Hollande snaps up Bank of America’s Boone June 10, 2014 CHIEF European economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Laurence Boone, has been snapped up by French President Francois Hollande to be his new economic adviser after Emmanuel Macron stepped down. Boone was previously an economist at Barclays in Paris.
BSkyB launches new footie channel for Europe to block BT June 10, 2014 BSKYB has unveiled its seventh sports channel, dedicated to European football for next season, but the move got a tepid response from investors. Shares in Britain’s biggest pay-TV operator fell 0.8 per cent yesterday and one analyst said the move would “not drive customer growth or upgrades”. Sky Sports 5, which will be free to [...]
Bottom Line: A new front opens in the football wars June 10, 2014 DING ding, seconds out. Another round in the ongoing fight between BT and BSkyB, and this time Sky is the one landing a hard punch. BT shares fell 2.8 per cent on the pay-TV firm’s offer to bundle unlimited broadband free for two years with its new European football channel. The announcement took some shine [...]
City’s biggest investor BlackRock warns on listings blitz June 10, 2014 One of the City’s key institutional share buyers yesterday said that the flurry of companies seeking a listing in London was lowering the standards of firms coming to market. James Macpherson, a senior equity executive at BlackRock, said pent-up demand to sell private businesses through public markets meant firms were being rushed through the initial [...]
Icap rejects antitrust accusations from EU over yen Libor rigging June 10, 2014 INTERDEALER broker Icap has knocked back claims it breached EU competition rules amid ongoing allegations of Libor rigging. The group was responding to a complaint from the European Commission about its alleged role in yen rate-rigging, which led to fines for several banks last year. “The commission has concerns that Icap may have been involved [...]
Index Ventures eyes up London for £325m fund June 10, 2014 INDEX Ventures, which invested in the recently floated Just Eat and King, will today unveil its seventh early stage fund as the venture capital firm increasingly looks to London for startups with an ambition to become global leaders in their fields. While the new £325m fund would be spread over investments across Europe, the US [...]
Barclays fears tech firms could replace banks June 10, 2014 BANKS must continue to invest in new technologies and customer service if they want to avoid being replaced by firms such as PayPal and Amazon, Barclays’ boss said yesterday. Chief executive Antony Jenkins said customers were increasingly happy to manage their finance online and banks must give them a reason to stay with traditional lenders [...]
Stock market Euronext set to list for €1.75bn on its own exchanges June 10, 2014 EURONEXT, the exchange operator which runs the Paris and Amsterdam stock markets, yesterday unveiled details of its plans to list on its own stock market – valuing the firm at up to €1.75bn (£1.4bn). The group’s owner, ICE, will sell 60 per cent of the company to public investors by offering shares priced between €19 [...]
BP takes to the skies with first drone approval June 10, 2014 BP HAS become the first company to win permission to fly unmanned drones over US soil. The oil company is flying the AeroVironment Puma drone over Alaska to keep tabs on maintenance requirements at the Prudhoe Bay oil field, of which it owns 26 per cent. The US Federal Aviation Administration said yesterday that this [...]
Riskier house lending rises to five year high June 10, 2014 MORTGAGES with smaller deposits now make up the largest share of the mortgage market in five years, as the credit market recovers. In the first quarter of 2014, mortgages with higher loan-to-value (LTV) ratios were growing as a share of the market, according to statistics released by the Bank of England yesterday. Loans worth 90 [...]
