quarter, ending 27 June, compared to a [...]
BA calls in Acas to avert strike action July 1, 2009 BRITISH AIRWAYS (BA) said it asked the conciliation service Acas to intervene in a bid to reach a deal with unions on jobs and pay yesterday. Talks between BA and the Unite and GMB unions aimed at agreeing a series of cost-cutting measures including a pay freeze and more than 3,500 job losses broke up [...]
ANALYST VIEWS: IS THIS THE START OF A RECOVERY FOR M&S? July 1, 2009 NICK BUBB PALI INTERNATIONALWeak comparatives may well be making like-for-like sales look less bad, but gross margins and profits are still falling and there is no disguising the structural or management problems that M&S faces, so we suspect we are not going to hear “game, set and match to Stuart Rose” in the near future. [...]
UBS predicts Spanish bank woes July 1, 2009 Spanish banks are still to feel the full impact of the financial crisis, UBS said yesterday, warning that asset deterioration would hit the country’s lenders hard. “We expect earnings for Spanish banks to fall by 15 per cent this year and 25 per cent next year and to only start to recover in 2012,” UBS [...]
DSB fined over bad advice July 1, 2009 The Dutch market regulator has fined privately held DSB Bank for excessive lending practices and giving bad client advice during a period when former finance minister Gerrit Zalm was its financial chief. Market regulator AFM said in a statement that it had fined DSB €120,000 (£103,800) for the infractions, which took place in 2008. An [...]
Credit Suisse in funds sale to Aberdeen July 1, 2009 ABERDEEN Asset Management announced the completion of a deal to buy a number of funds from Credit Suisse yesterday and said its assets under management would rise by £36.4bn as a result. The transaction, which will create the UK’s largest listed fund manager, sees Aberdeen hand 207.5m shares to Credit Suisse for its UK, US, [...]
