LLOYD’S GETS ANOTHER LIST July 11, 2011 THE Lloyd’s building, the iconic home of the Lloyd’s insurance market, could be granted listed status by English Heritage this year. Designed by Richard Rogers, the £71m building, can be listed now as its construction began 30 years ago, in 1981. English Heritage said the application could take several months as it was “a significant [...]
HSBC sells insurance business July 11, 2011 HSBC exited from the UK car insurance market yesterday with the sale of its closed motor insurance book to US firm Syndicate Holding Corp for £68.5m. HSBC Insurance stopped writing new business in 2009. The policies will largely complete within two years but some accident claims have a longer tail, a bank spokesman said. HSBC [...]
Hiscox adds £100m to capacity July 11, 2011 Lloyd’s insurer Hiscox expects to write £100m more business in 2012 than in the past year, it said yesterday. It expects its Lloyd’s syndicate 33 to need a capacity of £1bn this year, up from £900m in 2011, as it said the market was improving, particularly for reinsurance, and it wanted space available “in the [...]
Lloyd’s pays claims 40pc faster July 11, 2011 A new pilot scheme has allowed Lloyd’s to cut the time taken to pay insurance claims to 15 days from 25. The 40 per cent fall was particularly seen in smaller claims of under £100,000, leaving more time for its staff to focus on the bigger and more complex claims. The pilot Claims Transformation Programme [...]
CKI makes a £2.4bn bid for Northumbrian July 11, 2011 NORTHUMBRIAN Water surged 5.1 per cent yesterday after it received a £2.4bn provisional offer from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing. Northumbrian will now open its books to Ka-shing’s Cheung Kong Infrastructure (CKI). The 465p a share bid would give a 21 per cent premium to Northumbrian’s share price before reports of a takeover surfaced last [...]
Nestlé spends $1bn to buy stake in Chinese candymaker July 11, 2011 NESTLÉ, the world’s largest food company, is paying a hefty $1.7bn (£1.1bn) for a 60 per cent stake in candymaker Hsu Fu Chi International to move deeper into fast-growing markets in China. Nestlé’s biggest deal in China so far will take it closer to its target of 45 per cent of sales from emerging markets [...]
House market stuck in a rut July 11, 2011 WEAK supply and demand has left the UK housing market in a “stalemate” despite a pick-up in mortgage lending, new data suggests. Demand failed to rise in June while the recent growth in new instructions to market properties ground to a halt, according to the latest survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). [...]
London’s troubled IPO market sees signs of life July 11, 2011 WHISPER it softly, but there are signs that the iciness that has characterised the London IPO market is beginning to thaw. Over the past couple of weeks, two foreign-based groups, Ophir Energy and Global Ports, have successfully raised funds in the London markets, in contrast to the many groups who have had to pull their [...]
President Obama rules out short term extension to America’s debt ceiling July 11, 2011 AMERICAN President Barack Obama will refuse to sign a temporary extension of the US debt ceiling, he said yesterday, insisting that Republicans and Democrats must come to a long-term agreement this month. “We should use this opportunity to do something meaningful on debt and deficits,” Obama said at a press conference in Washington DC. “We’re [...]
High street sales bounce back in June yet British retailers remain cautious July 11, 2011 TOTAL retail sales improved by 1.5 per cent in the year to June, according to figures released by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) today. While food sales slowed slightly, this was offset by increased non-food sales, attributed to the summer clearance sales beginning earlier this year. Like-for-like sales – which exclude changes in shop floor [...]
