Lloyds loses finance director in latest change of the guard September 18, 2011 TIM Tookey is leaving Lloyds Banking Group, where he is finance director, to join the insurance group Friends Life, a part of Clive Cowdery’s Resolution Group. Tookey, who is believed to have been in talks with Friends Life for several weeks, will team up with Andrew Briggs, a former Lloyds colleague over five years, who [...]
Card games trigger Panel probe at M&B September 18, 2011 REPORTS that Joe Lewis enjoyed games of cards with JP McManus and John Magnier on board his yacht Aviva over the summer, as revealed in City A.M. on 15 September, have prompted the Takeover Panel to re-open their files on alleged collusion between the two parties to seize control of pubs chain Mitchells & Butlers. [...]
Q&A: CONCERT PARTIES EXPLAINED September 18, 2011 Q. WHAT IS A CONCERT PARTY? A. A concert party is a group of people acting together to take over a target company. For example, when two major shareholders, perhaps owning about 15 per cent of the business each, attempt to replace a management team they believe is incompetent. The 30 per cent threshold at [...]
Grübel clings on to his job September 18, 2011 UBS chief Oswald Grübel has denied that he feels “guilty” about the $2.3bn (£1.5bn) loss suffered by his bank over the actions of a “rogue” trader and insists that there is no reason he should quit over the matter. “If someone acts with criminal intent, you can’t do anything… That will always exist in our [...]
McKinsey: low bank returns will hit recovery September 18, 2011 THE impact of new regulations on banks’ returns could choke off the global recovery in the developed world, McKinsey & Co warns in a new report today. In a survey of data from 300 banks in 79 countries, the consultancy says that banks’ inability to get their returns above their cost of capital will deter [...]
City lawyer faces her biggest challenge yet September 18, 2011 AS a partner at niche law firm Kingsley Napley, an expert in financial crime, writer, editor and military adviser, Louise Hodges is a woman of wide experience. She may need to call on all her skills when representing Kweku Adoboli. She may also turn for advice to her colleague, Stephen Pollard, who represented Nick Leeson [...]
Adoboli hires Nick Leeson’s legal advisers September 18, 2011 TRADER Kweku Adoboli spent the weekend in custody after being charged over the $2.3bn (£1.46bn) fraud at UBS. The 31-year-old former public schoolboy, who wept when he appeared at City of London Magistrates’ Court on Friday, has appointed Kingsley Napley, the law firm that previously represented former Barings banker Nick Leeson, to conduct his defence [...]
Multi-trillion yen boost to rebuild Japan September 18, 2011 TRILLIONS of yen will be raised in tax over the next decade to pay for post-earthquake reconstruction work, the Japanese government’s tax commission has announced. The proposed supplementary budget will bring in ¥11.2 trillion (£92.4bn). Either higher income and corporate taxes, or a combination including higher tobacco taxes, are expected to be used. The tax [...]
Housing shortage sends London’s prices rocketing September 18, 2011 ASKING prices have barely moved in the country as a whole, but a lack of new sellers in London pushed prices up this month, according to today’s Rightmove house price index. Prices are up 2.4 per cent month-on-month in the capital, and 7.2 per cent compared with last September. That translates to a cash increase [...]
Trade unions in call for fairer inflation stats September 18, 2011 THE UK’s statistics office is exploring new measurements of the effect of rising prices on struggling Britons, as the government comes under pressure to alter the way it calculates millions of pensions and benefit payments. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says it is investigating the cost of living for new demographics, yet insists its [...]
