Anger grows over £5.2bn deal by G4S October 24, 2011 THE fight to stop security giant G4S’ £5.2bn takeover of Danish rival ISS is mounting with one of the country’s proxy groups speaking of its concerns over the deal. Institutional Shareholder Services, a corporate governance adviser to 1,700 large investors, spoke out over the weekend about concerns over the difficulties of integrating the two firms [...]
Lloyds branch float could lead to delay October 24, 2011 LLOYDS could delay the disposal of 632 branches by up to two years in order to wait out volatile markets if its sale process falls through. The plan was to offload the branches by selling them before 2012. But a lack of interest in the assets could now push Lloyds towards an alternative plan to [...]
Recovery may take time as Buckles gets investors onside October 24, 2011 SHARES in G4S have recovered about a quarter of the 20 per cent-plus they lost on Monday after it announced the ISS deal, but that still leaves the firm chasing a serious hit to its market cap – with no storming comeback visible on the horizon. Mired in a game of tug’o’war with investor groups, [...]
Bank capital timeline seen as unrealistic October 24, 2011 DETAILS of a mass-bailout for Europe’s banks continued to elude the region’s leaders yesterday, but they are now thought to be mulling stress tests that would result in banks having to raise around €110bn (£95.6bn). Banks will have to try and raise the cash themselves by an agreed deadline, whereupon sovereign states will then use [...]
Q&A: EU SUMMIT: THE TOP ISSUES October 23, 2011 Q. WHAT ACTION WILL BE TAKEN TO BOOST THE BAILOUT FUND? A. France wants the euro bailout fund to become a bank and borrow from the ECB, boosting its €440bn firepower. The leveraged fund would then be used to help troubled banks and nations. Germany believes this breaks treaties preventing the ECB from funding state [...]
Rebels set to stick to guns October 23, 2011 THREATS to clamp down on Tory MPs who defy the party’s three line whip are expected to go ignored today, with rebels determined to vote for a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union. Despite three line whips unusually being imposed by all three main parties against the motion, around 70 Conservative MPs [...]
Lord Turner admits error in arguing for the euro October 23, 2011 LORD Adair Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, yesterday admitted he “was wrong” to argue Britain should have joined the euro. Turner, a former director general of the Confederation of British Industry, argued in a 2002 paper that “joining the euro would increase our incomes and our standard of living.” “At each stage the [...]
Google could mount a shock Yahoo bid October 23, 2011 GOOGLE has emerged as a surprise potential suitor for embattled Yahoo, with the search giant understood to be in talks with private equity backers over a possible deal. The prospective partners are thought to have held preliminary discussions in which Google could partly finance a deal but have not come up with a formal proposal [...]
Slowdown in Chinese economy would be bad for the UK and Europe, says our panel October 23, 2011 A SLOWDOWN in the Chinese economy would be “unhelpful” to both the UK and Europe, according to the majority of participants in our latest Voice of the City poll, run in association with PoliticsHome.com. Seventy-one per cent of our panel said a slower Chinese growth would be either very or somewhat unhelpful to the Western [...]
Canada vows to defend its interests over oil sands being called pollutants October 23, 2011 CANADA warned yesterday it will “defend its interests” if the European Union (EU) goes through with a proposal to rank Canadian oil sands as a highly polluting fuel. In a letter to EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver also said the European Commission’s Fuel Quality Directive (FQD) potentially violates the [...]
