Euro woes return with a vengeance January 5, 2012 EUROPEAN banks were caught in a wave of new anxiety yesterday as doubts over capital-raising plans and Hungary’s solvency caused investors to drop stock in the continent’s major lenders. Shares in UniCredit, Italy’s biggest bank, dropped 17.3 per cent to their lowest level since 1985 as markets fret over its heavily discounted rights issue, which [...]
Better data from UK and US provides some cheer January 5, 2012 WOE in the Eurozone was offset by a wave of promising economic data from the UK and the US yesterday. The UK’s biggest sector – services – ended last year on a “surprisingly buoyant” note, new research said, while America’s efforts to heal its ailing jobs market showed signs of progress. The US private sector [...]
And then there were none: Shell shuts pension scheme January 5, 2012 FINAL salary pensions in the private sector moved closer to extinction yesterday, after Royal Dutch Shell announced plans to close its scheme to new members. The oil giant became the final company in the FTSE 100 to abandon its final salary pension, after it said new members would be unable to join from the first [...]
Record audit fine for PwC January 5, 2012 BIG FOUR auditor PwC was fined a record £1.4m by an industrial tribunal yesterday for failing to scrutinise accounting practices at JP Morgan. PwC’s reports to the Financial Services Authority from 2002 to 2006 did not explain that JP Morgan was keeping clients’ cash with its own, breaching accounting rules. The bank failed to ring-fence [...]
Welcome to 2012’s two-speed world January 5, 2012 ON the face of it, it would seem that nothing changed during the holiday season. Take some of the news in today’s paper. Hungary is in ever-deeper crisis, the euro reached another 15-month low yesterday and Eurozone bank shares plunged, led by those of Italy’s UniCredit. Important stuff, certainly, but more of the same. It [...]
Unite rejects pension plan January 5, 2012 JUST ONE union has rejected the latest plan to make NHS pensions more affordable without consulting their members, with Unite describing the plans as “pernicious” yesterday. Unite – which represents 100,000 health professionals, and around seven per cent of the NHS’s workforce – turned down the changes on the basis that they “make hard working [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING January 5, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES NEW CLASHES BREW OVER TOBIN TAX Britain and France are set for another European clash as Paris attempts to frame a new Eurozone financial transaction tax in a way that is likely to have a significant impact on the City of London. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France wants to include the so-called Tobin [...]
Samsung set for record profits January 5, 2012 Samsung this morning said its profits for the last quarter of 2011 would jump 73 per cent to a life-time high, aided by record-breaking sales of its smartphones. The South Korean firm, which surged past Apple as the world’s top smartphone maker in the third quarter, said its quarterly operating profit would come in at [...]
Blue Inc to take on D2 shops January 5, 2012 Blue Inc, the fashion chain backed by Sir Stuart Rose and the Reuben brothers, is set to buy up most of the remaining shops from collapsed retailer D2 Jeans. The retailer will take on around 20 of D2’s outlets from administrator BDO, according to reports. D2, which was formerly owned by billionaire Sir Tom Hunter, [...]
Defiant Swiss bank boss: I will not quit January 5, 2012 UNDER-FIRE Swiss bank governor Philipp Hildebrand yesterday insisted he had no plans to step down, and vowed to fight accusations of insider trading that have been made against him “with all means”. Speaking at a press conference in Zurich yesterday afternoon, Hildebrand gave more details of the currency transactions made by his wife that have [...]
