The Gresham, an art deco palace on the Danube, is Budapest’s finest hotel January 16, 2012 Budapest is sometimes compared to Paris. While very pleasant indeed – especially if you go in the summer and lounge by the vast 19th century public baths in the scorching sun – the city doesn’t really compete with Paris in terms of beauty, architecture or cultural riches. With its history of hardship and decimation, how [...]
City slams high speed rail plans January 15, 2012 THE CITY has rejected the government’s controversial plan to build a £32.7bn high-speed railway linking London to the north. Fifty-one per cent of the City A.M./PoliticsHome.com Voice of the City panel, which represents a cross-section of London’s business and financial community, said they opposed the controversial railway known as High-Speed 2 (HS2). An overwhelming majority [...]
Royal Bank of Scotland pulls plug on Peacocks January 15, 2012 PEACOCKS, the fashion retail chain, is teetering on the brink of administration after Royal Bank of Scotland, one of its senior lenders, pulled the plug on talks to refinance the company. A syndicate of 18 lenders, including Barclays, Goldman Sachs and hedge funds including Och Ziff and Perry Capital, had jointly been working on a [...]
Default is looming for Greece January 15, 2012 GREECE is under pressure to strike a deal with its private debt-holders or face default and a possible exit from the Eurozone. The International Institute for Finance (IIF), which represents investors in Greek sovereign bonds, will return to Athens on Wednesday to thrash out a deal after talks collapsed last Friday. Athens has until March, [...]
Sarkozy suffers downgrade as Spanish PM vows austerity January 15, 2012 FRENCH Minister Francois Fillon declared he would do “everything” to get France’s triple-A rating back after Standard And Poor’s cut it to AA+ on Friday, leading to president Sarkozy losing ground in polls. “It is always better to have the best rating,” Fillon told Le Journal du Dimanche, a Sunday newspaper. His claims could clash [...]
How US CEOs are being cut down to size by investors January 15, 2012 HERE is a finding you won’t have read elsewhere. The total pay of top CEOs in listed US firms has gone down – yes, gone down – by about 50 per cent in real terms since peaking in 2000-01. This is what Steve Kaplan, professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, reveals [...]
Osborne makes plea for IMF cash January 15, 2012 CHANCELLOR George Osborne used a visit to Hong Kong to implore Asian members of the IMF to stump up more cash for the international bailout fund last night. Speaking at the Asia Financial Forum, Osborne told delegates from the region that governments “must ensure a reformed and more representative IMF has the tools and resources [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING January 15, 2012 THE TIMES £2BN PRISONS SELL-OFF OPENS DOOR TO MASS PRIVATISATION Seven private companies are bidding for £2bn of contracts to run nine English jails in what is being regarded as the first move towards the wide privatisation of the Prison Service. The American correctional services companies MTC and GEO are among the bidders. FINANCIAL TIMES [...]
Think-tank: No rate rise before 2016 January 15, 2012 THE WORSENING economic outlook means interest rates will stay at rock-bottom levels until 2016 and quantitative easing (QE) will soar to £400bn, according to forecasts published today by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). The think-tank slashed its economic growth forecast for 2012 from 0.7 per cent to a contraction of 0.4 per [...]
Europe is relying on the ratings it hates January 15, 2012 THERE is a certain irony in the Eurozone’s latest dilemma over Standard & Poor’s mass downgrade on Friday. Eurozone leaders have spent months looking for convoluted ways to turn junk Greek ratings into triple-A rated debt backed by Germany. The alchemy is to be achieved via a regional bailout fund, or complex structured product called [...]
