Mazda recalls 320,000 US cars August 18, 2010 Japan’s Mazda is recalling nearly 320,000 vehicles in North America over a potentially deadly malfunction in their power steering, US authorities said yesterday. The recall of its popular Mazda 3 and Mazda 5 models was issued for vehicles manufactured between 2 April 2007 and 30 November 2008, affecting a total of 319,714 cars in the [...]
Get ready for the gaming revolution August 18, 2010 YOUR City A.M. gadgets correspondent had a sneak preview of Xbox’s brand new Kinect sensor last week. The sensor, which will be on sale in November in time for Christmas, is an accessory to the new Xbox 360 that lets you play games just by moving your body – without a controller. As its makers [...]
Social Network advertising to top $3bn August 18, 2010 Advertising on social networking sites will reach $3.3bn this year, according to research by eMarketer, an online marketing research firm. This means that advertising revenues are up 31 per cent on last year’s $2.53bn, and eMarketer predicts a similar increase of 29 per cent to $4.26bn in 2011. Moreover, Facebook will increase its share of [...]
iPad nano in the works August 18, 2010 Online communities are buzzing with the news that Apple will be bringing out a new iPad by the end of the year. According to the Chinese paper Economic Daily News, which correctly predicted the specifications of the initial iPad, Tawainese companies have won contracts to produce a slimmed down iPad by the end of the [...]
It’s time to reject the Van Gogh fallacy August 18, 2010 HOW far should your boss mess with your mind? Or to put it another way, is your mental health your employer’s business? First up, let’s have some numbers. Estimates of how many of the British workforce suffer mental health problems a year vary from one in three to one in six – probably it depends [...]
Swiss Life’s German unit comes good August 18, 2010 SWISS Life’s profits nearly doubled in the first half of the year on the back of a strong performance by German subsidiary AWD, allaying fears the insurer could be forced into an embarrassing writedown of AWD’s value. Switzerland’s biggest life insurer also said it was on track to achieve key margin targets for 2012 after [...]
Westfield sees sales boost at its London mall August 18, 2010 MALL owner Westfield Group yesterday said sales at its London mall were up 17 per cent in the first half of the year compared with the same period last year. The mall, at Shepherd’s Bush, is on track to hit its target of £800m in takings this year after being boosted by tourist numbers, the [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS August 18, 2010 SRL Global Alex Lowe, the former chief executive of Man Global Strategies (MGS), has joined the asset management technology firm as its new managing director. Lowe worked at MGS, part of Man Group, for six years – three years of which were at the helm of the company. SRL was initially established as a joint [...]
Don’t be taken for a fool by a gold guarantee August 18, 2010 INVESTORS with money in physical gold exchange-traded products (ETP) might have had a scare this week as gold-backed ETPs came under heavy fire in a paper by Hinde Capital, a hedge fund. The hedge fund compared precious metal exchange-traded funds (ETF) to the collateralised debt obligations (CDO) at the heart of the financial crisis and [...]
Cut your exposure to cyclical stocks August 18, 2010 IT IS a rare thing that Americans look at Europe with envy. But in recent weeks, more than a few policymakers stateside have been turning a rather violent shade of green. Over the course of the summer, US economic data has been weakening, while Europe is seeing something of a revival as worries about stress [...]