Anti-Davos protesters charged January 22, 2012 Swiss police will charge more than 100 demonstrators with breaching the peace after they rallied in Bern to protest against the World Economic Forum that holds its annual meeting in Davos this week. The protesters, some wearing masks, began an unauthorised demonstration but were stopped by police in Bern, 270 km west of the Davos [...]
EU to propose tough web rules January 22, 2012 The European Union will propose tough new rules in the coming days on how corporations handle internet users’ personal data, a long-awaited move that could have far-reaching implications for web giants such as Google and Facebook. Viviane Reding, vice president of the European Commission, said yesterday that the new data-protection legislation was needed to protect [...]
Lufthansa closer to sale of BMI Regional January 22, 2012 GERMAN airline Lufthansa has moved a step closer to selling its bmi Regional and bmibaby brands, the parts of the business that were not included in the sale of their parent company to IAG last year. Lufthansa has found a buyer for bmi Regional, which operates from airports including Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds Bradford and [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS January 22, 2012 Kentz Corporation The FTSE 250 engineering group has announced that Christian Brown (pictured) will replace Hugh O’Donnell as chief executive on 1 February. Brown steps up from the role of group chief operating officer, while O’Donnell, who has led Kentz since 2000, will continue as an exclusive adviser to the group for the next three [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS January 22, 2012 PETROFAC JP Morgan downgrades the oil services group to neutral with a target price of 1,699p, despite seeing good potential for a margin upside to balance any shortfall in revenue from its order intake and project progress. The broker says the $8bn (£5.14bn) of orders it has estimated as necessary to meet consensus forecasts for [...]
WALL STREET WEEK AHEAD January 22, 2012 STOCKS rising, bulls rampant are motifs you might pick if designing a coat of arms for Wall Street at the moment. But the motto should read: Caveat emptor. Yes, buyer beware. The S&P 500, a broad measure of the market valuation of the biggest US publicly traded companies, is up 20 per cent from its [...]
New technologies that will allow us to live even longer will pay economic dividends January 22, 2012 THERE is little downside to the wonderful reality that human beings are now living longer than ever before. While many assume that society’s economic burden radically increases with greater longevity, the reality is the opposite. Everyone is better off because of longer life expectancies. For example, in 1850, life expectancy in the United States was [...]
Ratings agencies won’t be trusted without a fight January 22, 2012 THE Big Three rating agencies hardly seem to be out of the news with their ability to move markets. Following Standard & Poor’s (S&P) decision to reduce its assessment of the health of France’s sovereign debt by one notch to AA+ from AAA status, top German politicians like Michael Fuchs and others have jumped on [...]
London’s success is the whole country’s gain January 22, 2012 HAVING just returned to this country after leading a senior City delegation to Turkey, I am currently on an equally important business visit – to six of our own major cities across the United Kingdom. At first glance, it may seem to some that promoting the City in my hometown of Bradford – where I [...]
RAPID RESPONSES January 22, 2012 Informal channels Dionysios Demetis makes a good point [Tracking Money Laundering Matters, Wednesday] – very little terrorist funding goes through the conventional banking system. Most of the cross-border financing is via the hawala or informal money transfer system, especially to and from the Indian sub-continent. The UK authorities are well aware of this but do [...]
