Westfield profits flat in 2012 February 26, 2013 Australian shopping mall group Westfield, which runs two enormous sites in London, yesterday said earnings were flat in 2012. Westfield said its funds from operations – a industry measure of operating profits – hit $1.47bn australian dollars (£1bn) last year, up 0.3 per cent on 2011. The company said it was confident that new developments [...]
Apple settles app purchase case February 26, 2013 Apple has agreed to settle a US class action lawsuit that said customers were charged when their children inadvertently downloaded certain applications from the company’s online store. Under the proposed settlement, Apple could potentially end up paying around $100m as it has agreed to provide a $5 iTunes store credit to as many as 23m affected [...]
Music industry grows for first time since 1999 February 26, 2013 THE GLOBAL music industry has returned to growth for the first time since Boyzone and the Vengaboys topped the charts, according to figures released yesterday. Worldwide revenues rose by 0.3 per cent in 2012 to $16.5bn (£10.9bn), driven by the continued success of legal download sites, booming use of streaming services such as Spotify, and [...]
UK failing to rebalance exports to growth markets, says HSBC February 26, 2013 BRITAIN is failing to rebalance its exports, an HSBC report warns today, with the top destinations for UK goods and services set to stay exactly the same throughout the coming decades. Germany, the USA and France will still be the top three buyers of UK exports in 2030, despite politicians’ insistence that the country needs [...]
Barclays will publish pay February 26, 2013 BARCLAYS will publish its pay bands under a new transparency drive to be unveiled in the coming weeks, which is set to show hundreds of staff earning over £1m per year. Chairman Sir David Walker is spearheading the review into the bank’s practices, and the move would make Barclays the third lender in the world [...]
JP Morgan to chop 4,000 more mortgage jobs in savings drive February 26, 2013 JP MORGAN Chase will chop 4,000 jobs this year in its mortgage and consumer banking arm, keeping a tight grip on costs even as its branch network expands, the US bank announced yesterday. London staff should be unaffected, while the bank is still expanding other departments – it has hired hundreds of staff in areas [...]
Italian election dumps country into stalemate February 26, 2013 ITALY was thrown into political stalemate yesterday as elections delivered a hung upper chamber in the country’s parliament. Pier Luigi Bersani, whose centre-left coalition won a majority in the lower chamber, has the unenviable task of either bringing maverick anti-establishment figure Beppe Grillo into the fold or forming a unity government with Silvio Berlusconi’s bloc. Since [...]
Twilight for the technocrats but not the end of the world February 26, 2013 BOTTOM LINE THEY don’t like it up ‘em,” as Lance Corporal Jones used to cry on Dad’s Army. They in this case being EU bureaucrats and the European markets, both feeling bruised in all the wrong places following the remarkable Italian election results. The emergence of Beppe Grillo’s maverick Five Star movement as a serious [...]
What‘s next for gridlocked Eurozone member Italy? February 26, 2013 Q and A Q So which party or coalition secured a win in the Italian elections? A Pier Luigi Bersani’s centre-left coalition got the highest vote in the lower house, automatically giving it 54 per cent of the seats there. But it came second in the senate – Italy’s upper chamber – after scoring about [...]
City Views | Are you concerned about Italy’s election results? February 26, 2013 CHRIS OEHLERT THOMSON REUTERS The markets are very fragile at the moment. In this current economic climate I think markets are especially fragile and a political development like this causes a knee-jerk reaction. MARCUS WEYERER INTESA SANPAOLO I’m not as concerned as I was a year and a half ago because the fundamental market and [...]
