RBS sells its Kazakhstan units to HSBC for $52m June 17, 2010 ROYAL Bank of Scotland sold its Kazakhstan business to HSBC yesterday to take the part-nationalised bank’s proceeds from a trio of Asian and Middle East assets to $200m (£135.2m) in two days. HSBC, which unlike RBS did not take state help during the financial crisis and consolidated its position as Europe’s biggest bank, said it [...]
CBI: Demand for UK goods weakens June 17, 2010 DEMAND for manufactured goods weakened a little in June but this followed an exceptional improvement in May, according to the latest monthly Industrial Trends survey from the CBI, which was published yesterday. A net 23 per cent of manufacturers said that total orders were below normal in June. This is slightly worse than May’s balance [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS June 17, 2010 BHP BILLITON Citigroup maintains a “buy” recommendation on BHP Billiton saying the group’s share price has been overly impacted by issues such as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Chinese slow down and OECD debt issues. According to Citi, the market has already discounted $55bn in value destruction for BHP, which it believes is overdone. [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS June 17, 2010 Alpha Strategic The hedge fund investment group has appointed Florence Lombard, the former head of the Alternative Investment Management Association (Aima), as a non-executive director. Lombard, 58, was head of Aima in the UK from 1993 until the end of 2008. She then stayed on as an executive director to focus on the relationship with [...]
Orange offers first UK plans for iPhone 4 June 17, 2010 ORANGE became the first British mobile network operator to announce tariffs for the iPhone 4, the latest runaway success from Apple. The operator said the 16GB version of the smartphone will be free on its £50-a-month business tariff with a two-year contract. The 32GB version will set customers back £41.70 on the same tariff. On Orange’s cheapest [...]
Swiss pass US banking treaty June 17, 2010 THE Swiss parliament finally backed a treaty yesterday to give the US government details of clients UBS helped dodge taxes, ending nearly a year of uncertainty that threatened the Swiss bank’s recovery. The two houses of parliament agreed not to hold a referendum on the treaty after crisis talks yesterday, so Swiss tax authorities should [...]
Mulberry reports plum profits and rising sales June 17, 2010 LUXURY fashion firm Mulberry Group shrugged off economic gloom yesterday, saying it expected further sales growth ahead after a strong set of full-year results, boosted by growing demand in an effervescent Asian market. The company, famed for its leather handbags, said retail sales in the first ten weeks of the current year were up 36 [...]
Kerviel was a zombie, court hears June 17, 2010 Ex-Societe Generale trader Jerome Kerviel was an overworked “zombie” trader whose risky bets were symptomatic of the bank’s faulty control system, two French academics said at his trial yesterday. Kerviel, blamed by SocGen for a €4.9bn (£4bn) trading loss in 2008, never took holidays and worked long hours, an industry problem according to Jean-Hubert Blanchet, [...]
WS Atkins profits fall as public sector work put at risk and staff numbers cut June 17, 2010 CONSTRUCTION and engineering firm WS Atkins saw its profits fall by six per cent last year, as a slowdown in revenues and mounting pension debts outweighed its recent cost cutting drive. The company, which helps design big building projects such as London’s 2012 Olympic site, said pre-tax profit fell to £96.5m in the last financial [...]
Sky Sports axed from Freeview June 17, 2010 SKY Sports News, the increasingly popular sports service, is being taken off the Freeview platform and being made available only to pay television customers. Sky has decided to use the popularity of Sky Sports News to further drive its pay television subscribers and expects to use some of the extra revenues it might attract to [...]
