Two thirds against shares for rights October 11, 2012 Almost two thirds of people in Britain think the government’s proposed employee-owner scheme is a bad idea, according to the results of a YouGov poll released yesterday. The scheme would allow employees to choose to receive £2,000 to £50,000 worth of shares in the company, in exchange for waiving employment rights. Support was split on [...]
DS Smith raises savings forecast October 11, 2012 DS Smith told investors yesterday that it expects to save more than expected from its acquisition of SCA Packaging, 100 days after it bought the Swedish firm. The packaging firm expects cost synergies of €100m (£80.5m) per year over the next three years of ownership – higher than the €75m per annum it predicted just after [...]
Arm loses non-exec to Samsung October 11, 2012 Cambridge-based chipmaker Arm Holdings said yesterday one of its non-executive directors is leaving the firm at the end of the year to focus on an executive role at electronics giant Samsung. Young Sohn, a veteran of Silicon Valley and the former chief executive of US semiconductor group Inphi, has sat on Arm’s board since 2007. [...]
Olympics puts off visitors but boosts income October 11, 2012 VISITS to the UK slipped in August, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirmed yesterday, although tourists spent considerably more than usual. Overseas residents made 3m visits to the UK in August, the data showed, five per cent down on the same month last year. However, even on the reduced number of visits earnings grew some nine per cent, [...]
New US jobless claims hit lowest weekly level in over four years October 11, 2012 NEW US unemployment claims plummeted to a four and a half year low last week, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed yesterday. Seasonally-adjusted new claims dropped 30,000 in just a week, from 369,000 to 339,000 – putting them 63,000 lower than a year ago. The fall on the headline number came from a much smaller [...]
Housing market gloom returns as transactions and prices drop October 11, 2012 THE HOUSING market stalled in September, with slipping prices and collapsing numbers of sales, data revealed today. Transactions dived 24 per cent into September, according to statistics from LSL Property Services, while the average house price edged down 0.1 per cent to £225,374. “A combination of dipping house prices and falling sales numbers point to [...]
Consumers in Japan reveal August gloom October 11, 2012 CONSUMER confidence dropped in September, data from Japan’s Cabinet Office revealed yesterday. Seasonally-adjusted consumer confidence drifted down from 40.5 in August to 40.1 in September, driven by a fall from 38.7 to 37.7 in the employment sub-index. Separate data released yesterday by the Cabinet Office also revealed a 12.6 per cent monthly crash in machinery orders [...]
Surveyors say commercial rents will slip further in third quarter October 11, 2012 A LACK of demand in commercial property will bring rents further down, according to survey data released by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) today. Eleven percentage points more of those surveyed expected rents to fall over the next quarter, than thought rents would rise – but this was the most optimistic result since the second quarter last [...]
Esurv says Funding for Lending is not yet boosting mortgages October 11, 2012 MORTGAGE lending dived in September, data from Esurv showed today, implying the Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) has failed to boost loans so far. Home loans slumped seven per cent in September, the surveyor said, to just 47,603, the third worst September since records began 19 years ago. As well as slipping in number, loans [...]
City Moves | Who’s switching Jobs October 11, 2012 Reech AiM Group The international asset management group has appointed Daniel Betts as client services director. He joins Reech from Aviva Investors, where he was most recently client relationship manager. He will oversee all client service functions and will report directly to the chief executive officer Christophe Reech. Scottish Widows Investment Partnership Neil Tong has [...]
