Keep your tech side secure with these gizmos January 26, 2011 TECH TALK THERE are millions out there who envy the City and its wealth generators. With mobile theft and hacking on the rise, you’d better secure yourself. Phone hacking is a case in point. A “hack’” can only hear your mobile messages if you don’t choose a new password. If you keep the default password, [...]
APP OF THE WEEK January 26, 2011 ALBUMS – £1.19 Albums is a very smart music controller application, offering a brilliantly tactile alternative to the iPhone or iPod Touch’s normal library system which will appeal to anyone who misses the days of handling real CDs. In the old days, after you bought a new CD it would likely sit around on your [...]
King: I was right not to raise rates January 25, 2011 GOVERNOR Mervyn King used a defiant speech last night to defend the Bank of England’s record in the face of rising inflation and a stumbling economic recovery. King’s speech came after shock figures – showing a 0.5 per cent contraction in the UK economy for the three months to December – had rocked the markets. [...]
BlackRock’s profits soar January 25, 2011 PROFITS at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, soared 77 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2010, beating all expectations yesterday. Higher hedge fund fees and inflows into its exchange-traded fund business generated earnings of $670m (£419m), or $3.42 per share, up from $379m, or $2.39 per share, in the same period in 2009. [...]
Don’t panic over disastrous GDP data January 25, 2011 MEA culpa. The dramatic extent of yesterday’s collapse in reported GDP took me by surprise, though I realised a couple of weeks ago that the slowdown was sharper than previously thought. That the data confounded every professional forecaster polled by news agencies, as well as the Bank of England and all political parties, is only [...]
What the other papers say this morning January 25, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES RUSSIANS PREPARE FOR LISTING SPREE IN LONDON Four industrial and mining companies from Russia are set to list in London within the next few weeks, the first in a string of companies from the country rushing to raise an estimated $15bn-$20bn (£9.5bn-£12.7bn) this year. The companies are taking advantage of a narrow window [...]
BofA’s Merrill settles SEC fraud January 25, 2011 Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch unit yesterday agreed to pay $10m (£6.3m) to settle US Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it fraudulently misused customer orders so it could trade for its own benefit. The SEC claimed Merrill used the order information to place proprietary trades on a desk it no longer operates. The SEC [...]
Airbus and Boeing trade blows January 25, 2011 Airbus and Boeing traded blows yesterday ahead of a final World Trade Organisation ruling on claims Boeing received subsidies, in a tit-for-tat case brought by the European Union over similar US claims against Airbus. An Airbus spokeswoman said in a statement that the report would confirm Boeing got “massive illegal subsidies” from research grants. A [...]
Osborne set to scale back Merlin plan January 25, 2011 GEORGE Osborne is planning to water down his flagship peace deal with British banks, in a desperate bid to push through an agreement before UK bonuses are announced next month. The chancellor had originally hoped to convince banks to agree 10 per cent more business loans this year than they did in 2010, as part [...]
Voluntary rules for auditors January 25, 2011 GOVERNMENT minister Ed Davey told a House of Lords inquiry yesterday that moves to make the “big four” auditors less dominant in the market should be voluntary before more regulation is tried. Davey, minister for government relations, said “demand-side” measures to help mid-sized audit firms to grow should take precedence over regulation to improve competition. [...]
