Three things you didn’t know about… February 23, 2014 Head of M&A and corporate finance at Osborne Clarke Ray Berg 1 He’s a self-confessed “secret clubber” and has an apartment in Ibiza. One of the last gigs he went to was Fatboy Slim’s Eat Sleep Rave Repeat tour at XOYO in Shoreditch. 2 Although he’s a keen Spurs fan, his favourite thing about London [...]
Investors took $1 trillion in 2013 payout bonanza February 23, 2014 GLOBAL payouts to investors topped a record $1 trillion (£602bn) last year, after resilient corporate balance sheets helped grow dividend payments by $310bn since 2009, fresh data out today shows. Total dividend payments rose to $1.03 trillion in 2013, up 43 per cent from $717.2bn in 2009, when equity markets fell to their lowest level [...]
City Moves for 24 February 2014 | Who’s switching jobs February 23, 2014 Northern Trust The asset management business has made two appointments. John Elder (right) joins as a senior investment adviser for multi-manager solutions. He has previously worked at Mellon Family Office Services and Ernst & Young. Jonathan Lidster joins as a senior wealth strategist. He was formerly chief operating officer at Global Partnership Family Offices. Barclays [...]
Best of the Brokers for 24 February 2014 February 23, 2014 To appear in Best of the Brokers, email your research to notes@cityam.com BRITISH AMERICAN TOBACCO Panmure Gordon tells investors in the tobacco firm to “hold” shares and has nudged its target down to 3,225p ahead of full-year results on Thursday. The broker thinks the pace of black market growth is slowing and the firm can [...]
London Report: Insurance firms start a deluge of UK earnings February 23, 2014 A BUMPER week for UK earnings kicks off today with results from Hiscox, one of the big home insurers reporting full-year figures. Figures from Hiscox, RSA and Direct Line could give more detailed estimates of losses for UK industry and themselves after recent flooding and storms. Aviva and L&G are also set to give end [...]
Wall St The Week Ahead: Fed chair Yellen in spotlight for banking speech February 23, 2014 AFTER the S&P 500 slipped on Friday and broke a two-week rally, stocks may find tougher sledding this week as investors may be unwilling to push the benchmark index to a record high. The Standard & Poor’s 500 has risen three per cent over the past three weeks, as investors have largely been willing to [...]
The West has killed its entrepreneurs and replaced them with bureaucrats February 23, 2014 IF WESTERN economies have lost considerable ground to emerging powers over the last two decades, it is not simply because we lack the cheap labour of China and India or the natural resources of Russia and Brazil. It is because we have killed our own entrepreneurs at a time when our competitors made business creators [...]
City Matters: The growth of Islamic finance is critical to sustaining the City’s export weight February 23, 2014 GEORGE Osborne signalled last week that he plans to encourage more trade and investment in next month’s Budget announcement. The chancellor rightly pointed out that this was critical to securing a sustainable recovery across the UK. The City plays a crucial role in underpinning the wider economy through job creation, investment, trade and exports. That [...]
Europe’s liquidity tax will sacrifice innovation for a false promise of stability February 23, 2014 THINGS are finally looking up for Europe’s beleaguered economies. So it is incomprehensible that we are still taking the idea of implementing a European Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) seriously. Last week, the French and German governments pledged to continue pushing for a FTT, while Greece hosted a meeting of the 11 states working on the [...]
Letters to the Editor – 24/02 – Planning laws, Political banking, Best of Twitter February 23, 2014 Planning laws [Re: The only solution to the housing crisis: build, build and build, Friday] Well said. The iron grip on planning laws held by councils throughout the UK simply stops the housing market from functioning properly. Just a quick look through the government’s online “planning portal” reveals the complexity that builders must deal with. [...]
