City financier’s saucy thriller is made into film January 16, 2013 READERS of this page will remember last year that The Capitalist spotted ex-corporate financier and author Tony Drury flogging copies of his second novel The Deal in Leadenhall Market. The book tells the story of a financier falling in love with a woman who won’t go to bed with him unless he raises £2m for her [...]
A feathered and furry flock at St. Paul’s cathedral yesterday January 16, 2013 TRACTORS, combine harvesters, chicken, sheep and other furry animals took up residence outside St. Paul’s yesterday. City workers flocked to the cathedral at lunchtime, sandwiches in hand, to get a closer look at the animals, who seemed to be munching their way through a fair few Pret scraps themselves. Plough Wednesday takes place to remind [...]
Lenders report rise in number of home loans January 16, 2013 MORTGAGE loans ticked up in November, an influential group of lenders said yesterday, with a rise in the number of first-time buyers providing a welcome boost to the figures. The number of loans for house purchases grew by six per cent in the penultimate month of 2012, the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) found. Mortgages [...]
Steady inflation and positive economic data boosts US hopes January 16, 2013 AMERICAN investors were given a brief respite from the US debt ceiling row yesterday, as fresh data revealed steady inflation, high home-builder morale and a rise in industrial output. US consumer prices stayed flat in December, the Labor Department said, potentially giving the Federal Reserve scope to continue its ultra-loose monetary policies. The consumer price [...]
ONS says productivity mystery is down to zombie businesses January 16, 2013 THE PUZZLING weakness in productivity since the onset of the recession is down in part to zombie firms, the official statistics body suggested yesterday. Despite a boom in employment past pre-recession highs, GDP remains several percentage points below its peak level. This means output per worker, or productivity, has fallen This has defied usual trends, since [...]
Britain facing a struggle with Japanese style lost half-decade January 16, 2013 THE UK is well on its way to suffering a Japanese-style lost half-decade of flat or worse economic growth, according to research released yesterday. Though the service sector is back above its pre-recession high in output, catastrophic industrial and construction output mean the economy as a whole is roughly in the same place as it was four [...]
UK’s households some of the least work intensive in the EU January 16, 2013 THE UK has one of the highest rates of so-called low work intensity households out of the 27 members in the EU, data revealed yesterday. In 2011, some 11.5 per cent of people under the age of 60 lived in households where the adults were employed at only 20 per cent or less of their capacity. [...]
Fund manager calls on central banks to shock January 16, 2013 CENTRAL bankers should shock markets more with monetary policy decisions, M&G fund manager Jim Leaviss argued in a note yesterday. Central banks sometimes announce their policy too far in advance, Leaviss said, meaning they may be forced to commit to their policy even if economic circumstances change, or potentially leading to a loss of credibility. “What [...]
Purchases of new cars in EU at 17-year low January 16, 2013 DEMAND for new cars in recession-struck Europe fell to a 17-year low in 2012, according to industry figures released yesterday. Yet motorists in the UK are bucking the downward trend seen elsewhere on the continent. Passenger car registrations across the European Union plummeted by 8.2 per cent last year – the sharpest decline since 1993. [...]
Top investment bankers join up to form boutique advisory firm January 16, 2013 FORMER Morgan Stanley investment banker Simon Robey is teaming up with senior City figure Sir Simon Robertson to form a joint advisory boutique, the latest in a line of veteran dealmakers to quit a large investment bank for pastures new. Robey, whose 25-year career at Morgan Stanley saw him latterly as head of the UK [...]
