BAA earnings rise fuelled by Heathrow October 26, 2011 BAA reported a 17 per cent rise in earnings in the first nine months of the year, helped by strong traffic growth, especially at London’s Heathrow airport. BAA, majority owned by Spanish infrastructure group Ferrovial, said adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose to £842.2m in the nine months to the end [...]
Barclays offloads Russian retail unit to Igor Kim October 25, 2011 Barclays has agreed to sell its Russian retail and commercial banking operations to local banker Igor Kim. Barclays said its Barclays Bank LLC Russian division had gross assets of £513m as of the end of September 2011. It added that the sale of the business would not have any material impact on its earnings or [...]
Reckitt earnings rise October 25, 2011 British consumer goods group Reckitt Benckiser cautioned of slower growth ahead due to a number of one-off effects as the company matched forecasts with a nine per cent rise in third-quarter earnings. The maker of Cillit Bang cleaners and Nurofen painkillers said growth will slow as it laps an acquisition made late last year and [...]
King says QE is not guaranteed to trigger bank lending October 25, 2011 The Bank of England’s resumption of its asset buying programme will not automatically persuade commercial banks to increase lending, though it should provide a safeguard against a major dip in loan activity, Bank governor said. “I can’t guarantee that it means that bank lending will rise, but what I do believe is that it won’t [...]
Novartis to axe 2,000 jobs October 25, 2011 Novartis AG is slashing 2,000 jobs in Switzerland and the United States to keep costs under control in the face of growing price pressures and the strong Swiss franc, the Swiss drugmaker said on Tuesday. The Basel-based group has already cut thousands of jobs, shut several sites, notably in Britain. It has also shifted its [...]
Credit Suisse fined £5.9m by FSA October 25, 2011 Credit Suisse has been fined £5.95m by the Financial Services Authority for system failures in its private bank, the second time it has fallen foul of the British regulator in less than two years. The FSA said in an emailed statement on Tuesday it had fined Credit Suisse for “systems and control failings in relation [...]
Household saving ratio rises October 25, 2011 Households ramped up their savings to their highest in almost a year between April and June, official data showed on Tuesday, in a sign that a darkening economic outlook may be causing consumers to retrench. The Office for National Statistics said the household saving ratio rose to 7.4 per cent in the second quarter, up [...]
Lloyds raises net interest margin target October 25, 2011 Part-nationalised bank Lloyds slightly raised its 2011 core banking net interest margin target as a result of the company devising a new way of treating its funding costs and capital. Lloyds said the changes would mean that net interest income within its core banking divisions would increase slightly, while there would be a slight reduction [...]
BP ‘bouncing back’ from US crisis October 25, 2011 BP has “turned the corner” in its recovery from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the British oil major said, predicting production growth and an almost 50 per cent increase in planned divestments to $45 billion (£28bn). Management said it expected improved cashflow would, in time, enable the group to pay investors higher dividends and [...]
UBS profits better than forecast despite scandal October 25, 2011 Swiss bank UBS reported a better-than-expected third-quarter net profits but warned the tough trading conditions that hit its investment banking income looked set to continue unless the global economy improved. The bank said its core wealth management business had held up well despite a trading scandal which had lost the bank 1.8bn Swiss francs (£708m) [...]
