Catherine is tantalisingly close to being a great game February 22, 2012 Tantalus made a pretty bad mistake: he pissed off Zeus. To make amends, he chopped up his son Pelops, boiled him in a pot and served him as a sacrificial aperitif. Now, as you might have predicted, this only made things worse and Zeus, not the most forgiving of gods at the best of times, [...]
MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS February 22, 2012 NOKIA TO UNVEIL CHEAPER LUMIA Nokia is poised to unveil a new, cheaper smartphone using Microsoft’s Windows Phone software at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona next week. The struggling Finnish giant wants to target a wider market for its new range of smartphones, with its flagship Lumia 800 failing to make the desired [...]
Edinburgh Woollen Mill saves 6,000 Peacocks jobs February 22, 2012 British clothing retailer Edinburgh Woollen Mill is to acquire two thirds of discount clothing retailer Peacocks, in a deal which will see 6,000 jobs saved. Administrators KMPG said they had agreed the sale of 388 stores from Cardiff-headquartered Peacocks but another 224 stores would be closed immediately, leading to 3,100 redundancies. Peacocks called administrators in [...]
Banks fork out £1.9bn for insurance mis-selling February 22, 2012 Lenders paid out a record £441m in compensation for insurance mis-selling in December, taking payouts for 2011 to £1.9bn and raising the prospect of an even bigger bill this year. The financial regulator said payouts in December jumped 16 per cent from the previous record of £379m in November. Aside from September, there has been [...]
Bank mulled even more QE in February February 22, 2012 Two Bank of England policymakers voted for a bigger stimulus to the economy in February than their colleagues could support, minutes to the Bank’s February 8-9 meeting showed on Wednesday. The news is likely to re-open the debate about whether the central bank will add further quantitative easing in May, especially as the minutes showed [...]
Shell bids $1.6bn for Cove February 22, 2012 Royal Dutch Shell has made a ($1.6bn) £992.4m bid for Mozambique-focused Cove Energy, offering a full price to open up a new gas frontier for the Anglo-Dutch oil major in East Africa. Shell has offered 195 pence per share in cash, which Cove’s directors said Wednesday they would recommend to shareholders. Tuesday, Cove’s shares closed [...]
Barratt swings to profit February 22, 2012 Housebuilder Barratt swung into profit in the six months to 31 December as revenues climbed. Pre tax profits of of £21.6m compared with a loss of £4,6m in the same period the previous year, Revenues jumped by 8.6 per cent to £952.8m while the average selling price of its homes increased by 3.1 per cent [...]
BAA losses narrow after record Heathrow passenger numbers February 22, 2012 Heathrow airport passenger numbers rose five per cent to a record 69.4m last year, helping BAA to narrow its losses. The airport operator made a loss of £255.8m in the year to 31 December, compared with£316.6m the year before. Passengers at its Stansted airport dropped by by 2.8 per cent to 18m. The company said [...]
China new export orders fall February 22, 2012 China’s new export orders shrank in February the most in eight months, a preliminary HSBC business survey shows, defying expectations of a pick up after Lunar New Year holidays and a worrying sign of the impact of the euro area debt crisis. Many analysts had expected some rebound in February after imports and exports fell [...]
Dow hits 13,000 February 21, 2012 But European traders are sceptical as Greek bailout rally fades US MARKETS ignored the shakiness of the Greek bailout deal yesterday, with bullish investors pushing the Dow Jones through the symbolically important 13,000 mark for the first time since before the financial crisis. But Europe’s markets slipped as worries mounted that politicians had comprehensively failed [...]
