Centrica buys up Total’s UK fields February 22, 2012 ENERGY group Centrica has agreed to buy $388m (£246m) worth of UK North Sea oil and gas assets from French firm Total. Centrica, parent company of British Gas, said its purchase of the seven sites would raise its reserves by around five per cent, or 22m barrels of oil, and is expected to produce 9,300 [...]
Drax shelves plans for new biomass plant February 22, 2012 COAL-FIRED power producer Drax has scrapped plans to build a dedicated biomass plant on its site in North Yorkshire. The company, which also reported a smaller-than-expected drop in full-year core earnings yesterday, said state support levels for using only biomass in power generation were still too low. High costs of transporting fuel to its inland [...]
SUNDAY TIMES REPORTER KILLED IN SYRIA February 22, 2012 Marie Colvin, the veteran Sunday Times foreign correspondent, has been killed in Syria. Born in New York, she covered almost every war zone in the world during the last quarter of a century. She died in the city of Homs alongside French photographer Remi Ochlik after an artillery shell hit their safe house. President Bashar [...]
Protesters on the brink as legal bid fails February 22, 2012 PROTESTERS from Occupy London appear set for an angry confrontation with bailiffs after they lost a last-ditch legal bid to preserve their camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral. Yesterday three judges dismissed the activists’ applications for the right to appeal against an earlier eviction order, paving the way for the City of London Corporation to clear [...]
HP profits plunge as PC sales slump February 22, 2012 HEWLETT–PACKARD has announced a 44 per cent decline in quarterly earnings as the computer giant was hurt by weak sales of PCs and printers. The Silicon valley company reported net income of $1.47bn (£938m) for the first fiscal quarter, down from $2.6bn a year earlier. Revenue dropped by seven per cent to $30bn, missing forecasts. [...]
CITY VIEWS: DO YOU THINK THE OCCUPY PROTESTS HAVE ACHIEVED ANYTHING? February 22, 2012 MUNICE KHAN | ROTHSCHILD “If the public perceives them to be doing something beneficial then yes, they would be achieving something. But all the protesters are doing is causing a nuisance and the public agrees.” JAKE HALSTEAD | INGLEBY TRICE “They haven’t got anywhere. They have annoyed more people than they have helped and even [...]
Microsoft asks for patent help February 22, 2012 MICROSOFT has asked EU antitrust regulators to intervene in a patent dispute with Google and Motorola Mobility as it stepped up its battle against Google. Microsoft complained that Motorola Mobility was charging Microsoft too much for use of its patents in Microsoft products a week after the European Commission and the US Justice Department approved [...]
Barclays sees complaints edge down February 22, 2012 BARCLAYS saw the number of retail customer complaints it receives edge down by six per cent last year in a development that it expects to deliver millions of pounds in cost-savings. The drop in complaints came despite a 12 per cent rise in the second half of the year entirely due to the payment protection [...]
Banks pay out £1.9bn in PPI mis-selling scandal February 22, 2012 BANKS paid out a record £441m in compensation for insurance mis-selling in December, taking the total payout for 2011 to £1.9bn. The Financial Services Authority said payouts in December jumped 16 per cent from the previous record of £379m in November. There has been an increase in monthly payouts in almost every month since April, [...]
BNP Paribas offloads dollar assets to Wells February 22, 2012 WELLS Fargo is buying an energy lending business from BNP Paribas, in the US bank’s latest acquisition from a European bank seeking to shrink its balance sheet. The San Francisco-based bank is buying $9.5bn (£6.1bn) of total loan commitments, including $3.9bn in funded balances. BNP said the premium paid by Wells and other terms of [...]
