JJB fined for lack of deal disclosure January 26, 2011 SPORTS retailer JJB was fined nearly £500,000 yesterday for failing to give investors the full picture about two acquisitions. The Financial Services Authority imposed the fine after JJB said in 2007 that it had bought the Original Shoe Company for £5m, without disclosing it paid an extra £10.04m to buy all the shoe chain’s stock. [...]
FASB softens fair value accounting for US banks January 26, 2011 THE US accounting regulator has relaxed its fair-value proposals, meaning that banks will be allowed to continue valuing their loans at adjusted historical costs rather than using mark-to-market principles. US banks welcomed the decision, having feared that a rule change would force them to value loans based on market movements. This can lead to massive [...]
Second Bank voter joins call for interest rate rise January 26, 2011 FOR seven straight months Andrew Sentance stood alone in the Bank of England’s rate setting committee – the only member proposing an increase in the Bank’s lending rate. But this month Sentance convinced one of his colleagues to jump off the fence. “The surprise was not so much that someone joined Andrew Sentence, it was [...]
One in five new graduates faces unemployment January 26, 2011 GRADUATES were hit with an unemployment rate of 20 per cent in the third quarter of 2010, official data showed yesterday. This was the highest unemployment rate for new graduates in over a decade, and double the rate seen before the recession. By the end of the recession graduate unemployment was twice the national rate, [...]
Shock surge in US house sales January 26, 2011 NEW home sales rocketed by 17.5 per cent in December, compared to November, data showed yesterday. The rise meant that 329,000 one family homes were sold in the 12 months to December. Sales were up massively in the west of the US — a 33 per cent increase on the previous month — raising some [...]
Mortgage levels fell in December January 26, 2011 LENDING remained sluggish in December, while approvals for mortgages dropped to their lowest rate since January 2009, the British Bankers’ Association said yesterday. The number of approvals from banks dropped from 29,696 in November, to 28,726 in December, the BBA said. Overall mortgage lending rose by £0.9bn, a slower rate than was measured in November [...]
WILL INTEREST RATES BE RAISED THIS YEAR? January 26, 2011 JAIMIE FERNANDEZ | LDN UNDERWRITING “Yes. It probably should happen but I wouldn’t want them to. They perhaps need to go up to get us back into a good position.” ANTHONY BURKE | WSI CORPORATE “Yes, in this economic climate. It should happen to keep inflation under control and it’ll probably happen towards the end [...]
Hiscox is hit by disasters January 26, 2011 LLOYD’S insurer Hiscox was yesterday the latest company to warn that insurance claims from the UK’s snowy winter are on the rise. Hiscox estimated it faces £16m in claims from November and December’s bad weather-related claims and said this did not take January’s further freezing conditions into account. The loss is likely to be revised [...]
Heritage admits its Iraq oil find is gas January 26, 2011 HERITAGE OIL revealed yesterday that its Miran oil field in Iraq turns out to be mostly filled with natural gas. FTSE 250-listed Heritage said yesterday it will continue drilling at the Miran site, which is one of the largest gas fields to be discovered in Iraq. Its shares sank 29 per cent to 310p, as [...]
Costly case of mistaken identity January 26, 2011 “THERE’S a whole ocean of oil under our feet! No one can get at it except for me!” So screams Daniel Day Lewis as Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film There Will be Blood. Until yesterday, Heritage was on the verge of a similarly huge find in the semi-autonomous Iraqi region of Kurdistan. Heritage did [...]
