Tablets that don’t cost the earth November 21, 2012 AMAZON KINDLE FIRE HD Amazon.co.uk, £129 (seven inch) The Kindle Fire was hailed as the first serious challenger to Apple’s domination of the tablet market – a colour e-reader with access to the web that seamlessly integrated with your Amazon account. In reality it was too heavy and too ugly to ever set the tablet [...]
French downgrade wasn’t unexpected November 21, 2012 MOODY’S downgrade of France this week was hardly a surprise. Although blamed on the risk of Greece leaving the Eurozone, France’s structural challenges – its declining competitiveness, high unemployment, public debt and market rigidity – have long been worsening. The Eurozone crisis has only highlighted a more gradual decline in the country’s ability to compete [...]
HP accuses Autonomy of $9bn lie November 20, 2012 FORMER bosses at British software giant Autonomy were yesterday accused of “serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentation” by the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard (HP), after the US firm wrote off $8.8bn (£5.5bn) over last year’s purchase of Autonomy. Meg Whitman, who took the reins at HP shortly before the $11bn deal was completed [...]
Sir John Bond steps down as Glenstrata giant is born November 20, 2012 CITY grandee Sir John Bond stepped down yesterday as chairman of Xstrata, as shareholders backed the £56bn mega-merger with Glencore but snubbed controversial remuneration plans for senior executives. The retention bonus snub prompted Bond – who was set to become chairman of the enlarged group and backed the pay proposals as “fundamental” to its future [...]
Xstrata investors back Glencore megamerger November 20, 2012 THE £56bn soap opera between commodity giants Xstrata and Glencore finally came to a head yesterday as Xstrata investors approved the mining mega-merger. In a meeting lasting just over two hours, investors green-lit the merger – whose twists and turns have entertained the market since Glencore first approached Xstrata in February – and paved the [...]
Fresh allegations overshadow welcome cultural shift in City November 20, 2012 LET us hope yesterday won’t eventually be remembered as another disastrous day for the City of London. Hewlett Packard’s inflammatory attack on the accounts of Autonomy, the UK tech giant it now owns, is either a wrong-headed attempt by a struggling US firm to try and justify why it failed to do its due diligence [...]
What the other papers say this morning November 20, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES TNK-BP fails in London civil suit bid TNK-BP, Russia’s third-largest oil producer and the subject of a high-profile sale, has failed in its attempt to sue a former director for civil fraud in English courts. A €39m (£31m) freezing order gained by TNK-BP on its former head of logistics, Igor Lazurenko, his wife, [...]
Finance chiefs wrangle over Greek aid talks November 20, 2012 CRUNCH talks between Eurozone finance ministers dragged into the early hours of this morning as the Eurogroup strives to find a face-saving agreement over the next tranche of Greece’s bailout cash. Ministers were considering allowing Athens to buy back up to €40bn of its own bonds at a discount as one of a number of [...]
UK technology darling’s rocky road to HP deal November 20, 2012 WHEN Autonomy was sold to Hewlett-Packard (HP) for $11bn (£6.9bn) in October 2011, the deal was hailed as a defining moment for Cambridge’s technology scene and chief Mike Lynch was made a poster boy for British entrepreneurship. But seven months later, Lynch was out of HP, fired by the US giant’s new boss Meg Whitman. [...]
Aviva appoints former AIA head Mark Wilson as chief executive November 20, 2012 AVIVA, the UK’s second-biggest insurer, yesterday announced it had appointed former AIA boss Mark Wilson as chief executive. The New Zealand-born insurance veteran prepared AIA for its 2010 listing and was credited with successfully steering the Asian firm through the financial crisis in his four-year tenure. His appointment at struggling Aviva comes six months after [...]
