Spiked US IPOs hit decade high August 31, 2011 EQUITY market turmoil caused 15 US corporate IPOs to be withdrawn in August, the highest number since April 2001, data from Dealogic showed yesterday. August saw the number of completed floats reach the lowest volume since 2009 as fears over US and European sovereign debts caused a mass sell-off in equities. Just four IPOs got [...]
Galleon trader gets five years August 31, 2011 A FORMER trader at the Galleon Group hedge fund was sentenced yesterday to five-and-a-half years in prison, a term the judge said should serve as a warning to Wall Street that insider trading was a serious crime. Craig Drimal, 55, who pleaded guilty in April, was arrested as part of a sweeping government crackdown on [...]
BNY MELLON CHIEF STEPS DOWN August 31, 2011 BANK of New York Mellon Corp said Robert Kelly (pictured) has stepped down as chairman and chief executive officer after three years, following differences in approach to managing the company. The company named board member Gerald Hassell as chairman and CEO, effective immediately, sending its shares down more than one per cent in late trading.
MPs call for bank reforms to be delayed August 31, 2011 A GROWING number of Tory backbenchers are calling for sweeping banking reforms to be delayed over fears they could damage the fragile economic recovery. Their intervention came as Vince Cable (pictured), the business secretary, attacked UK banks for being “disingenuous in the extreme” after they argued the Vickers reforms could force them to scale back [...]
WHAT DO THE BANKS SAY ABOUT THE RINGFENCE? August 31, 2011 LLOYDS Lloyds has taken the most pro-ringfence stance of all the banks – and argues that almost all of Lloyds’ operations should be inside the fence. Chief executive António Horta-Osório (pictured) argues that a ringfence should form a crucial part of a resolution plan to allow regulators to wind up failing banks in an orderly way. [...]
CITY VIEWS: IS NOW THE RIGHT TIME TO BRING IN BANKING REFORMS? August 31, 2011 CHRIS BATCHELOR | LLOYDS “It’s not the right time as it will increase the cost of retail banking. The inability to get mortgages will destabilise the housing market, shaking the economy.” JAMES GIBSON | CRONE CORKILL/WILLIS “No, I think that we should hang on six months to see what happens; recently the FTSE has been [...]
New blow for BP as Russian office raided August 31, 2011 BAILIFFS and armed special forces stormed BP’s Moscow’s offices yesterday, just a day after the Kremlin rubbed salt into the oil giant’s wounds by signing a coveted Arctic exploration deal with US rival ExxonMobil. BP was ordered to let bailiffs search through all documents by a court in Siberia, where Andrei Prokhorov, a minority shareholder [...]
Shell poised to sign $800m deal for Ukrainian shale gas August 31, 2011 ROYAL DUTCH Shell, the world’s largest oil producer, is poised to sign an $800m (£492m) deal to explore and develop shale gas fields in the Ukraine, a presidential official told journalists yesterday. President Viktor Yanukovich’s chief of staff said Shell and Naftogaz, the Ukrainian state-run gas and oil company, intend to sign a deal today [...]
Higher taxes hurt profit at JKX Oil as the firm forgoes dividend August 31, 2011 SHARES in FTSE 250-listed JKX Oil and Gas fell more than four per cent yesterday after the energy group posted a drop in first-half operating profit, weighed down mainly by higher taxes in Ukraine. Pre-tax profits at the eastern Europe-focused oil group fell 32 per cent to $32.7m (£20.1m) for the six months to 30 [...]
Tesco to quit Japan after eight years August 31, 2011 TESCO yesterday announced that it would quit Japan after a bruising eight years in which it failed to gain a profitable foothold in the market. Japan is known as a difficult market to crack for western companies, especially in the notoriously tough grocery sector. Tesco has 129 stores, mainly in the Tokyo area, having started [...]
