House prices fall in May June 4, 2010 HOUSE prices fell by 0.4 per cent in May following April’s 0.1 per cent, drop, according to mortgage lender Halifax The fall still left prices 6.9 per cent higher in the three months to May compared with a year ago and took the average price of a UK home to £167,570. Analysts had forecast a [...]
EasyJet to use hi-tech ash cloud radar June 4, 2010 EasyJet has unveiled a high-tech radar system to allow planes to fly around ash clouds after figures showing 215,000 of their passengers had been hit by the Icelandic volcano. In its data for last month the airline revealed that 1,600 flights were cancelled after the ash cloud billowed across Europe. The new technology it is [...]
Laura Ashley revenue boosted by online sales June 4, 2010 FASHION and homewares retailer Laura Ashley said total UK retail revenue for the first 17 weeks of the financial year rose 6.2 per cent – fuelled by a growth in online sales. The company, which has 229 stores in the UK and Ireland, said it remained confident of continued growth in 2010 and expected full-year [...]
BP credit rating cut in new blow June 3, 2010 BP suffered a fresh blow yesterday after two of the world’s three largest credit rating agencies downgraded the group’s debt. Fitch and Moody’s both slashed BP’s rating on fears that the company would be significantly impacted by the mountainous legal and clean-up costs coming from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Moody’s lowered its senior [...]
Cable says he is not a socialist June 3, 2010 VINCE Cable attacked banks yesterday for not lending enough to small firms –?though he insisted he was not a socialist and believes in the market economy. He said that in many cases, the most useful thing the government could do was to “get out of the way”, adding that the coalition government was going to [...]
Blackstone in $1bn sale talks June 3, 2010 PRIVATE equity group Blackstone is in talks with fund manager M&G to sell it most of the property behind its Center Parcs holiday business. The deal could be worth more than £1bn, making it one of the biggest property deals since the recession. The proposed sale would leave Blackstone running the holiday parks it acquired [...]
UK must learn from Australia’s error June 3, 2010 IT is not just Britain that is about to shoot itself in the foot with a crippling and destructive tax hike on investors. In our case, it is capital gains that are being targeted; in Australia’s case, however, it is the mining industry that is the being subjected to a weird experiment in irrationality. It [...]
Google to hand over data June 3, 2010 GOOGLE is set to hand over rogue WiFi data it picked up through its Street View cameras to European regulators within the next two days. The company is keen to avoid further criticism of its privacy record and potential criminal charges, and will provide information to the German, Spanish, French and Italian data protection authorities. [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING June 3, 2010 Financial times TNK-BP STEP UP SALE OF GAS FIELD TNK-BP, BP’s Russian joint oil venture, ratcheted up the pressure for a sale of its vast Kovykta gas field on Thursday, announcing that it was pushing the unit that owns the licence to the field into bankruptcy. The move raises the stakes over the future of [...]
Jittery banks park cash at ECB June 3, 2010 Nervous European banks parked just over €320bn at the European Central Bank’s overnight deposit facility, a new record that reflects heightened loan-loss and default fears spreading through the banking system. ECB data yesterday gave more evidence of steady increases in the funds that banks would rather store at the central bank than loan to other [...]
