Bayern batter beleaguered Basel March 14, 2012 FOOTBALL: Bayern Munich beat Basel 7-0 last night and 7-1 on aggregate to progress to the last eight of the Champions League. Inter crashed out on the away goals rule despite beating Marseille 2-1 at San Siro.
Wall Street finally out of the woods March 14, 2012 WALL STREET’S financial crisis is almost over – or so the Federal Reserve would like us to believe. It rushed out the results of its stress tests of the 19 biggest US banks last night: just four failed – in all cases relatively narrowly – a test which gauged their ability to withstand a financial shock [...]
West launches rare earth trade case against China March 13, 2012 The European Union, the United States and Japan have formally asked the World Trade Organisation to settle a dispute with China over Beijing’s restriction on exports of raw materials, including rare earth elements critical to electronics makers. The dispute is one of several between Beijing and the other three economic powers, as Chinese industry remolds [...]
UK trade deficit rises from 2-year low March 13, 2012 The UK’s goods trade deficit widened less than expected in January, keeping hopes alive that the economy is rebalancing. Total goods exports to non-EU countries rose to a record high, helped by car sales to the United States, Russia and China. Total oil exports also hit a record peak due to higher oil prices, though [...]
Standard Life profits surge March 13, 2012 STANDARD Life reported a better-than-expected 28 per cent increase in its 2011 profit, helped by cost cuts and a strong performance at its Canadian unit. Edinburgh-based Standard Life, Britain’s fifth-biggest insurer, made a pre-tax operating profit of £544m last year, ahead of the £476m expected by analysts. The improvement was driven in part by £45m [...]
UK and Europe on a collision course March 13, 2012 IT is the elephant in the room, the issue nobody wants to talk about. But the growing, irreconcilable gulf between what UK voters and their continental counterparts want from European integration will eventually become as important a question as the fallout from the economic crisis. The scale of the challenge is laid bare by YouGov-Cambridge [...]
Women now make up a quarter of new FTSE board members March 12, 2012 A QUARTER of new FTSE 100 board hires made in 2011 were female, research will reveal this morning, in a new record that highlights a dramatic change at the top of Britain’s largest companies. Of the 190 appointments made to FTSE 100 boards during 2011, 47 were women, boosting the total number of female-held directorships [...]
Housing plan under attack March 12, 2012 THE GOVERNMENT will back up high loan to value mortgages worth up to £500,000, it announced yesterday, as the scheme was attacked as ineffective and economically dangerous. “The government’s NewBuy guarantee scheme, like many such schemes over the years, smacks of desperation,” said Jonathan Samuels, CEO of Dragonfly Property Finance. “The concern is that NewBuy [...]
UK and Europe on a collision course March 12, 2012 IT is the elephant in the room, the issue nobody wants to talk about. But the growing, irreconcilable gulf between what UK voters and their continental counterparts want from European integration will eventually become as important a question as the fallout from the economic crisis. The scale of the challenge is laid bare by YouGov-Cambridge [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING March 12, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES EARNINGS FORECASTS TAKE A BULLISH TURN Analysts last week upgraded more companies’ earnings forecasts globally than they downgraded for the first time since May last year. After 41 weeks of consecutive downgrades, net earnings per share revisions for next year turned positive powered by a surge in upgrades of Japanese companies and industrial [...]
