Borders starts Falklands drilling February 1, 2012 Borders and Southern yesterday said it had started drilling at its Darwin exploration well in the Falklands. It is the first in a series of exploration wells that will test potentially large reservoir targets in the deeper water off the Falkland Islands. The drill programme is being carried out further south of the area that [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS February 1, 2012 Commonwealth Business Council Sir Alan Collins, the UK Olympics ambassador who helped win the Games for London in 2012, has been appointed as director general of the Commonwealth Business Council, the Commonwealth’s agency for promoting trade and investment. He will replace founding director general Dr Mohan Kaul in April. Sir Alan served as ambassador to [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS February 1, 2012 BABCOCK INTERNATIONAL Numis upgrades the engineering company from “add” to “buy” with a target price of 870p after a management statement that was largely in line with expectations. The broker expects organic growth of around five per cent for the current year, which it sees as a strong performance when compared to the rest of [...]
Strong earnings and Greek hopes cause FTSE to jump February 1, 2012 BULLISH company earnings reports and the prospect of Greece nearing a debt deal helped lift Britain’s FTSE 100 higher yesterday, while robust manufacturing data from China, the US and Europe boosted appetite for the mining sector. London’s blue chip index rose 109.11 points, or 1.9 per cent to 5,790.72. The index closed below 5,800, where [...]
US stocks extend gains on good data February 1, 2012 US stocks extended January’s rally yesterday after upbeat global manufacturing data boosted sentiment and as Greece neared a long-delayed deal with private creditors. The recent run of better-than-expected economic data around the world, though still not suggesting a booming expansion, has helped lift equity markets as investors move away from a worst-case scenario for the [...]
The Eurozone will implode, but it isn’t too late to learn from past monetary unions February 1, 2012 FOR a long time it was taboo to suggest the Eurozone would collapse – now people write and talk of little else. Currency break-up is inevitable, but despite the twists and turns a workable solution isn’t in sight. Although it’s impossible to predict the precise outcome, previous monetary unions offer insights into what went wrong [...]
Apprenticeships in Britain plainly have not worked February 1, 2012 POLITICIANS faced by persistent social problems often dream of reviving old institutions. Youth unemployment in Britain recently passed 1m. No surprise, then, that historical solutions are being proposed for the UK’s present day problems with youth training. Politicians of all stripes believe that increasing access to apprenticeships will turn those young people not in employment, [...]
Romney will be hoping victory comes swiftly February 1, 2012 IT COST Mitt Romney approximately $16m to win Florida’s 50 delegates. The one thing he couldn’t afford in Florida was defeat. But Romney didn’t just come back from a double-digit poll deficit – he did something much more impressive. Newt Gingrich remarked that a strong second would save his “totally unique” campaign. With a landslide [...]
RAPID RESPONSES February 1, 2012 A critical state George Osborne commented on the loss of Fred Goodwin’s knighthood by stating “RBS came to symbolise everything that went wrong in the British economy in the last decade”. This is a perplexing statement from the man charged with sorting out the public finances. The years of artificially low interest rates that provided [...]
The thinking man’s games February 1, 2012 Last year saw a host of games that pushed the boundaries of what the genre can achieve. New techniques give almost cinematic animation quality and video game acting is no-longer the refuge of Z-list talent. Titles like LA Noire and Skyrim were vast in their scope and brilliant in their execution, proving that games are [...]
