With reform of Sunday trading laws put on hold, is England showing the world it’s closed for business? November 10, 2015 Adrian Pepper, managing director of Pepper Media and the founder of consumer group Open Sundays, says Yes You can now shop on the Champs-Elysees in Paris all day on a Sunday. But you can only spend six hours in the supermarkets and tourist emporiums of Knightsbridge, Oxford Street or Westfield. As things stand in the [...]
Best of the Brokers for 10 November 2015 November 10, 2015 To appear in Best of the Brokers, email your research to notes@cityam.com BAE SYSTEMS Analysts at Berenberg are expecting more good news for BAE Systems, the British multinational defence, security and aerospace company. Reiterating their “buy” recommendation in a note out yesterday, the Berenberg team said they anticipate the Saudis will put in an order for [...]
Miners fearing US rate rise pull down FTSE 100 – London Report November 10, 2015 UTILITIES, the InterContinental Hotels Group and mining companies yesterday weighed on the FTSE 100. The blue-chip share index closed 0.92 per cent lower at 6,295. InterContinental Hotels Group, one of the world’s largest hoteliers, saw its share price fall 4.83 per cent during the day to 2,640p per share, after denying rumours of a possible [...]
Easy does it: How to find value in the new normal November 10, 2015 October's relief rally in equity markets should have provided just that – relief. The trouble is that, with positions washed out, sentiment still fragile and macro data still mixed, few participated fully in the move and many simply didn’t believe in it. Many commentators – bullish and bearish alike – appear very happy to [...]
Governor Mark Carney: The out-of-touch boyfriend – CNBC Comment November 10, 2015 The only thing worse than an “unreliable boyfriend” is one who relentlessly aims to please but fails to understand what his partner really needs. Despite his best intentions, he disrupts the relationship through an improper assessment of the situation at hand. Meet the “out-of-touch boyfriend”. The latter label arguably became a more apt characterisation [...]
Three unusual ways to boost productivity: Restrictive social media policies can be counter-productive November 10, 2015 It's not rocket science that you can increase employee output by giving staff more flexibility and freedom. However, a new report commissioned by Red Letter Days for Business, entitled “What’s killing UK productivity?”, has produced some unusual findings. Surveying 2,000 employees, it revealed that those with the highest output are likely to be late for [...]
City Moves for 10 November 2015 | Who’s switching jobs November 9, 2015 BNP PARIBAS INVESTMENT PARTNERS The asset management division of BNP Paribas has announced the appointment of Laurent Gueunier as head of alternative debt management. He joins from Axa Investment Managers, where he was head of structured finance. Gueunier has also worked within structured credit at JP Morgan and began his career within commodities trading at [...]
Wall Street slips on China crisis worries – New York Report November 9, 2015 WITH Wall Street bracing for an interest-rate hike and fretting about weak Chinese trade data the S&P 500 index yesterday suffered its worst loss in six weeks. The Dow Jones industrial average ended down one per cent at 17,730.48 points and the S&P 500 lost 0.98 per cent, to 2,078.58. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.01 [...]
EU reforms speech: David Cameron’s European Union renegotiation failed before it even began November 9, 2015 Today, David Cameron will deliver a much-awaited speech setting out in detail the reforms he wishes to see adopted by the European Union. I am sorry to say this, but in regard to achieving significant and lasting change, it is an entirely shallow and pointless exercise. To paraphrase Churchill’s dictum, the Prime Minister’s renegotiation is [...]
Forget horse-trading over cuts: The Spending Review is an opportunity to rethink the state November 9, 2015 How large were cuts to government spending during the last parliament? The answer may surprise you. Overall real expenditure fell by just 2.9 per cent between 2010-11 and 2014-15. Later in the month, when the chancellor delivers his Spending Review to flesh out where the axe will fall to meet this parliament’s spending targets, it’s [...]
