North Korea cellphone boom November 20, 2011 Secretive North Korea is expected to register the one millionth cellphone user on its new 3G network by the end of the year, barely four years after people were thrown into prison camps, or possibly even executed, for owning one. Most of the users are in the capital of Pyongyang, home to the impoverished country’s [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS November 20, 2011 Kingfisher The home improvement retailer has appointed Mark Seligman, the former European chairman and chairman of UK investment banking at Credit Suisse, as a senior independent director, effective from 1 January 2012. Seligman will step down from his role as a senior adviser at Credit Suisse at the end of the year. He is also [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS November 20, 2011 HAMWORTHY Evolution Securities downgrades the marine, oil and gas services firm from add to “reduce” with a target price of 825p after it said it was in talks with Finnish marine engineering group Wartsila over a possible takeover offer. The target price was raised to match the potential offer price, but the broker cut its [...]
Rumoured ECB loans to IMF will keep all eyes on the euro November 20, 2011 ONCE again, investors spent last week battling with the effects of Europe’s ongoing debt crisis. Italian, French and Spanish bonds all fell sharply despite support from the ECB. The European Central Bank bought bonds in the secondary market as part of its Securities Markets Programme (SMP). However, yields on these troubled countries continued to rise [...]
WALL STREET WEEK AHEAD November 20, 2011 WALL Street is in for a volatile run this week as escalating problems in Europe’s debt crisis continue to keep investors on their toes. With light trading volume expected due to the US Thanksgiving Day holiday on Thursday, intraday swings are likely to be wide and frequent as traders instantly react to headlines out of [...]
Elastic money is folly – we are facing a breakdown in our entire monetary system November 20, 2011 What is the disease you diagnose in our monetary system? A. We have a strange monetary system. It is inherently unstable. It’s not the natural outcome of market forces. Most people don’t appreciate that the financial system is designed by politics. It’s a fiat money system based on government-controlled money, issued without limit under [...]
We should worry about taxpayers’ exposure to QE November 20, 2011 THE governor of the Bank of England (BoE) has just sent his ninth letter to the chancellor explaining why he and his impressive team on the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) have failed to meet the two per cent inflation target for yet another quarter. The chancellor will no doubt reply that the contents of the [...]
Britain must punch its weight within Europe November 20, 2011 THE political tensions and divided philosophies across Europe have once again returned to the spotlight, following David Cameron’s visit to Berlin last Friday. Strong language has been used on both sides of this debate, but understandably so, given the high stakes. Volker Kauder, of the Christian Democratic Union, made the provocative claim that “suddenly Europe [...]
RAPID RESPONSES November 20, 2011 Think global I agree with Matthew Sinclair [The carbon floor price needs to be scrapped]. Introducing a carbon floor price is wrong. With the UK facing the troubling prospect of a decade of stagnant growth, the government must prioritise: rescuing the economy, tackling the chronic level of youth unemployment and putting us firmly back on [...]
Trading on global risk sentiment November 20, 2011 AS IS the case across all asset classes, sentiment in the commodity markets hinges upon the belief, or lack thereof, in the ability of politicians and policy makers to find a solution to the European debt crisis. With no sign of a meaningful, long-term cure for Europe’s ills on the cards, cyclical commodities, like industrial [...]
