THE LONDON REPORT June 22, 2009 THE FTSE 100 ended 2.6 per cent, or 111.88 points, lower at 4,234.05 yesterday as falling commodity prices pressured miners and oil majors. Bucking the trend, Anglo American was the biggest blue chip gainer, rising 4.6 per cent, after rival Xstrata said it wanted talks about a proposed merger of equals. Xstrata shed 6.7 per [...]
WITCHING WEEK MEANS VOLATILITY June 22, 2009 MARTIN SLANEYHEAD OF DERIVATIVES, GFT LAST Friday saw the quarterly event that is known in the markets as “quadruple witching”. It’s when we have the combined expiry of US index futures, index options, stock futures and stock options, all on the same day. The haunting moniker that is attached to this infamous occurrence suggests a [...]
History tells us that indices have further upside to come June 22, 2009 FOLLOWING a three-month rally in global equities, stock market indices have eased off as investors face the prospect of a slow and protracted recovery and question whether a correction – of some magnitude, at least – is now overdue. Given the sharp rise in equity prices since March, many investors are now wondering what is [...]
How the Baker Street brigade are taking on the Big Four accountants June 22, 2009 YOU get the impression when you meet him that Simon Michaels, the managing partner of BDO Stoy Hayward, wants a lot of things – and one of the first is a larger slice of the UK accounting pie. Michaels, at 42 the youngest person to lead the UK’s sixth-largest professional services business, was elected to [...]
Gazprom Neft reinstates the chief exec it replaced less than a week ago June 22, 2009 RUSSIAN oil and gas giant Gazprom yesterday did a U-turn over its plans for Aim-listed Sibir Energy, re-appointing Stuard Detmer as chief executive of the firm just days after replacing him with a candidate from its own legal team. Sibir said in a statement it had re-appointed Detmer at the request of the group’s oil [...]
NO SLOANE RANGERS AT LIBERTY June 22, 2009 LIBERTY of London, the iconic department store group, is to close its Sloane Street standalone store in Knightsbridge just 12 months after it opened, having received a “fabulous” offer for the lease. Liberty said an unnamed European fashion brand had offered it a £700,000 cash premium to take over the site.
Siemens sees green boost to order book June 22, 2009 GERMAN industrial conglomerate Siemens said it expects to win new orders of around €15bn (£12.7bn), mostly green projects, from economic stimulus programmes worldwide in the next three business years. Of that figure, €6bn would come from green technology contracts, “significantly” increasing revenues from the company’s environmental portfolio in the future. Nonetheless, Siemens still expected business [...]
Over three quarters of investors trust politicians more than financial advisers June 22, 2009 OVER three quarters of investors believe financial intermediaries, such as client-facing advisers, are less trustworthy than politicians, according to a survey. Intermediaries are perceived as being untrustworthy and lacking knowledge, perhaps as a result of poor education by investment managers on complex products and risk management practices, according to the KPMG/Datamonitor study. “It is little [...]
I believe we can become a country of entrepreneurs June 22, 2009 ONE of the biggest myths – and it is the size of the Wizard of Oz – is that there is job security. There is none, so get over it. It’s not that employers are bad, but just that no one can honestly promise job security in an ever globalising world, or in one where [...]
CBI: UK faces a brain drain June 22, 2009 OVER a quarter of organisations plan to transfer work overseas because of the UK’s downturn, according to a survey out today by the CBI and recruitment expert Harvey Nash. Fears of a “brain drain” are rising as over half of bosses in the science, hi-tech and IT sectors reported they have either moved jobs overseas [...]
