American service sector still growing yet employment figures remain mixed October 5, 2011 GROWTH in America’s service sector held up in September, yet mixed news on jobs dampened sentiment across the pond yesterday. While the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) non-manufacturing survey came in at 53 — indicating growth — employment activity contracted for the first time since August last year. The drop in services employment was, however, [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS October 5, 2011 Victoria Private Investment Office The financial adviser and wealth management business, previously Victoria Capital, has relaunched as it aims to reach a wider market. Leading the firm’s expansion is Heather Maizels, the former head of Barclays Private Bank, who has been appointed as managing director. As an advisory board member of Barclays Wealth, which she [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS October 5, 2011 MICHAEL PAGE Broker Numis expects Page to deliver another strong trading performance during the third quarter, with good performances from the mature European economies and high growth once again for the emerging markets. However, it says macro sentiment is likely to dominate share price sentiment in the short-term and lowers its 2012 forecasts. It maintains [...]
Greek progress lends a hand to FTSE despite retail worries October 5, 2011 RALLIES by hard-pressed banks, insurers and commodity stocks led a bounce back by Britain’s top shares yesterday as support for debt-laden Greece revived investor appetite for riskier assets. Financial issues were boosted after the International Monetary Fund said it “definitely participate” in a second bailout package for Greece if the Washington-based lender was happy about [...]
Wall Street gains again on tech talk October 5, 2011 US stocks rallied for a second day yesterday, as investors bid up materials and energy shares on rising commodity prices and poured into beaten-down tech names after days of selling. Stocks continued to recover from a decline that briefly took the S&P 500 into bear-market territory. That turned abruptly on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 [...]
Estonia’s lesson for Britain: Cut now and cut hard if you don’t want worse pain later October 5, 2011 WOULD you like to live in a country with a budget surplus, a 21 per cent flat tax rate, that grew at an annual rate of 8.4 per cent in the last quarter led by manufacturing, has almost no government debt and is planning to spend 20 per cent of its budget on capital spending? [...]
A Prime Minister on auto-cue blind to the big picture October 5, 2011 THE joke doing the rounds in the Manchester conference hall yesterday was this: is David Cameron following Plan C or Plan D? The wags weren’t referring to the government’s deficit reduction strategy, but rather the fact that the Prime Minister was forced to rewrite his speech after early extracts, released to the press on Tuesday [...]
UK bank rules need to be taken Europe-wide October 5, 2011 SAYING “I wouldn’t start from here” is not a very helpful response to a traveller asking directions, but sometimes it is the best one. It is good news for London that the chancellor managed to force concessions on EU derivatives legislation. He entered the negotiations in Luxembourg outnumbered 26 to 1, but achieved most of [...]
RAPID RESPONSES October 5, 2011 Exemplary ETFs BlackRock calls for high standards on disclosure for Exchange-traded fund (ETF) providers. We agree. That will only codify exactly what is already being delivered by the ETF community. ETFs have built an exemplary track record of delivering on straightforward performance objectives in a highly transparent and liquid environment. Michael John Lytle, Managing Director, [...]
Giving ninety per cent of its tickets away is P&G’s winning 2012 strategy October 5, 2011 COUNTDOWN TO THE LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES 295 DAYS TO GO Irwin Lee explains why being the Proud Sponsor of Mums makes business sense for Procter & Gamble Q.WHAT WAS YOUR BRAND’S PRIMARY REASON FOR BEING INVOLVED WITH THE GAMES? A.Our first involvement with the Olympics came in Vancouver with the 2010 Winter Games. We [...]
