Bonfire Night strike is off November 5, 2010 LONDON firefighters called off their Bonfire Night strike last night with just hours to spare, citing concerns over the safety of the public. Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said the union had scrapped plans to strike on Friday from 10am through to 9am on Sunday. “We are always concerned about taking [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING November 5, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES NEW HOLE IN CONNAUGHT DEBT The scale of debt at Connaught, the collapsed property services group, will be greater than previously thought after administrators found 50,000 invoices that the company had not accounted for. Management accounts had led administrators from KPMG to believe that the social housing maintenance arm of Connaught owed £46m [...]
Bad mortgages to cost banks November 5, 2010 The top US banks could face up to $31bn (£19.1bn) in losses from buying back bad mortgages, Standard & Poor’s said in a report yesterday. Large US banks are facing pressure to buy back soured home loans that they packaged into mortgage bonds and sold to investors. The six most exposed firms, including Bank of [...]
Xstrata to face Sphere rival November 5, 2010 A rival bidder has emerged for Australian iron ore prospector Sphere Minerals, which has already agreed a A$514m (£320m) takeover bid by London-listed Xstrata. Sphere’s biggest shareholder, Sin-Tang Development Pte, said yesterday it plans to reveal an alternative bid as soon as today. The group refused to support the takeover efforts of Xstrata, which currently [...]
The former City trader aiming for pop stardom November 5, 2010 THERE are plenty of stories about people who escaped the City to get into farming, painting, charity work or plough any number of non-rat race new directions. However, in taking the City worker-to-pop star route, 26-year-old Roxanne Emery is pretty much unique. And refreshingly, the former trader’s change of direction wasn’t even because she wanted [...]
Japan’s Resona in share issue November 5, 2010 Resona Holdings plans to raise about $6.2bn in the Japanese bank’s first public stock offering since it was effectively nationalised in 2003. Resona, Japan’s fourth-largest bank, will issue about 500bn yen worth of new shares.
Peacocks sale is called off November 5, 2010 The owners of Peacocks, the discount fashion retailer, have called off talks to sell the company after prospective buyers opted against stumping up the £500m price tag, according to Sky News. Bain Capital and Blackstone, the two remaining bidders for the company, have decided not to make formal offers after indicating that they were not [...]
ALSO OUT THIS WEEK November 5, 2010 FILM DUE DATE Underwhelming comedy road movie with Robert Downey Jr and Zach Gallifinakis. JACKASS 3D The latest round of dumb stunts and potty humour from Johnny Knoxville et al. MAMMOTH Emotional drama with Gael Garcia Bernal and Michelle Williams. DVD THE PACIFIC Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’s epic TV series about World War II. [...]
Santander to press on with UK IPO plans November 5, 2010 Spanish lender Banco Santander will go ahead with plans to list its British unit, which grew during the global financial crisis chiefly through acquisitions, chairman Emilio Botin said yesterday. A tentative timetable for the share sale could be during the first half of 2011, Botin said at a news conference in Sao Paulo. The largest [...]
Osborne will give Budget on 23 March November 5, 2010 The Conservative-Liberal Democrat government will present its 2011 budget to parliament on 23 March, chancellor George Osborne said yesterday, proposing changes to the way government spending is dished out. Osborne foreshadowed tighter checks on a huge part of the budget used for top-up funding by government departments which face swings in unpredictable areas such as [...]
