Miners eye Colombia growth August 18, 2011 ANGLO American, Xstrata and BHP Billiton have approved a $1.3bn (£789m) expansion of the Cerrejon mine, home to one of the world’s largest coal deposits, in Colombia. The diversified miners said yesterday they would invest equal amounts in the project that will increase production and export capacity by 8m tonnes per annum (mtpa) to 40 [...]
Tax programme lures high achiever August 18, 2011 PEOPLE always assumed Jasmine Cope, a high achiever who skipped a year at the Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School in Aylesbury, would go on to university. But Cope, who turns 17 tomorrow, turned her back on higher education after the tuition fees increase left her “unable to justify” finishing her studies with so much debt, [...]
The UK is lagging behind despite growth in maths August 18, 2011 DESPITE the jump in students taking mathematics at A-Level, the UK risks falling further behind other nations unless the qualification becomes more popular, an education charity claims. “[A]s recent reports have highlighted, the UK still lags well behind its industrial competitors in terms of participation in mathematics education beyond GCSE level,” said Mathematics in Education [...]
Noble Energy inks $3.4bn deal to develop shale gas August 18, 2011 OIL and gas producer Noble Energy will pay $3.4bn (£2.06bn) to Consol Energy to form a partnership to develop Consol’s assets in the Marcellus shale. The move is S&P 500-listed Noble’s first into the Marcellus shale deposit in the eastern US, one of the largest natural gas fields ever discovered, and comes amid a natural [...]
CITY VIEWS: DO YOU THINK EXAMS ARE GETTING EASIER OR STANDARDS ARE GETTING HIGHER? August 18, 2011 MICHAEL WATTS | BERENBERG BANK “I do think that students are working harder. But I think that results are being driven by the government trying to ensure pass rates get higher year on year, which makes me quite cynical of the statistics we are seeing.” PAUL MILLER | TARDIS GROUP “I don’t think the increase [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS August 18, 2011 Mercer The HR group has appointed Michael Dempsey as head of the investment management division for EMEA and a member of the firm’s EMEA executive team and its global investment management leadership team. Dempsey most recently led Mercer’s investment management business in Ireland, where he launched the Dynamic De-Risking Solution. Dempsey replaces Tom Murphy, who [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS August 18, 2011 HENDERSON UBS rates the asset manager “neutral” and has trimmed its target price by 10p to 145p following Wedensday’s first half results figures. The broker has also cut its earnings forecast for the year by six per cent and now expects modest outflows from the group’s retail segment. UBS also sees signs that integration with [...]
Biggest one-day FTSE 100 fall in more than two years August 18, 2011 BRITAIN’S top shares dropped yesterday in their worst one-day fall since March 2009, led by banks on concern the growth outlook for global economies was slowing and worries about contagion in the Eurozone debt crisis. Stocks extended falls after August factory activity in the US Mid-Atlantic region dropped to its lowest level since March 2009, [...]
Wall St slammed by recession fears August 18, 2011 RISING fears of another recession hammered US stocks yesterday, sending major averages sharply lower in a return to the extreme fluctuations investors endured a week ago. New worries about the health of European banks set the tone before the market’s open, and a dismal report on regional US manufacturing fueled a downward spiral in which [...]
London trends: who’s moving the prime market higher? August 18, 2011 THE headlines are clear: core prime central London property – that is central London property at the very top of the market in places like Knightsbridge, Chelsea and Belgravia – is rocketing in value, keeping pace with gold as an asset class. Supply of these properties is now chronically low, adding even more upward price [...]
