Samsung will target rivals in M&A spree October 31, 2011 SAMSUNG chief executive Choi Gee-sung yesterday fired a warning shot to rivals General Electric and Philips, saying he will he will aggressively target acquisitions in their sectors to compensate for his flagging chip business. He said he will target growth industries including solar cells, LEDs, biopharmaceuticals and medical equipment to complement his firm’s booming smartphone [...]
RBC Capital Markets and City’s shifting sands October 31, 2011 OCCASIONALLY the move of a key employee from one investment house to another inadvertently sums up the varying fortunes of the two groups involved in the transfer. And so it is with James Eves, who has quit UBS after 11 years to join RBC Capital Markets in its pan-European financials team. Eves leaves UBS shortly [...]
Financial education to get debate October 31, 2011 AN ONLINE petition to make financial education compulsory in schools could be one of the first to trigger a debate in parliament, after it attracted more than 100,000 signatories. The petition, “Make financial education a compulsory part of the school curriculum”, is due to run until February but yesterday passed the 100,000 threshold needed to [...]
Panasonic is braced for a £3.4bn loss as it takes a hit from restructuring October 31, 2011 PANASONIC is braced for a £3.4bn quarterly loss, its worst in a decade, as it struggles against the soaring yen and weak demand for flatscreen TVs. The loss, which compares to a £588m profit a year earlier, includes costs associated with a large-scale restructuring that will see it shed 17,000 jobs by 2013. Panasonic, which [...]
Netflix and Amazon raise competition in online TV October 31, 2011 NETFLIX and Amazon stepped up their rivalry in the video streaming market yesterday as they both unveiled deals with Disney. Netflix, which last week announced plans to expand into the UK, said it extended its licence agreement with ABC, a division of Disney, to continue to stream TV shows over the Internet. Amazon announced a [...]
Qantas starts flights after union ruling October 31, 2011 QANTAS Airways planes returned to the skies yesterday morning, after the Australian firm grounded its entire global fleet over the weekend to force the government to intervene in the nation’s worst labour dispute in a decade. Shares in the firm jumped 4.3 per cent yesterday after a labour tribunal, at the government’s request, ordered Qantas [...]
Honda withdraws its earnings forecast after double disaster October 31, 2011 HONDA withdrew its annual earnings guidance in an unusual move yesterday due to uncertainty surrounding currency markets and floods in Thailand just as the manufacturer was starting to recover from the March earthquake and tsunami. Among Japanese automakers, Honda has been hit the hardest by both disasters this year, recovering slowly from the supply disruption [...]
TNK-BP inks $1bn Brazil deal October 31, 2011 BRAZILIAN oil start-up HRT said yesterday it signed a $1bn (£619.4m) agreement with BP’s Anglo-Russian oil joint venture TNK-BP for the sale of a stake in oil fields in the Amazon. HRT said it would receive the funds over two years for the sale of a 45 per cent stake in 21 exploratory blocks located [...]
Clegg announces winners of regional growth funds October 31, 2011 DEPUTY Prime Minister Nick Clegg yesterday announced the latest projects that will get funding from the government’s regional growth fund, identifying 119 programmes across the UK that will receive some of the £950m available. Clegg said that the funds would create or safeguard more than 200,000 jobs across the UK, either through direct job creation [...]
Labour drops support for third runway at Heathrow October 31, 2011 THE LABOUR Party has dropped its support for a third runway at Heathrow Airport, all but sounding the death knell for the controversial expansion. Shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle said “the local environmental impact means that this is off the agenda” during a conference in London. The coalition government dropped Labour’s plans to expand the [...]
