TripAdvisor’s chair Barry Diller sells stake to Liberty Interactive December 11, 2012 TRIPADVISOR chairman Barry Diller is stepping down from the role after selling his stake in the travel website to Liberty Interactive. Liberty Interactive, which runs digital businesses including the shopping channel QVC, bought 4.8m shares of TripAdvisor’s common stock from Diller and The Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation for a total of about $300m (£186m), making [...]
Incoming Bank boss at odds with Treasury December 11, 2012 INCOMING Bank of England governor Mark Carney yesterday put himself at odds with current Treasury policy by extolling the benefits of throwing out inflation targeting. Making the inflation target flexible – giving a central bank latitude to attempt to boost output or unemployment in hard times – or even abandoning the target altogether, and moving [...]
City watchdog slaps HSBC after $1.9bn US fine December 11, 2012 THE FINANCIAL Services Authority (FSA) yesterday announced a clampdown on HSBC, following the news that the British bank will pay $1.9bn (£1.2bn) to US authorities over money laundering. The City watchdog said it had told the bank to introduce a number of measures “to ensure that all parts of the HSBC Group are in compliance [...]
Greek debt buyback attracts €31.8bn bids December 11, 2012 GREECE’S debt buyback attracted bids totalling €31.8bn (£25.7bn), a senior Eurozone official said yesterday, but the average price paid for the bonds was slightly above expectations meaning the total debt reduction will be less than planned. A banker involved in the operation confirmed the figures, saying that the average price paid for the bonds purchased [...]
Red tape detail forces Northern Rock to repay £270m in interest December 11, 2012 THE TAXPAYER-funded arm of Northern Rock will have to pay £270m back to customers, after a regulatory technicality means borrowers’ interest payments were not legally required. Around 152,000 Northern Rock loans made in 2008 are not valid, the chancellor told parliament yesterday, because the newly state-owned lender failed to include certain compulsory information in letters [...]
Bumi board is set to hear findings from Macfarlanes December 11, 2012 THE BOARD of London-listed miner Bumi is due to meet this morning to hear the initial findings from City law firm Macfarlanes on alleged financial irregularities at Indonesian arm Bumi Resources. The report, first commissioned in September, is understood to be concerned with several development assets in Indonesia. At the meeting, the board could also [...]
London leads collapse in GB home owners December 11, 2012 THE PERCENTAGE of home-owners in England and Wales plunged between 2001 and 2011, according to census figures out yesterday. There were 14.85m home-owners across the two countries, according to the 2011 census, carried out by the Office for National Statistics. The rise of around 7,000 came despite a 1.71m increase in the number of households [...]
OBR denies that it made life easier for George Osborne December 11, 2012 BUDGET watchdog boss Robert Choate yesterday told MPs that far from tweaking processes to help the chancellor, the changes make budget targets harder to meet. Changing its model for the output gap when it was spitting out “implausible” numbers was the right thing to do, Robert Choate, who heads the Office for Budget Responsibility, maintained at [...]
London Kcell book near full December 11, 2012 KAZAKHSTAN-based mobile telecoms group Kcell has its book largely covered ahead of closing on its London float today, according to sources close to the situation. It is understood orders are flooding in from Kazakhstan, with the possibility that the book could be oversubscribed. The news will provide a welcome boost to London’s struggling market for [...]
US Treasury to make $7.6bn in sale of remaining AIG shares December 11, 2012 THE US Treasury’s sale of its remaining stake in American International Group (AIG) will fetch $7.6bn (£4.7bn), bringing the government a total profit of $22.7bn from its crisis-era bailout of the insurer. The share offering will close the chapter on one of the most politically contentious rescues of 2008, which ultimately gave AIG up to [...]
