Dulux boss is off with stress September 18, 2012 TON Buchner, the chief executive of Dulux maker Akzo Nobel, is taking a leave of absence for several weeks due to fatigue. Buchner, who has been in post since April, will return to work in the first half of October. Chief financial officer Keith Nichols will run the Dutch firm temporarily.
Wages crushed as inflation set to rocket again September 18, 2012 HARD-PRESSED workers took another blow in August as inflation stayed persistently above wage rises for the 27th consecutive month. Economists fear inflation will jump yet again towards the end of this year and could even hit three per cent again in 2013, increasing the pressure on household budgets even further. Consumer price inflation came in [...]
Société Générale hails Eurozone labour cost rebalancing as vital September 18, 2012 LABOUR COSTS are rebalancing rapidly across the Eurozone, research from Société Générale revealed yesterday. This means the Eurozone is going some way to accomplishing the internal devaluations necessary to keep peripheral countries competitive, Société Générale says. Total hourly labour costs rose two per cent quarter on quarter in Eurozone powerhouse Germany, putting them up 2.6 [...]
US current account deficit slims down to less than half of peak September 18, 2012 THE US current account deficit narrowed again in the second quarter, preliminary figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis revealed yesterday. The combined balance on trade in goods and services came down from $133.6bn (£82.3bn) to $117.4bn in the second quarter, a fall of around 12 per cent. This big quarterly move is the latest [...]
Sales of ebooks spur publishing market growth September 18, 2012 EBOOK sales are driving the book market to growth despite falls in print revenue, with sales of the format almost trebling in the first half of the year, data showed yesterday. Figures from the Publishers Association (PA)’s Sales Monitor report showed that digital sales – ebooks, audiobook downloads and online book subscriptions – had risen [...]
Aibaba makes Yahoo buyback September 18, 2012 ■ China’s Alibaba has gone ahead with its plan to buy back half the stake Yahoo owned in the company for about $7.6bn (£4.7bn) as it moves closer to an initial public offering. Alibaba said it paid Yahoo about $6.3bn in cash and $800m in preferred shares in Alibaba Group. Separately, Yahoo said it will [...]
Microsoft hit by security breach September 18, 2012 ■ Microsoft warned yesterday that hundreds of millions of its users were vulnerable to a bug on its Internet Explorer browser. The security flaw leaves Internet Explorer users open to hackers who could install viruses on computers. The breach is the latest blow to Microsoft’s browser, which was overtaken by Google’s Chrome earlier this year. [...]
Hibu asks for loan waivers September 18, 2012 ■ Hibu, the online directory formerly known as Yell, has approached its lenders to ask for waivers on its borrowing facilities as it ploughs on with restructuring efforts. The company said it needs more time to negotiate on the terms of its financial restructuring. Otherwise, the firm said it could breach loan covenants on 30 [...]
Fundamentals much weaker than rallies suggest, claims UBS September 18, 2012 RALLIES in the sovereign credit of Asian and peripheral European countries have been driven by central bank cash, without any improvement in economic fundamentals, UBS strategists claimed in a note yesterday. They warn that Greek default, Spanish banking dysfunction, Chinese growth slowdown, and the US fiscal cliff of spending cuts and tax rises are all [...]
Barclays and Macquarie to help fund London wind farm work September 18, 2012 THE WORLD’S biggest offshore wind farm came a step closer to completion yesterday as an array of engineers and financiers were picked to fund and run the power lines linking the site to land. Blue Transmission, a consortium made up of Macquarie, a Barclays infrastructure fund, Mitsubishi and Frontier Power, have preferred bidder status to [...]
