Barclays was at centre of tax loophole clampdown February 28, 2012 Barclays said it was the bank at the centre of a clampdown by Britain on two tax avoidance schemes that the government said would close loopholes and raise more than £500m in tax. Barclays said it notified Britain’s tax office about its plan to buy back its own bonds, on which it and other banks [...]
Sales growth slows at Whitbread February 28, 2012 Sales growth at Whitbread, owner of hotel chain Premier Inn and Costa Coffee, slowed in the fourth quarter as consumers struggled with a lack of disposable income. Overall group sales rose 1.8 per cent in the 11 weeks to February 16, but like-for-like sales at Premier Inn fell by 0.9 per cent due to poor [...]
RBS to shed 80 jobs on Australian trading desk February 28, 2012 Royal Bank of Scotland is closing its Australian fixed income, commodity and currency (FICC) trading desk and moving some of the 80 affected employees and trading to desks in Singapore and London as the bank shrinks to cut its losses. RBS, 82 percent owned by the British government following a bailout in 2008, has already [...]
Provident Financial profits up 12pc February 28, 2012 Lower bad debt charges boosted full-year profits at British sub-prime lender Provident Financial and the company said on Tuesday that it was confident of further growth in 2012. Provident Financial, which lends to people who cannot get credit from mainstream banks and whose roots date back to 1880, reported pre-tax profits for the year ending [...]
Persimmon to return £1.9bn to shareholders February 28, 2012 Housebuilder Persimmon posted a slightly stronger than expected jump in full-year profit on Tuesday and said it would return £1.9bn of surplus cash to shareholders. The York-based company said it would return the cash through dividends over nine-and-a-half years, starting in 2013, and remain largely debt-free throughout the period. The company is still investing in [...]
Occupy camp cleared from St Paul’s February 28, 2012 Police and bailiffs cleared an anti-capitalist camp from outside St Paul’s cathedral in London early on Tuesday, ending a four-month protest which resonated with Britons angered by huge bonuses awarded to bankers during an economic slowdown. There was no violent resistance from the Occupy London activists as bailiffs employed by the City of London Corporation, [...]
£67,700,000,000: The amount of tax paid by Britain’s top 100 companies last year February 27, 2012 THE TAXMAN took an extra £8.3bn from top UK companies in the last fiscal year, with big firms contributing 14 per cent more compared to the previous year. In total, the so-called Hundred Group of businesses paid an eye-watering £67.7bn in tax in the year to March 2011, according to data released by PwC this [...]
Simply the best in the West: HSBC posts record profits February 27, 2012 HSBC yesterday posted the highest 2011 profit so far of any Western bank after escaping the worst of the Eurozone crisis. Pre-tax profit rose 15 per cent to $21.9bn (£13.84bn), just short of the $22.2bn expected by analysts. Britain’s largest bank achieved strong revenue growth in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America although it [...]
Barclays hit by crackdown February 27, 2012 BARCLAYS has been targeted by the government’s closure of an “aggressive” tax avoidance scheme, costing it around £500m. The scheme shut by HMRC saw banks buy back their debt at a lower price than they had sold it, before avoiding corporation tax on the profit. The government is shutting down that scheme retrospectively, hitting any [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING February 27, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES GORDON GEKKO TELLS WALL ST GREED IS NOT GOOD Michael Douglas is playing a new and unlikely role as spokesman for the US Federal Bureau of Investigation in its war against corruption on Wall Street. The Hollywood actor – famous for his line “greed is good” in the 1987 film Wall Street – [...]
