Englefield Capital sees buyout November 9, 2009 C&A retail chain owners, the Brenninkmeijer family, have offered to buy out investors in the private equity group Englefield Capital, who include Lord Myners and Rolls-Royce chief executive Sir John Rose. The move comes as the family decided to acquire Englefield capital, the group which owns the fund, from Dominic Shorthouse, who founded it and [...]
Report says UK rules took Citi to brink November 9, 2009 A REPORT into the US bank bailouts has raised questions about whether the Financial Services Authority (FSA) pushed Citigroup towards the brink in November 2008 in a bid to protect UK interests from another Lehman Brothers-type collapse. A footnote to a report by the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) claims that the FSA ratcheted up liquidity [...]
FSAboss Hector Sants threatens jail sentences for rule-breaking City firms November 9, 2009 HECTOR SANTS, chief executive of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), yesterday threatened financial firms that flout the regulator’s rules with a jail sentence, as he seeks to prove the watchdog’s toughness. He said that if “firms do not adjust their behaviours…people will go to jail”. And Sants blamed the City’s culture for the downturn, saying [...]
Bmi in talks to sell off its Heathrow slots to cut debts November 9, 2009 Loss-making carrier Bmi is in advanced negotiations to sell its prized Heathrow take-off and landing slots to plug debts of £190m. A spokesman for the airline said: “Negotiations are significantly advanced with several airline groups.” Bmi is the second largest holder of slots at Europe’s busiest airport, behind British Airways, with 11.5 per cent of [...]
Brokers could go to EU over bank bullying November 9, 2009 LAWYERS yesterday advised the City’s independent brokers to turn to EU competition chief Neelie Kroes if calls for the government to prevent bailed-out banks from forcing debt-laden companies to use their investment banking services fall on deaf ears. The news emerged after the heads of three leading independent stockbrokers – Panmure Gordon chief executive Tim [...]
Murdoch in war over ‘theft’ of content November 9, 2009 MEDIA tycoon Rupert Murdoch threw down the gauntlet to Google yesterday, declaring that News Corporation-owned websites such as The Times and The Sun would soon block the search engine. Murdoch accused Google and Microsoft of “stealing” content from his newspapers’ online portals and said he was planning to pull their pages from search engines’ indices. [...]
LSE slashes UKtrading fees November 9, 2009 The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is set to introduce a new fee structure for its UK order books as it ups the ante in an increasingly aggressively-priced market. From 1 December, sellers of stocks will be hit by a flat charge of 10p per executed order, rather than the multiple 10p charges they currently pay [...]
Google snaps up mobile ad firm for $750m November 9, 2009 GOOGLE is snapping up mobile advertising company AdMob for $750m (£448m) in a bid to make more cash from mobile phone handsets. The all-stock deal gives Google, whose Android software is increasingly used to power smartphones such as the Motorola Droid, an important element to monetise mobile internet traffic. Privately held AdMob makes technology that [...]
House prices still rising but sellers return November 9, 2009 SELLERS are slowly returning to the property market but confidence is underpinning further house price rises, according to a survey of estate agents published today. The latest monthly survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) showed that the net balance of surveyors reporting rising prices over the past three months surged to 34 [...]
Strong retail sales growth but 2010 outlook uncertain November 9, 2009 RETAIL sales enjoyed their strongest October growth for seven years with retail sales values rising 3.8 per cent on a like-for-like basis, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC). But the BRC warned that last month’s strong performance was compared to October 2008, when sales fell 2.2 per cent due to turmoil in the financial [...]
