Google offers new concessions to avoid EU antitrust penalty September 9, 2013 GOOGLE has offered further concessions aimed at ending a three-year investigation into complaints it was blocking competitors and to avert a possible $5bn fine, the EC said yesterday. The new proposal comes two months after the Commission, which is the EU’s antitrust regulator, asked the world’s most popular search engine for more measures to sooth [...]
Banks face jump in technology spending but branch costs to fall September 9, 2013 BANKS that have patched up their information technology (IT) systems too often in recent years face big increases in spending to modernise their operations for the digital age. But digital innovation should help offset the outlays by cutting the costs of new branches, which are likely to be 25 per cent smaller and have a [...]
Hargreaves Lansdown’s HMRC tax showdown September 9, 2013 FTSE 100 fund platform Hargreaves Lansdown laid down the gauntlet to tax collectors yesterday after launching a legal challenge on the taxation of fund cash back rebates. The Bristol-based firm, currently one of the country’s best performing companies, said it will challenge a discount tax introduced by HMRC on payments made to its customers. [...]
Red tape cut for micro firms September 9, 2013 MORE than a million small businesses will now be able to file substantially reduced financial reports, the government confirmed yesterday. Micro entities – those with less than ten staff and annual turnovers below £632,000 – are currently required to meet the same reporting standards as other small firms. But they will now have the option [...]
ShEx gets new exec director September 9, 2013 THE SHAREHOLDER executive (ShEx), the body responsible for managing the state’s business stakes, yesterday confirmed the appointment of former Nomura managing director Paul Norris as executive director. Norris, formerly head of Nomura’s global markets research unit, joined the outfit on 2 September with oversight for a variety of projects run by the organisation, a government [...]
Q and A: HMRC vs Hargreaves Lansdown on tax September 9, 2013 Q Discount tax? What on earth is that? A It’s a tax on the money you get back from the funds you invest in. When you put your savings into a investment fund, it normally pays you back some of your money in a rebate. There’s about 1,000 funds around which pay a rebate. But [...]
Cable starts review of board appointments September 9, 2013 BUSINESS secretary Vince Cable yesterday launched a review into how headhunters select candidates for executive positions, amid fears that women and minorities are still missing out on top jobs. Charlotte Sweeney, a former head of diversity at investment bank Nomura, has been appointed to investigate whether the executive search industry is sticking to the voluntary [...]
TSB boss has museum epiphany September 9, 2013 THE GHOST of retail bankers past inspired the decision to resurrect the TSB brand name out of the huge variety of old high street brands which have been subsumed into the Lloyds Banking Group, its new boss revealed yesterday. Reverend Henry Duncan founded the Trustee Savings Bank in 1810 in Ruthwell, and had such an [...]
Osborne reveals hair-raising cuts September 9, 2013 AMID all of George Osborne’s talk yesterday of “turning a corner” and “sustainable recovery”, the chancellor’s audience seized on the word “cut” – specifically Osborne’s own dodgy chop. So while Osborne earnestly delivered his keynote speech, Twitter users ignored economics to pose a more pressing question: “What’s going on with George Osborne’s hair?” The formerly [...]
Global pension values soar to nudge same levels as US GDP September 9, 2013 THE VALUE of stocks, bonds and property held by the world’s 300 biggest pension funds soared in value last year to reach a record $14 trillion, closing in on the same value as America’s annual GDP (around $15.7 trillion), data shows. Pension fund assets grew by $1.3 trillion in 2012, a 9.8 per cent rise [...]
