RBS faces £8bn loss after adding £3bn for legal payouts January 27, 2014 RBS SHOCKED investors late yesterday, revealing another £3.1bn hit for mis-selling and poor conduct that could leave the state-backed bank facing a huge £8bn loss. The provisions dragged down RBS shares and rounded off a bad day for the FTSE overall. The lender is now expected to have made a loss of around £8bn for [...]
Apple bruised despite record iPhone sales January 27, 2014 APPLE’S iPhone sales hit an all-time quarterly record of 51m units in the final three months of 2013, but still missed analyst expectations of 55m. Shares in the world’s most valuable technology company initially dived eight per cent in after-hours trading as some investors reacted to Apple’s holiday season sales figures plus a weaker-than-expected forecast [...]
Tax experts warn Ed Ball’s 50p plan won’t raise £3bn January 27, 2014 THE INSTITUTE for Fiscal Studies scotched Labour’s claims that its plan to increase the top rate of tax to 50p would raise an extra £3bn for the Exchequer, saying yesterday that the change was more likely to boost coffers by just £100m. Economists, business leaders and politicians, some from Ed Balls’s own party, have also [...]
Labour’s proposed tax grab will backfire even before it starts January 27, 2014 HERE is how Labour’s misguided, punitive and anti-growth 50p tax plan could backfire almost immediately. If the Tories go into the election promising to keep the top rate of tax as is, and Labour to increase it by 5p, and it continues to look like Ed Miliband will triumph in May 2015 (albeit on a [...]
Industry voices scepticism over pension policy January 27, 2014 GOVERNMENT plans to encourage a new type of pension system got a tepid response from the industry yesterday, with concerns about how it would work and the risk it would expose savers to. Pensions minister Steve Webb promoted the collective defined contribution (CDC) schemes this weekend, which would allow people to pool their savings and risk, [...]
What the other papers say this morning – 28 January 2014 January 27, 2014 FINANCIAL TIMES Jobs data defies Hollande pledge French unemployment rose to a record level in December, forcing President Francois Hollande to concede failure in his main political promise of 2013 to “invert the curve” of rising joblessness by the end of the year. Official figures published yesterday showed the number of jobseekers rose 10,200 in [...]
Bitcoin exchange pair charged January 27, 2014 Two men who operate Bitcoin exchange businesses have been charged with money laundering for helping drug merchants exchange $1m (£603,000) in cash for bitcoins, the digital currency, US prosecutors said yesterday. Prosecutors in New York announced charges against Charlie Shrem and Robert Faiella for attempting to sell $1m in the digital currency to users of [...]
Demand for business space soars January 27, 2014 Demand for commercial property from occupiers grew at the fastest speed in at least 15 years at the end of 2013, as the recent recovery pushes up firms’ appetite for space to rent. According to figures released by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) today, 42 per cent more respondents to their fourth quarter [...]
Tech sector ends 2013 on a high January 27, 2014 The UK tech sector saw the steepest expansion of business activity for almost a decade during the last quarter of 2013, according to the latest KPMG/Markit Tech Monitor UK report. In December, the index measuring UK tech sector business activity posted above the 50 no-change threshold for the sixteenth month with a healthy score of [...]
Canadian group swoops for F&C with £700m bid January 27, 2014 ONE OF Britain’s oldest investment companies is on the brink of being sold to Canada’s fourth biggest bank in a £700m takeover deal. F&C Asset Management, which runs the 145-year-old Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust, yesterday said the Bank of Montreal had tabled a 120p a share offer for the firm which it was likely [...]
