Bharti will pay Zain $10bn February 16, 2010 Bharti Airtel will finance its $10.7bn (£6.78bn) bid for Kuwaiti telecom firm Zain’s African assets with foreign currency loans. India’s top mobile operator is believed to be in talks with Standard Chartered, Barclays, State Bank of India, Goldman Sachs and Nomura to secure funding. State Bank of India had already agreed to provide $2bn in [...]
Shamed Powell eyeing Wales return February 16, 2010 WALES flanker Andy Powell has vowed to win back his place after being dropped from the Six Nations squad for drink-driving a golf buggy. The Cardiff Blues star’s international future is in doubt following his arrest early at a motorway service station on Sunday, hours after beating Scotland. Head coach Warren Gatland ditched Powell on [...]
Public turns against Kraft over Cadbury deal February 16, 2010 Peter Mandelson has expressed his “disappointment” at the manner of Kraft’s take-over of Cadbury, and the public, as measured by BrandIndex, seems to agree. Graph one shows what has happened to perceptions of the Kraft and Cadbury brands – measured as the proportion that are positive out of all those with a view, here with [...]
SPORT | IN BRIEF February 16, 2010 India take control in Kolkata CRICKET: VVS Laxman (143no) and Mahendra Dhoni (132no) put on an unbeaten stand of 259 to give India overwhelming control of the second Test against South Africa in Kolkata. The pair helped India to 643-6 – 347 runs ahead of the Proteas, who were 6-0 in reply before bad light stopped [...]
Strong Barclays results help FTSE to chalk up solid gains February 16, 2010 BRITAIN’S top shares closed sharply higher yesterday as Barclays led a banking sector rally after its 2009 forecast-beating results, and oils and miners were buoyed by firmer commodity prices. The FTSE 100 ended up 76.59 points, or 1.5 per cent, at 5,244.06, extending gains into a second consecutive session after closing 0.5 per cent higher [...]
DIAMOND TAKES HARD LINE ON BONUS ROW February 16, 2010 AS AN investment banking doyen continually under the cosh these days with regard to bonus payments, it must be tough to keep a calm and unruffled façade at all times. Bob Diamond, the president of Barclays and head of its money-spinning investment bank Barclays Capital – yesterday kept mostly schtum at the group’s annual results [...]
US stocks boosted by Merck earnings February 16, 2010 US stocks posted their biggest daily percentage gain in three months yesterday after strong revenue from drugmaker Merck and regional manufacturing data instilled confidence in the economic outlook. Resource related shares were among the strongest gainers as a weaker US dollar sparked buying in oil and other commodities. The CRB commodities index marked its largest [...]
Technical signs point to dollar domination over the euro February 16, 2010 THE latest revelation in the Greek debt saga is that investment banks on Wall Street helped Greece and other southern European economies to move some of their debt off of their balance sheets through the use of securitisation and swaps over the past 15 years. This allowed them to reduce their official budget deficit figures [...]
RISK TRADE IS HEADING DOWN UNDER February 16, 2010 TURN on financial television these days and you see nothing but a procession of analysts offering their eulogies for the Eurozone. In fact, the worries about the fragmentation of the EU have become so uniform and the chorus of euro bears has become so loud that the euro may be due a bounce as short-term [...]
Play the Asian growth story using the baht February 16, 2010 LAST week the Vietnamese authorities devalued the dong by 3.4 per cent against the US dollar, the second adjustment to the currency in three months. But, its Asian neighbours are not going to follow its lead, and some currencies could actually appreciate in the coming months. The Bank of Thailand specifically ruled out a devaluation, [...]
