Mulberry reports plum profits and rising sales June 17, 2010 LUXURY fashion firm Mulberry Group shrugged off economic gloom yesterday, saying it expected further sales growth ahead after a strong set of full-year results, boosted by growing demand in an effervescent Asian market. The company, famed for its leather handbags, said retail sales in the first ten weeks of the current year were up 36 [...]
Kerviel was a zombie, court hears June 17, 2010 Ex-Societe Generale trader Jerome Kerviel was an overworked “zombie” trader whose risky bets were symptomatic of the bank’s faulty control system, two French academics said at his trial yesterday. Kerviel, blamed by SocGen for a €4.9bn (£4bn) trading loss in 2008, never took holidays and worked long hours, an industry problem according to Jean-Hubert Blanchet, [...]
WS Atkins profits fall as public sector work put at risk and staff numbers cut June 17, 2010 CONSTRUCTION and engineering firm WS Atkins saw its profits fall by six per cent last year, as a slowdown in revenues and mounting pension debts outweighed its recent cost cutting drive. The company, which helps design big building projects such as London’s 2012 Olympic site, said pre-tax profit fell to £96.5m in the last financial [...]
Sky Sports axed from Freeview June 17, 2010 SKY Sports News, the increasingly popular sports service, is being taken off the Freeview platform and being made available only to pay television customers. Sky has decided to use the popularity of Sky Sports News to further drive its pay television subscribers and expects to use some of the extra revenues it might attract to [...]
AOL sells Bebo to Criterion June 17, 2010 INTERNET giant AOL announced yesterday it will sell its Bebo social network site to private investment firm Criterion Capital Partners for an undisclosed sum, as it tries to restructure its business and deal with declining revenue. AOL has been trying to streamline operations since being spun off from Time Warner last year. It has struggled [...]
OSBORNE: BANK IS KING OF CITY June 16, 2010 GEORGE Osborne unveiled sweeping changes to the way the City is regulated last night, scrapping the Financial Services Authority and giving a beefed-up Bank of England huge powers. Bank governor Mervyn King is set to become one of most influential central bankers in the world under the shake-up, with responsibility for maintaining the overall stability [...]
OECD states losing power June 16, 2010 THIS is likely to be the last year in which developed countries account for more than half of global output, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) annual Perspectives on Global Development report, published yesterday. The Paris-based organisation, which represents 31 developed countries, said that its members would account for 51 per [...]
Why Mervyn King is the real winner June 16, 2010 SO there you are. The Bank of England is now in charge; the FSA is being disbanded and its name junked; and its staff are being reallocated to the Bank and other new agencies (and many will physically be moving back to the Square Mile from Canary Wharf). Hector Sants, the FSA’s chief executive, will [...]
Burren fund raises $500m June 16, 2010 GIBRALTAR, the low-tax British territory, has staged a coup by attracting the launch of a $500m (£340m) hedge fund run by ex-BNP Paribas event-driven specialist Andrew McGrath. In a sign of the growing preference for low-tax jurisdictions among alternative investment managers, McGrath will domicile the Burren Global Arbitrage Fund in the former colony rather than [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING June 16, 2010 CHÁVEZ ATTACKS ECONOMIC CRITICS Hugo Chávez has strongly defended his economic record as president of Venezuela after a turbulent year in which the country has been rocked by recession and 30 per cent inflation. Chávez used an interview to assail his critics in the US and Europe, saying the performance of the Venezuelan economy contrasted favourably [...]
