MANCHESTER UNITED LAUNCHES US LISTING July 30, 2012 MANCHESTER United has brushed off market concerns by kicking off a $383m (£243.8m) initial public offering in the United States last night. Just a week after reports said the football club had put the brakes on its float due to lukewarm investor interest, Manchester United said in a filing it hopes to sell 16.67m Class [...]
Banks could face criminal charges over Libor fixing July 30, 2012 CRIMINAL charges can be brought against those responsible for manipulating interbank lending rates, the UK’s fraud squad confirmed yesterday, paving the way for prosecutions of individual bankers over the Libor-rigging scandal. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said that as part of an ongoing investigation into the scandal, it had now concluded that “existing criminal offences [...]
Workers should not be spending 650 hours a year on email July 30, 2012 IT seems that we finally have an answer to why productivity is falling in Britain – and no, it has nothing to do with the fact that so many of us are spending so much time watching the Olympics. The problem is much more prosaic and far more devastating: we are spending so much time [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING July 30, 2012 FIANANCIAL TIMES Blackout in India hits millions A protracted blackout disrupted the lives of an estimated 300m people across northern India yesterday, as the aspiring superpower’s fragile infrastructure added to the woes of a government already struggling to manage a slowing economy, persistent inflation and the failure of monsoon rains. Punk band denies Putin charges [...]
What will the Libor review entail? July 30, 2012 Q Why is the government in such a hurry to review the Libor rate? A The Treasury admits four weeks is a “challenging” timeframe. But it wants to feed the review’s conclusions into legislation that is currently before parliament. Q Who is leading the review and what format will it take? A Martin Wheatley, managing [...]
Credit Suisse finds bond buyers July 30, 2012 Credit Suisse said yesterday that major shareholders bought 64m of contingent convertible bonds not taken up by shareholders in its recent capital-raising. The Swiss bank’s shareholders soaked up SFr1.833bn (£1.19bn) of the instruments, which corresponds to a take-up rate of 96.6 per cent. The securities were backed by existing major investors such as Qatar and [...]
Private equity funds hit record July 30, 2012 Private equity firms managed over $3 trillion of funds for the first time at the end of last year, according to research released by Preqin yesterday. This reflects a nine per cent rise in assets by December compared to a year earlier, and comes after the bumper period in 2004-2007 when mega buyout funds drove [...]
Cheap money aids mortgage deals July 30, 2012 NatWest launches its first ever 2.95 per cent five year fixed rate mortgage today, after HSBC and Santander offered similar deals. But the offer is only for mortgages with loan to value ratios of 60 per cent or below, and comes with a £2,495 arrangement fee. Cheap money is finding its way into the mortgage [...]
HSBC penalty costs may rise to over $2bn July 30, 2012 EMBATTLED bank HSBC apologised for its failure to control money laundering yesterday as it admitted that a $2bn (£1.3bn) provision set aside to pay for a string of regulatory fiascos could shoot up in future. The bank, criticised by the US Senate two weeks ago for lax controls on payments between Mexico and the US, [...]
Forget the scandals for a moment July 30, 2012 LOOK beyond the huge numbers that HSBC has said it is putting aside for fines, and you might just find something that looks like a banking success story. While the world’s attention has understandably been distracted by Libor, PPI and tax accusations, Stuart Gulliver has been getting his house in order. This is most evident [...]
