Blackcurrants are not the only fruit August 18, 2010 BANK of England governor Mervyn King may be warning of the dangers of destructive inflation but the minutes of the latest Bank meeting show that these concerns are tempered by a fear of slowing down what is now officially known as a choppy recovery. Destructive inflation, as far as I understand it, is when inflation [...]
Barclays pays in trade case August 18, 2010 BARCLAYS last night struck a $298m (£192m) deal with US authorities over charges it violated trade sanctions. The shock announcement came just 24 hours after the judge who endorsed the settlement branded it a “sweetheart deal” which the government should be concerned about. The banking giant was in the dock over allegations it broke the [...]
Spain finds surprise €500m August 18, 2010 TROUBLED Spain has received an unexpected boost after it discovered it had an extra €500m (£412m) to spend on its beleaguered infrastructure. The nation, which has been forced to adopt strict austerity measures after massively overspending before the economic collapse, has raised its budget after making “internal adjustments”. It has benefitted from better than expected [...]
Rules for reverse takeovers are made easier August 18, 2010 REVERSE takeovers are likely to become more common after the UK Listing Authority (UKLA) yesterday changed the rules to make them easier. The watchdog has made the financial requirements for the process, where a company buys a larger unlisted or foreign firm, less stringent. One of the most fundamental changes is a simplification of a [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING August 18, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES EXXON ABANDONS ITS $4BN BID FOR GHANA OIL STAKE Following months of battle with Accra, ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest western oil company, has given up trying to acquire a share of Ghana’s giant Jubilee oil field from Kosmos, the American oil company. The $4bn deal was heavily opposed by Ghana’s government and its [...]
Troubled Kesa criticised for bonus payout August 18, 2010 KESA ELECTRICALS, the owner of TV and computer retailer Comet, has been criticised for handing its boss a £1m bonus for a period in which its share price and UK sales fell. Analysts described chief executive Thierry Falque-Pierrotin’s award as “sizeable” and said management was not doing enough to reassure investors that performance would pick [...]
Expect to pay £8bn for Aviva’s general arm, UBS warns RSA August 18, 2010 RSA Insurance would have to crank up its offer for Aviva’s general insurance business by nearly two thirds to win the backing of the larger company’s shareholders, a UBS analyst said yesterday. UBS put the highest valuation yet on Aviva’s casualty and property operations in the UK, Ireland and Canada, suggesting RSA would have to [...]
GM files for its historic flotation, expected to raise up to $20bn August 18, 2010 GENERAL Motors (GM) will press ahead with an historic initial public offering (IPO) that is expected to raise almost $20bn. The firm filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission last night that confirmed the long-expected flotation. Trading in GM shares is expected to start sometime between late October and the 25 November Thanksgiving holiday. [...]
Lone hawk at MPC calls for a rise in rates August 18, 2010 THE Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted 8-1 to keep monetary policy on hold in August, suppressing speculation of a three-way split among members, the minutes of this month’s meeting showed yesterday. Eight members, including newcomer Martin Weale, overruled Andrew Sentance’s third call for a 0.25 per cent rise in interest rates and [...]
German retail sales revised up August 18, 2010 GERMANS spent more in the first half of the year than had previously been estimated, according to the Federal Statistics Office. The official figures now show that retail sales rose by a real 0.9 per cent during the first six months of the year on the same period of 2009 compared to the previous estimate [...]
