RAPID RESPONSES January 24, 2012 On the money Per Kurowski is absolutely right [Holy moly: Banks were drugged by Basel’s rulebook, yesterday]: the reason for the evolution of the collateralised debt obligation (CDO) debacle and especially the emergence of the synthetic variety of this was that decision making was driven by an artificial “risk structure” for asset holdings propagated by [...]
On its silver anniversary as Olympic sponsor, Visa looks for a golden 2012 January 24, 2012 COUNTDOWN TO THE LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES 184 DAYS TO GO Visa Europe’s Colin Grannell explains the three ingredients for the perfect Olympic brand association Q. WHAT WAS YOUR BRAND’S PRIMARY REASON FOR BEING INVOLVED WITH THE GAMES? A. We’ve just celebrated our silver jubilee as a top, worldwide Olympic Games sponsor; London will be [...]
Boxing clever: the new Land Rover January 24, 2012 Right now Land Rover’s design team is halfway through a programme to redesign the world’s most famous 4×4, the Land Rover Defender. The goal is to take the key elements of the iconic car and create a cool, new and modern version of a design that has remained mostly unchanged since 1948. For the time [...]
CAR TALK January 24, 2012 NEW SLK 55 AMG TO SET YOU BACK UNDER £55,000 Mercedes–Benz has announced prices for its powerful SLK 55 AMG. The top of the line AMG model has a new 5.5-litre V8 engine good for 421bhp which can propel the car from 0-62mph in 4.6 seconds. The car produces 30 per cent less emissions and [...]
There is more to Rioja than wine (although that would be plenty) January 24, 2012 PRINCE Charles surely wouldn’t approve. In the dell of Villabuena de Alava, a sleepy, sloping village squatting among the vineyards of Spain’s Rioja Alavesa region, sits the jagged, unruly modernism of Hotel Viura. It is one of those “impossible” buildings, an optical illusion that seems to squeeze in more angles, surfaces and textures than logic [...]
UK house sales down 11 per cent January 24, 2012 UK house sales were down 11 per cent at 869,000, according to figures from HM Revenue and Customs. Unemployment and the difficulty of obtaining a mortgage have hit the number of sales, currently at half the volumes recorded before the financial crisis. Transactions peaked at 1,671,000 in 2006 before plummeting to a record low of [...]
Banks peg back FTSE as Greece faces the abyss January 24, 2012 The rally on the FTSE 100 stalled this morning after talks to address the Greek debt crisis appeared to be floundering with the threat of a default casting a shadow. Financial stocks pinned the market back as Eurozone ministers yesterday rejected an offer made by private bondholders to help restructure Greece’s debts, sending negotiators back [...]
UK debt hits £1 trillion January 24, 2012 British public borrowing was lower than expected in December, thanks to stronger tax receipts, but total outstanding debt rose above the £1 trillion mark for the first time on record, official data showed. The Office for National Statistics said that public sector net borrowing excluding public sector interventions – the government’s preferred measure – fell [...]
Eurozone service sector in boost January 24, 2012 The Eurozone may yet escape recession thanks to a surprise upturn in the service sector that outweighed the ongoing contraction in manufacturing this month, surveys showed on Tuesday. Markit’s Flash Euro zone Purchasing Managers’ Composite Index (PMI), often seen as a growth indicator, jumped to 50.4 from December’s 48.3, its highest reading in four months. [...]
Cairn investors force U-turn on £2.5m payout to Gammell January 24, 2012 Oil explorer Cairn Energy dropped plans to award chairman and founder Bill Gammell share options worth £2.5m, bowing to pressure from investors. Cairn had wanted to reward Gammell, a former Scottish international rugby player who in 1980 founded what is now a FTSE 100 blue-chip company, for helping pull off the $5.5bn (£3.5bn) sale of [...]
