Barca edge seven-goal Clasico March 23, 2014 FOOTBALL: Barcelona moved to within a point of the top of La Liga last night with a 4-3 victory at Real Madrid. Andres Iniesta opened the scoring before a Karim Benzema brace put Real ahead, but Lionel Messi equalised before the break. Cristiano Ronaldo netted from the spot, but Messi then scored two penalties, Sergio [...]
Labour in turmoil over pensions plan March 20, 2014 LABOUR was in turmoil last night as senior party officials failed to respond to the coalition’s radical liberalisation of UK pensions, more than 24 hours after the revolutionary shake-up was announced in the Budget. Neither leader Ed Miliband, shadow chancellor Ed Balls, or shadow pensions minister Gregg McClymont, set out a clear position on the [...]
US and Russia go tit for tat in sanctions row March 20, 2014 SANCTIONS against allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin were ramped up by the US government yesterday, targeting 20 more individuals and one of the country’s banks. Bank Rossiya and the listed men join the US Treasury’s specially designated nationals list, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Their assets in the US will be frozen, and US [...]
Annuity market to collapse by £8bn because of rule switch March 20, 2014 SAVERS fleeing the pension annuity market will cause it to collapse by two-thirds over the next 18 months, analysts predict, as the fallout from the Budget continued to hit markets. Barclays analysts said the annuity market could shrink from £12bn a year to just £4bn by September 2015, due to changes announced in the Budget, [...]
Labour would be mad to oppose Osborne’s pensions liberation March 20, 2014 SUPPORTERS of the nanny state were out in force yesterday, attacking George Osborne’s revolutionary liberalisation of the pensions market. Starting next year, the chancellor will no longer force savers to hand over pension pots to insurers in return for a miserable income for life, a so-called annuity. Instead, savers will be able to use the [...]
Shake-up of oil rig duty could shrink profits March 20, 2014 THE OIL and gas industry yesterday warned that tax changes on drilling rigs outlined in the Budget would put UK North Sea projects at risk. The International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC) said that changes to the bareboat charter, which will result in higher rates for drilling rigs and floating vessels, “will cause the UK offshore [...]
What the other papers say this morning – 21 March 2014 March 20, 2014 FINANCIAL TIMES Turkey blocks access to Twitter Turkey blocked access to Twitter late last night, after Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister, vowed to eradicate the social media site, which has been extensively used to spread corruption allegations against his government. “Twitter and so on, we will root them out,” Mr Erdogan told an election rally [...]
600,000 more people fall into higher rate tax March 20, 2014 THE NUMBER of higher rate taxpayers will jump from 4.7m this year to 5.3m in 2015-16, a think-tank warned yesterday, saying an extra 2m people will have fallen into the 45p bracket since the start of the coalition’s term. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) revealed that, with wages being lifted faster than the increase in the [...]
Ladbrokes and William Hill slide as betting duty hike hits firms March 20, 2014 BOOKMAKERS William Hill and Ladbrokes both continued to suffer on the stock market yesterday following the government’s increase in tax on fixed odds betting terminals used in their high street stores. William Hill raised its initial estimate of the impact of the tax from £16m to £22m, prompting its shares to fall 1.4 per cent [...]
BG Group plans redundancies to slash costs March 20, 2014 OIL AND gas explorer BG Group is targeting UK redundancies as new management looks to slash costs and streamline the business, City A.M. has learnt. It is understood that the FTSE 100-quoted firm offered its UK employees the opportunity to apply for a voluntary redundancy package earlier this month. BG has 1,500 staff in the [...]
