Wall Street closes up on light trading September 8, 2010 US stocks rose yesterday as investors latched onto positive news out of Europe in the latest in a string of low-volume sessions suggesting little confidence in market direction. Bank stocks recovered from Tuesday’s losses, with JPMorgan up 2.2 per cent and the BKW bank index up 1.7 per cent. A successful Portuguese debt offering as [...]
KPMG looks to hand over Connaught jobs September 8, 2010 HOUSING repair firm Connaught formally appointed KPMG as its administrator yesterday, as rival property companies looked to take over the collapsed firm’s contracts. KPMG will keep the firm’s property maintenance arm trading until it has farmed out its contracts to other providers. Around 4,400 people face redundancy. Richard Heis, joint administrator, said the group had [...]
Goldman mergers expert to join Glaxo as its finance chief September 8, 2010 PHARMACEUTICALS giant GlaxoSmithKline scored a coup yesterday as it hired one of Goldman Sachs’ most successful rainmakers as its new chief financial officer. Simon Dingemans is currently head of Goldman’s European mergers and acquisitions business and has been prolific in advising some of the world’s largest companies in his 25 years in the investment banking [...]
Phoenix rises from ashes to the FTSE 250 September 8, 2010 SERIAL entrepreneur Hugh?Osmond has seen his Phoenix Group life insurance consolidation vehicle promoted to the FTSE 250. Phoenix said its £1.2bn market value would make it one of the larger players in the index. In a quarterly rejig, Home Retail Group, Segro and Cable & Wireless Worldwide will drop out of Britain’s FTSE 100 later [...]
Factories see healthy rate of growth September 8, 2010 BRITISH manufacturing production expanded at a robust pace in July, recording the strongest annual growth rate since the end of 1994, official data showed yesterday. Manufacturing production was up 4.9 per cent on the year, while the monthly rate held steady at 0.3 per cent. The wider industrial production measure also grew 0.3 per cent [...]
Take home pay still dwarfed by inflation September 8, 2010 Growth in take home pay rose 1.3 per cent in the three months to August compared to just 0.8 per cent in the quarter ending in July, the VocaLink Take Home Pay index will show today. However, with CPI standing at 3.1 per cent in July, pay growth is still dwarfed by inflation. Over the [...]
Surprise fall in German trade September 8, 2010 A SURPRISE fall in exports and near-zero growth in industry output in July yesterday suggested that the German industrial juggernaut may slow somewhat after building up record momentum earlier this year. Data from the Federal Statistics Office showed exports, the main driver in Germany’s rebound, fell by 1.5 per cent from June, while imports shrank [...]
Think-tank wary on UK growth September 8, 2010 BRITAIN’S economic recovery softened in the quarter to August and the pace of growth will decelerate further in the coming months, a leading economic think-tank warned yesterday. The National Institute for Economic and Social Research (Niesr) said that output only expanded by 0.7 per cent on the previous quarter. The pace of growth may have [...]
A three-way split for MPC September 8, 2010 A THREE-WAY split has emerged in City A.M.’s Shadow Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) this month, ahead of the Bank of England’s policy decision scheduled for midday today. Two hawks are sustaining their call for a rate rise while a dove is now pushing for further quantitative easing. Both City A.M. editor Allister Heath and Henderson’s [...]
Oracle to pay ex-HP chief Hurd up to $11m in salary and bonus September 8, 2010 ORACLE has offered its new co-president, former Hewlett-Packard chief Mark Hurd, a hiring package with a bonus of up to $10m (£6.5m) and options potentially worth tens of millions more. Oracle, the world’s third-larges software maker, named Hurd co-president on Monday, a month after he stepped down from HP because of a scandal involving expense [...]
