Treasury hit by cyber attacks May 16, 2011 THE UK Treasury is subjected to sustained, malicious cyber attacks from foreign intelligence agencies, according to chancellor George Osborne. An average of at least one “serious and pre-planned” attack is launched every day, with some 20,000 virus and spyware attacks taking place each year. Osborne yesterday, speaking at Google’s Zeitgeist conference, gave an example of [...]
BELSTAFF DIRECTOR ON-BRAND IN PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN CAMEO May 16, 2011 NEVER mind the drawn-out takeover struggle by its largest shareholder Peel Holdings – the real action at Pinewood Studios has been filming the next instalment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, out tomorrow. Cinemagoers hoping to catch Pinewood’s chairman Sir Michael Grade in a cameo in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides will [...]
Autonomy in £234m cloud acquisition May 16, 2011 Autonomy yesterday crashed into the cloud computing market with the £234m acquisition of Iron Mountain’s digital archiving business. The deal adds six petabytes – a million billion bytes – of data and 6,000 clients to Autonomy’s total customer base of more than 25,000 users. Autonomy said annual cost synergies should hit £25m over the first [...]
Strong second half boost for Pinsent Masons May 16, 2011 CITY law firm Pinsent Masons has reported a three per cent rise in turnover for 2010-11, reversing the four per cent fall it saw last year thanks to a strong second half performance. “The figures were flat at the half-year stage,” managing partner David Ryan told City A.M. “So all the growth was in the [...]
ANALYST VIEWS: WHAT DOES THE PURCHASE MEAN FOR AUTONOMY? May 16, 2011 DAVID TOMS | NUMIS The long-awaited acquisition has finally been achieved, management are guiding to 15 per cent earnings accretion in 2012 against a consensus number that is already around 10 per cent ahead of our forecasts. GEORGE O’CONNOR | PANMURE GORDON A match made in pragmatism. It is not ‘the one’, but the Iron [...]
Alliance Trust share buying reaches £41m May 16, 2011 ALLIANCE Trust has bought back £41.2m of stock this year in a marked change of strategy since coming under fire from activist shareholders, one of its brokers said yesterday. Alliance has bought shares 20 times since February in a bid to appease hedge fund Laxey Partners, which wants the trust to adopt a formal system [...]
Phoenix cash generation grows to £314m by April May 16, 2011 PHOENIX Group, the UK’s largest manager of closed life insurance funds, generated £314m of cash from its operations in the four months to the end of April, it said yesterday. The cash included £14m from Ignis Asset Management and £300m from Phoenix Life, a bundle of life insurance companies including Royal & SunAlliance Life & [...]
Solvency II boosts pay of risk specialists May 16, 2011 THE CITY is expecting a boom in hiring risk experts due to regulation, in particular the impact of Solvency II, according to a survey by executive search firm Kinsey Allen and the Institute of Risk Management. Solvency II, which imposes capital requirements on insurers similar to Basel III for banks, is expected to increase the [...]
Equitable Life savers to start receiving payments May 16, 2011 SAVERS that lost their money in the collapse of life and pensions firm Equitable Life will receive compensation payments from June, the Treasury said yesterday. Policyholders at the firm will share £1.5bn from the government after a ten-year battle to recoup savings lost when the firm collapsed in 2000. The repayment scheme will be managed [...]
Charles Stanley in £2m takeover deal May 16, 2011 STOCKBROKER Charles Stanley took over Birmingham-based wealth manager Jobson James Financial Services in a deal worth a maximum £2.25m yesterday. The acquisition will grow Charles Stanley’s presence in the Midlands and boost its capability in wealth management services, it said. Founded in 1993, Jobson James is led by managing director Richard Venner and offers financial [...]
