NEWS | IN BRIEF December 14, 2009 Galleon boss asks for lower bail Lawyers for Raj Rajaratnam, the Galleon hedge-fund founder accused in a coast-to-coast insider trading probe, yesterday asked a New York judge to reduce his bail from $100m to $20m, taking aim at the government’s reliance on a cooperating witness. His lawyers took issue with the government’s reliance for proving [...]
Glaxo thought to have paid $1bn on lawsuits over Paxil December 14, 2009 DRUGMAKER GlaxoSmithKline is understood to have paid out around $1bn (£698m) to resolve lawsuits over the antidepressant Paxil after it introduced the drug in 1993. Around $390m is thought to have been paid out on cases related to suicides and attempted suicides, $200m to settle addiction claims and birth defects resulting from the drug, and [...]
Narrowing Conservative lead fuels talk of earlier election December 14, 2009 THE CONSERVATIVES’ lead over Labour has narrowed to single figures, a Guardian/ICM poll showed yesterday, upping the pressure on Gordon Brown to call an early election. This is the first ICM poll since the end of 2008 that gives the Tories less than a double-digit lead, raising hope in the Labour camp that they can [...]
Gartmore in disappointing share debut December 14, 2009 GARTMORE’s shares made a disappointing debut yesterday, falling by as much as 10p in morning trading after the firm was forced to cut the value of its initial public offering. The stock closed 1.4 per cent down at 217p in its first day of listing, giving Gartmore a market capitalisation of £666.8m. The fund manager [...]
Treasury Select Committee set to grill chancellor over deficit December 14, 2009 GOVERNMENT debt and the tax on bankers’ bonuses will be the hot topics when Alistair Darling is grilled by the Treasury Select Committee tomorrow. The chancellor will be questioned over his pre-Budget Report, which includes a 50 per cent one-off super tax rate on bankers’ bonuses. Darling, who pledged to halve public borrowing by 2014, [...]
Sales jump at Whitbread December 14, 2009 PUB and hotel group Whitbread yesterday posted higher sales thanks to price-cutting, but forecast a “long slow haul” out of the slump. The owner of Costa Coffee, Beefeater and Brewer’s Fayre pub restaurants and Premier Inn budget hotels boosted like-for-like sales 0.3 per cent in the third quarter to November 26, with total sales up 6.7 [...]
NEW VIRGIN MEDIA EXEC December 14, 2009 VIRGIN Media yesterday appointed Andrew Barron as its new chief operating officer. He will take up the position on 4 January. Barron has been with Virgin Media since March 2008, leading its strategy development and overseeing a comprehensive reorganisation of the group’s customer operations and network teams.
Property prices increasing as rising demand outstrips supply December 14, 2009 HUGE demand for housing is outstripping any modest rise in available property, with prices continuing to rise in the UK’s weak economic climate, a housing survey said yesterday. London and the South East are experiencing rising enquiries from new buyers, said the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors’ (RICS) November housing survey, with 50 to 60 [...]
NEWS | IN BRIEF December 14, 2009 London Array in £2bn cash boost Germany’s E.ON, Denmark’s state-owned group DONG Energy and Masdar said yesterday they had signed contracts worth nearly €2bn (£1.3bn) for work on London Array’s offshore wind project. Masdar is an Abu Dhabi green energy investment firm. The companies said work for first phase of the project would start early [...]
Greek prime minister details radical plan to stop country drowning in debt December 14, 2009 THE GREEK Prime Minister George Papandreou yesterday said the country was in danger of drowning in debt and pledged to take radical action to tackle its fiscal situation. “We need to move immediately to a new social deal,” Papandreou said in an economic policy speech aiming to reassure markets and EU partners. “We must change or [...]
