PENSIONERS’ LIVING STANDARDS DIP December 12, 2011 HALF of pensioners have had to dip into savings to maintain their living standards, and a quarter have taken a hit to bail out their adult children, according to research out yesterday from MetLife. “If you are on a fixed income the effect of an unbudgeted financial shock like bailing out adult children is magnified,” [...]
Japan’s consumer morale drops December 12, 2011 Japanese consumer confidence in November worsened from the previous month, a Cabinet Office survey showed yesterday, suggesting that turmoil from Europe’s debt crisis and slowing global growth are weighing on sentiment. The survey’s sentiment index for general households, which includes views on incomes and jobs, was 38.1 in November, down from 38.6 in October. The [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS December 12, 2011 Cushman & Wakefield The global property consultant has expanded its EMEA sustainability team by appointing Justy Mathew as sustainability analyst, based in London. He joins from Pensions & Investment Research Consultants, where he worked on corporate social responsibility. Reporting to Andries van der Walt, head of sustainability for EMEA, Mathew will deliver sustainability consultancy for [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS December 12, 2011 ASSOCIATED BRITISH FOODS Panmure Gordon rates the owner of Silver Spoon and Twinings as a “buy” and said it remained confident of its 14 per cent earnings per growth forecast for the year. ABF last week confirmed that trading for the first two months of the year is in line with expectations and that it [...]
FTSE tumbles as doubts over Eurozone deal take their toll December 12, 2011 Britain’s FTSE 100 fell in light volume yesterday, with investors selling riskier banking and mining assets as analysts concluded that the lack of detail in a European deal on fiscal union left question marks over its long-term plausibility. London’s blue-chips fell 101.35 points, or 1.8 per cent, to 5,427.86, erasing Friday’s 0.8 per cent rise, [...]
Wall Street slides on European fears December 12, 2011 US stocks tumbled yesterday, as concerns about Europe returned to the forefront after major credit ratings agencies warned that European leaders had not done enough to tackle the region’s debt crisis. The decline was broad. All ten S&P industry groups ended in negative territory, and most dropped more than one per cent. Banks took the [...]
Critics of listing rules in the UK should bear in mind how the system actually works December 12, 2011 MUCH has been written in recent weeks about the question of safeguarding the high standards of London’s listed equity market in the face of a spate of listings of international commodity stocks. Many of these articles assume it is the role of the UK Listing Authority (UKLA) to insist on full compliance with the Corporate [...]
Another summit, another letdown by Europe’s elite December 12, 2011 AUSTAN Goolsbee, former chairman of President Obama’s council of economic advisers, is hardly a virulent eurosceptic. However, his assessment of the prospects of the common currency is very stark: in his view, as long as European leaders remain wedded to a utopian vision of political union in Europe, they will have to keep fighting off [...]
Government spending won’t fix the economy December 12, 2011 WHEN looking at investment data during the recent recession two key things emerge. The first is that UK investment (or “Gross Fixed Capital Formation”) has not fully recovered (see top chart, below). It did bounce back, but once more the growth rate is negative. However, to understand what is going on, it’s important to look [...]
RAPID RESPONSES December 12, 2011 Deutsch courage [Re: David Cameron was right to say No, yesterday] Believe me: most people here in Germany are very concerned about that elite project called €. Once more in history, the UK is doing the right thing. It seems that German leaders haven’t learned anything from the past. See the readers’ comments in German [...]
