EURO CRISIS BACK AS SPAIN FEELS THE HEAT July 23, 2012 Spanish 10-year yields soar above 7.5 per cent Moody’s puts Germany rating on negative outlook Short-selling bans fail to impress rattled markets THE EUROZONE crisis flared back up yesterday as Spanish and Italian government borrowing costs soared to levels not seen since the start of the year, while Germany and other safe haven nations came [...]
A cautious welcome for Kay’s stock market plan July 23, 2012 BUSINESS organisations yesterday gave a cautious welcome to a government report that recommends reducing “short-termism” in stock markets by cutting cash bonuses for executives and improving communication between shareholders and companies. In his report Professor John Kay also backs the creation of a new institutional investors’ forum that would allow disparate shareholders to work together [...]
Short-termism is bad – but so is excessive long-termism July 23, 2012 THERE are many excellent suggestions in John Kay’s review on the future of the UK equity markets. It makes sense for asset managers to be transparent about their costs, for an investors’ forum to be set up to coordinate collective action and for there to be a push to align incentives and create a culture [...]
KAY’S PROPOSALS July 23, 2012 Long-term directors’ incentives should only be provided in the form of shares to be held until after the executive has retired from the business. Mandatory quarterly reporting of company results should be ended. An investors’ forum should be established to allow collective engagement by investors in UK firms. Companies should consult large long-term investors on [...]
Loan charges for ex-bosses at Anglo Irish July 23, 2012 TWO FORMER top executives at Anglo Irish Bank were charged with 16 counts of fraud yesterday, as part of a long-running fraud investigation into the failed lender. Former finance director Willie McAteer, and former managing director Pat Whelan faced the same set of charges relating to loans given to rich clients to purchase shares in [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING July 23, 2012 Financial times Local staff hired as G4S fails G4S has been replaced as the security contractor for Olympic football matches in Newcastle after games organisers realised that the company could not provide enough staff to safeguard the venue. Farmers agree milk price deal Dairy farmers have struck a deal “in principle” with processing companies and supermarkets [...]
O’Donnell and Winters could head Barclays July 23, 2012 THE TOP two jobs at Barclays could be given to a regulatory adviser and a Whitehall insider, rather than candidates with internal experience. Former JP Morgan banker Bill Winters is the Barclays board’s favoured candidate to replace Bob Diamond as chief executive of the beleaguered bank, and ex-civil service boss Lord Gus O’Donnell is the [...]
Minister: cash in hand is wrong July 23, 2012 TREASURY minister David Gauke declared yesterday that cash in hand payments are morally wrong, during an event at a Westminster think-tank. In the speech to Policy Exchange, Gauke outlined plans to toughen up oversight of tax avoidance schemes, including measures that could see the government name and shame advisers that help their clients who aggressively reduce [...]
Virgin Money buys more loans from Northern Rock bad bank July 23, 2012 THE TAXPAYER-OWNED part of Northern Rock offloaded another half a billion pounds-worth of mortgage assets yesterday, accelerating the wind-down of the so-called bad bank. Virgin Money, which bought the “good bank” at the start of this year, paid £465m for a book of roughly 3,700 residential mortgages, of which one-third are buy-to-let loans. None of [...]
China’s energy giants snap up British assets July 23, 2012 CHINA made a grab for a large part of the North Sea’s oil and gas fields yesterday, bidding to take over Canada’s Nexen for $15.1bn (£9.7bn) and 49 per cent of the UK unit of Talisman for $1.5bn. CNOOC, China’s state-owned oil producer, has agreed to buy Nexen in a cash deal worth $27.50 per [...]
