Osborne misses a great opportunity November 29, 2011 AS ever, it was Lewis Carroll who put it best in Alice Through the Looking Glass: “The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today.” Even that could be too optimistic: reading between the lines of yesterday’s mini-Budget, it is clear that the UK is out of money to an even [...]
ECB injects €9.5bn of QE into Eurozone November 29, 2011 THE EUROPEAN Central Bank (ECB) accidentally performed €9.5bn (£8.1bn) of quantitative easing last week because it was unable to persuade banks to deposit enough funds with it to make up for its bond purchases. The incident is a stark signal that the Bank could be reaching the “technical limit” of its ability to buy bonds [...]
S&P slaps downgrades on 15 major global banks November 29, 2011 SOME OF the world’s biggest banks were hit with credit rating downgrades from ratings agency Standard & Poor’s yesterday after a sweeping overhaul of the criteria it uses to assess institutions’ financial strength. S&P downgraded 15 banks after reviewing the ratings of 37 major institutions. It dropped seven of the top US banks by one [...]
ITALIAN BOND YIELDS HIT EURO-ERA HIGH November 29, 2011 ITALY, under new Prime Minister Mario Monti, had to offer a record 7.89 per cent yield to sell three-year bonds yesterday, a stunning leap from the 4.93 per cent it paid in late October, and above levels at which Greece, Ireland and Portugal were forced to apply for bailouts.
Barnier moves forward with his assault on Big Four accountants November 29, 2011 THE BIG four accountancy firms will face compulsory rotation every six years and will be barred from offering non-audit services to audit clients, under proposals being brought forward today by EU markets chief Michel Barnier. But Barnier has stopped short of proposing joint auditing for all major companies after opposition from the Big Four firms [...]
Turmoil no trouble for IG as sales soar November 29, 2011 TRADERS who rushed to bet on market swings caused by turmoil in the Eurozone are set to help IG Group increase first-half revenue by nearly 25 per cent. The spread betting firm yesterday said revenue should rise 23 per cent to more than £193m, marking a swift turnaround after it issued a profit warning in [...]
Rothschild trust looking for deals amid Eurozone crisis November 29, 2011 THE INVESTMENT trust run by Lord Rothschild is set to take advantage of the firesale of Eurozone bank assets. RIT Capital Partners yesterday posted a slump of nearly 10 per cent in net asset value (NAV) but Rothschild, its chairman, said they wished to do more ventures of the like of Renshaw Bay, an asset [...]
SCHRODERS PREDICTS 2012 RECESSION November 29, 2011 The UK is likely to be dragged into a recession by the Eurozone next year, according to investment firm Schroders. At its Annual Crystal Ball event yesterday, chief investment officer Alan Brown said: “We are going to find out in the next 12 months whether the Eurozone holds up and whether the UK is going [...]
KPMG recovers $500m in MF Global assets November 29, 2011 MF GLOBAL UK administrator KPMG said it had recovered about $500m (£320m) of client assets frozen at the defunct broker, and planned to make significant returns to customers before a March 2012 deadline. “We have so far collected about a half of the approximate $1bn outstanding but it is hard to speculate on the final [...]
US consumers hopeful as confidence figures soar November 29, 2011 CONSUMER confidence in the US climbed by the most in more than eight years during November, figures showed yesterday, increasing to 56 from a revised 40.9 reading in October. The Conference Board’s index showed the biggest monthly gain since April 2003, rebounding this month from a to-and-a-half-year low, but a fall in house prices in [...]
