Rockhopper falls on Sea Lion delays August 22, 2013 Aim-listed oil and gas explorer Rockhopper’s shares plunged yesterday morning, despite the company posting a £47.1m profit this year, compared to a £53.8m loss last year. The North Falkland Basin-focused energy firm said that the final investment decision on its Sea Lion field development would not be made until the end of 2014 and admitted [...]
South Africa faces fresh strike wave August 22, 2013 South Africa faced a strike wave across leading sectors of the economy yesterday, as the labour unrest threatened to hit its struggling gold industry, already squeezed by rising costs and falling bullion prices. Despite pleas from President Jacob Zuma and other government leaders for peaceful wage negotiations in Africa’s largest economy, the National Union of [...]
City Moves for 23 August 2013 | Who’s switching jobs August 22, 2013 Kleinwort Benson The private banking and wealth management firm has appointed Gemma Woodward as head of charities. She has previously held various roles at Newton’s Investment Management, Lloyds Private Banking, and Henderson Global Investors Private Asset Management. Deloitte Mark Stephenson has joined the business advisory firm as head of its UK and Switzerland manufacturing industry practice. [...]
Best of the Brokers for 23 August 2013 August 22, 2013 WOLSELEY UBS upgrades Wolseley’s rating from “neutral” to “buy”, and keeps its target price at 3,500p ahead of the building supplier’s quarterly results. UBS believes the firm’s growth has accelerated in recent months, particularly in the US, and sees a chance of another special dividend. LEGAL & GENERAL Morgan Stanley raises the insurance group’s target price [...]
London Report: Chinese factory data pushes up miners on FTSE August 22, 2013 BRITAIN’S main equity index rose yesterday to recover from stinging losses in the previous session, as robust Chinese economic data lifted major mining stocks to allay worries about tighter US monetary policy. The blue-chip FTSE 100 index closed up by 0.9 per cent, or 56.03 points, at 6,446.87 points, marking its biggest one-day rise in [...]
New York Report: Shares close higher despite Nasdaq outage August 22, 2013 US STOCKS closed higher yesterday in a trading session marred by a historic trading halt of roughly three hours on the Nasdaq stock exchange as a result of technical problems. All traffic through Nasdaq OMX Group, the second-largest US stock exchange stopped at 12:14pm Eastern Time, the exchange said on its website. Shares in Nasdaq [...]
Why far too many young people still struggle to find work after education August 22, 2013 AFTER a summer-size portion of angst and anticipation, judgement day has finally been and gone. More than 600,000 households across the country will be waking up today with the hangover of GCSE results. While some will be bounding out of bed, excited about sixth form in September, a drop in top grades and a falling [...]
There’s no point in a financial services Trip Advisor unless reputation matters August 22, 2013 ONCE again, a major mis-selling scandal has broken out, with 13 high street banks and credit card issuers facing a £1.3bn redress bill for mis-sold card protection policies. No amount of financial regulation seems to stop the flow. Until 1986, there were no mis-selling scandals. The sales of financial products were regulated by contract law [...]
Rising UK house prices intensify the need to cut illogical stamp duty August 22, 2013 STAMP duty has to be a good candidate for the most stupid, destructive and illogical of the UK’s many taxes. Residential stamp duty raised £4.2bn in 2011-12, just 0.8 per cent of the government’s total tax revenues. But its reform is long overdue. It’s stupid because its “slab” rate structure means that, if someone buys [...]
Letters to the editor – 23/08 – BBC Licence Fee, Foreign companies, Best of Twitter August 22, 2013 BBC Licence Fee [Re: TV licence offences responsible for a tenth of all UK court cases, Wednesday] Currently, if you have a TV but don’t watch live TV over it, you’re still subject to “reminders” to pay – even though you’re not liable. A better system would be to make us pay for what we [...]
