Europe suffers in Middle East unrest February 21, 2011 EUROPEAN shares fell sharply yesterday after unrest in Libya fuelled concern over energy supplies and sapped investor risk appetite, with Italian stocks among the hardest hit. A rise in the level of violence between protestors and the government of autocratic Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi over the weekend prompted a broad-based share pullback across the region, [...]
Soft commodity traders could be hung out to dry February 21, 2011 GROUPS of older ladies like to coo over small children’s cotton socks, otherwise this soft commodity didn’t use to cause too big a stir. That is until now: in the last month the price has broken from a three-decade range, rocketing to $2 a pound – that is a 40 per cent increase since January. [...]
JAGUAR LAND ROVER IN CHINA TALKS February 21, 2011 TATA Motors’ Jaguar and Land Rover unit is in talks with top Chinese sport utility vehicle maker Great Wall Motor about a potential China tie-up. Jaguar and Land Rover are among a very few top-line global brands that do not have manufacturing arrangements in China, where BMW, Audi and others have already racked up stellar [...]
CSR snaps up Zoran in deal worth £420m February 21, 2011 BRITISH chipmaker CSR has agreed to buy US-listed Zoran Corporation in an all-share deal to add imaging and video to its wi-fi, bluetooth and GPS location technologies. CSR’s chief executive Joep van Beurden said the $679m (£420m) deal would enable CSR to target the growing number of devices that combine imaging and video with wireless [...]
IRELAND’S ELECTION MAY ROCK MARKET February 21, 2011 CFD MARKET STRATEGIST, GFT NEWS of the civil unrest across north Africa, the Middle East and central Asia has rightly dominated the headlines this month. However, despite yesterday’s FTSE fall, equity investors have mostly brushed aside any concerns they may have and continue to buy dips whenever they occur. But it could be that political [...]
Merck KGaA receives a boost from displays for tablets and smartphones February 21, 2011 MERCK KGaA has raised the prospect of faster operating profit growth than analysts expected, defying concerns about competition for its cutting-edge liquid crystals for flat-panel display. The German chemical and pharmaceutical firm yesterday predicted a 35 to 45 per cent increase in operating profit for 2011. Analysts on average had expected an increase of about [...]
Juicy profit margins at Devro as world demand for meat heats up February 21, 2011 SAUSAGE-skin manufacturer Devro reported bumper results yesterday as it said an ever-richer world population is opting to eat more meat. Devro’s profit before tax and exceptional items grew 44 per cent in 2010 to £36.3m, up from £25.1m in 2009, while revenue grew 7.5 per cent to £237m. Its success was driven by an 11 [...]
Don’t let your CFD provider take you for an expensive ride February 21, 2011 THE tail end of last week saw reports that the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) had upheld a barrage of complaints surrounding transaction charges on Contracts for Difference (CFD). With this in mind, what should you look out for and what should you do to keep your CFD earnings intact? Martyn Jones of the Financial Ombudsman [...]
China Everbright headed for $7bn HK share sale February 21, 2011 CHINA Everbright Bank may raise around $7bn (£4.3bn) through a share sale in Hong Kong just six months after its Shanghai initial public offering (IPO), leading the way for more fundraising by smaller banks. Chinese banks face a tough time as Beijing aggressively tightens liquidity, with a rise in the reserve requirement ratio announced last [...]
THE TIPSTER February 21, 2011 SILVER surged to a 30-year high on Monday as Libyan unrest sent commodity prices soaring. Add this to the market’s talk of huge demand for immediate delivery of silver (the rumour on Friday was that the COMEX exchange was short large amounts of silver for March delivery). This talk of a squeeze added more than [...]
