Thomas to miss London June 20, 2012 OLYMPICS: European triple jump silver medalist Nathan Thomas has ruled himself out of London 2012 as a consequence of a back injury suffered last month. “I have been forced to accept the painful reality that I am unable to compete a
FED TWISTS AGAIN June 20, 2012 A WORSE than expected outlook for the US economy has prompted the Federal Reserve to extend its stimulus programme known as Operation Twist to the end of the year, although it stopped short of expanding the overall size of bond purchases. Markets initially sank last night as the Fed revealed that it was not launching [...]
Greece clinches coalition deal to battle bailout terms June 20, 2012 GREEK conservative party head Antonis Samaras was yesterday sworn in as Prime Minister at the helm of a three-party coalition dedicated to keeping the debt-stricken country in the euro but demanding softer terms on its international bailout conditions. The agreement between New Democracy, the socialist party Pasok and the smaller Democratic Left comes three days [...]
Investors gain new power over bosses’ pay packets June 20, 2012 BUSINESS and investor groups yesterday welcomed plans to give shareholders binding votes on directors’ pay, which are intended to give firms’ owners a greater say in assessing business performance. Business secretary Vince Cable announced the plan, which is set to be in place by 2014, arguing “there is compelling evidence of a disconnect between pay [...]
We need a flat tax with no loopholes to reduce avoidance June 20, 2012 HYPOCRISY barely starts to describe it. Left-wing comedians – you know, the kind that love to attack the City, ridicule aspirational values, question the motives of those in business and who wear their champagne socialism on their sleeve – are not supposed to be extreme tax avoiders. So the news that Jimmy Carr, one such [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING June 20, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES Banks to get cheap money to lift UK lending The government’s new “funding for lending” programme, designed to boost credit for British business, will cut banks’ costs to as little as 1.2 per cent, according to people briefed on the scheme. The supply of such cheap money to the banks is supposed to [...]
VOTES ON TOP PAY June 20, 2012 ■ Shareholders in publicly listed UK firms will get a binding vote on directors’ pay policy every three years. ■ They will vote on the whole package, covering salaries, bonuses and exactly what determines the level of pay. ■ That includes severance packages, in an effort to end “rewards for failure” when unsuccessful bosses leave [...]
Commerzbank appeals bonus rule June 20, 2012 Commerzbank yesterday lodged papers with the UK Court of Appeal in a bid to annul a judge’s ruling that it must fork out €52m in bonuses to a group of London-based investment bankers. Pointing to Dresdner Kleinwort’s €6.5bn loss, Commerzbank significantly slashed the bonuses of 104 bankers who joined from Dresdner after the 2009 acquisition and [...]
JPMorgan sells most of whale June 20, 2012 JPMorgan Chase & Co has sold as much as 70 per cent of the controversial position that caused huge trading losses for the bank, CNBC reported yesterday. The television network said the bank had sold 65 per cent to 70 per cent of the so-called London Whale position, a hedging strategy gone so wrong that [...]
Banks snap up £5bn of cheap loans in auction June 20, 2012 THE BANK of England injected £5bn of emergency liquidity into banks yesterday in an attempt to mitigate the costs of unexpected shocks from the Eurozone. Sir Mervyn King announced last week that the Extended Collateral Term Repo (ECTR) Facility would be activated to counter “market-wide stress of an exceptional nature”. All successful bidders will pay [...]
