HSBC to scale back Islamic business October 5, 2012 HSBC is to significantly scale back its global Islamic finance operations and will stop offering Shari’ah compliant products in the UK as part of a global restructuring, it said yesterday. The bank, which pioneered the first Western Islamic bond last year, said it will scrap Shari’ah loans and bank accounts for personal customers in the [...]
US unemployment falls to four-year low October 5, 2012 The US jobless rate dropped to a four-year low of 7.8 per cent in September, according to official figures. The US Labor Department said today that the unemployment rate dropped by 0.3 per cent to its lowest point since January 2009, as 114,000 new jobs were created over the month. The drop in unemployment will [...]
Wood Group confident on targets October 5, 2012 Wood Group expects to meet its full year projections, it said in an interim management statement today. The Aberdeen-based oil and gas company cited a high-performing engineering division and strong developments in Australia, Angola, the North Sea and North America. While the group expects a full-year loss of $15m to $20m (£6m to £9m) in [...]
Zynga shares plunge on disappointing results October 5, 2012 Shares in gamemaker fell 20 per cent in after-hours trading yesterday after it warned on profits. The San Francisco-based social gaming developer expects to report a net loss of between $90m and $105m (£55.6m and £64.9m) in the third quarter. Zynga said the results “primarily reflect weakness of certain games in our web ‘invest and [...]
Ofgem warns of electricity shortfall October 5, 2012 Britain risks running out of energy generating capacity in the next three to four years, according to a report by energy regulator Ofgem published today. Ofgem said the amount of spare generation capacity could fall from 14 per cent to only four per cent by 2015, largely due to tough environmental targets and the closure [...]
Airbus planes outsold by Boeing October 5, 2012 Airbus sold 437 planes in the nine months to September, half the amount of orders for rival Boeing. Boeing sold 962 planes between January and October, as it benefited from a surge in demand for new fuel-efficient model. After cancellations, Boeing outsold EADS’ owned Airbus by 879 to 832, based on the latest figures. The [...]
FTSE 100 boosted by mining shares October 5, 2012 The blue chip index opened up this morning, boosted by headline mining shares as investors adopted a ‘risk-on’ attitude. Outside of the miners, insurer CPP Group topped the leaderboard in early trading, while brewer Fuller, Smith & Turner jumped more than four per cent. Russian oil company Ruspetro soared 3.85 per cent in early deals, [...]
Telecom Plus expects higher profits for the first half October 5, 2012 British utility firm Telecom Plus said this morning it expects to post higher pre-tax profit for the first half of this year as its customer count rose. Telecom Plus, which supplies gas, electricity, fixed and mobile telecoms and broadband, said the number of customers rose 5.5 per cent to 438,146 over the half year. It [...]
Samsung posts record profits October 5, 2012 Samsung this morning posted record profits of $7.3bn (£4.5bn) in the third quarter, helped by strong sales of smart TVs and Galaxy smartphones. The profit figure, which was nearly double last year’s figure, helped to offset weaker profits from the South Korean technology firm’s chip business. Ahead of full quarterly results due by October 26, [...]
Think tank: London needs four-runway airport October 5, 2012 London needs a four-runway airport to the west of Heathrow if it wants to cement its place as Europe’s premier aviation hub, a think tank said today. A report by the Policy Exchange said if the West London site is “politically unfeasible”, a four-runway airport at Luton is the next best option. The report, written [...]
