Greece clinches coalition deal to battle bailout terms June 20, 2012 GREEK conservative party head Antonis Samaras was yesterday sworn in as Prime Minister at the helm of a three-party coalition dedicated to keeping the debt-stricken country in the euro but demanding softer terms on its international bailout conditions. The agreement between New Democracy, the socialist party Pasok and the smaller Democratic Left comes three days [...]
Investors gain new power over bosses’ pay packets June 20, 2012 BUSINESS and investor groups yesterday welcomed plans to give shareholders binding votes on directors’ pay, which are intended to give firms’ owners a greater say in assessing business performance. Business secretary Vince Cable announced the plan, which is set to be in place by 2014, arguing “there is compelling evidence of a disconnect between pay [...]
We need a flat tax with no loopholes to reduce avoidance June 20, 2012 HYPOCRISY barely starts to describe it. Left-wing comedians – you know, the kind that love to attack the City, ridicule aspirational values, question the motives of those in business and who wear their champagne socialism on their sleeve – are not supposed to be extreme tax avoiders. So the news that Jimmy Carr, one such [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING June 20, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES Banks to get cheap money to lift UK lending The government’s new “funding for lending” programme, designed to boost credit for British business, will cut banks’ costs to as little as 1.2 per cent, according to people briefed on the scheme. The supply of such cheap money to the banks is supposed to [...]
VOTES ON TOP PAY June 20, 2012 ■ Shareholders in publicly listed UK firms will get a binding vote on directors’ pay policy every three years. ■ They will vote on the whole package, covering salaries, bonuses and exactly what determines the level of pay. ■ That includes severance packages, in an effort to end “rewards for failure” when unsuccessful bosses leave [...]
Commerzbank appeals bonus rule June 20, 2012 Commerzbank yesterday lodged papers with the UK Court of Appeal in a bid to annul a judge’s ruling that it must fork out €52m in bonuses to a group of London-based investment bankers. Pointing to Dresdner Kleinwort’s €6.5bn loss, Commerzbank significantly slashed the bonuses of 104 bankers who joined from Dresdner after the 2009 acquisition and [...]
JPMorgan sells most of whale June 20, 2012 JPMorgan Chase & Co has sold as much as 70 per cent of the controversial position that caused huge trading losses for the bank, CNBC reported yesterday. The television network said the bank had sold 65 per cent to 70 per cent of the so-called London Whale position, a hedging strategy gone so wrong that [...]
Banks snap up £5bn of cheap loans in auction June 20, 2012 THE BANK of England injected £5bn of emergency liquidity into banks yesterday in an attempt to mitigate the costs of unexpected shocks from the Eurozone. Sir Mervyn King announced last week that the Extended Collateral Term Repo (ECTR) Facility would be activated to counter “market-wide stress of an exceptional nature”. All successful bidders will pay [...]
Blue Index trader and wife get jail terms for insider dealing June 20, 2012 A BRITISH trader and his wife who helped fund a lavish lifestyle from illegal share dealing were jailed yesterday in a landmark case pursued by prosecutors on both sides of the Atlantic. James Sanders, who owned and was a director of now-defunct brokerage Blue Index, his wife Miranda, and James Swallow, a Blue Index co-director, [...]
Crown Estate reports record annual profits June 20, 2012 THE CROWN ESTATE, which owns Regent Street and other London landmarks, today reported record profits and its highest ever property valuation as its super prime properties continued to outperform. Net profit, which is paid to the Treasury, was £240.2m in the year to 31 March – up four per cent on the previous year. The [...]
