European car sales slow in July August 2, 2010 Spanish, Italian and French car sales plummeted in July from a year ago as scrappage schemes were phased out and austerity measures kicked in, figures showed yesterday. Car sales in Spain fell 24 per cent to 82,167; French new car registrations fell 12.9 per cent to 169,804; and Italy’s new car sales were down almost [...]
E-book sellers face probe August 2, 2010 Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal is investigating deals struck by Amazon.com and Apple to offer low prices on electronic books, saying the agreements may block rivals from providing attractive pricing. Earlier this year, Amazon and Apple worked out a “most favoured nations” deal with major publishers, ensuring rival booksellers would not be able to work [...]
GEELY COMPLETES VOLVO PURCHASE August 2, 2010 CHINESE carmaker Geely has completed the purchase of Swedish rival Volvo from Ford for $1.5bn (£944m). The deal, which was agreed in March, ends the US firm’s involvement in overseas car brands. Li Shufu, Geely’s chairman (above), said former Volkswagen America chief executive Stefan Jacoby would take over as chief executive at Volvo on 19 [...]
Toxic writedowns fall at BNP Paribas August 2, 2010 BNP Paribas, France’s largest bank, was boosted by the lowest level of toxic debt writedowns for two years as it revealed a 31 per cent jump in net income yesterday. In a set of results described by one analyst as a “mixture”, BNP Paribas reported a 54 per cent year-on-year drop in provisions for bad [...]
Goldman defends trades with AIG during crisis August 2, 2010 GOLDMAN Sachs has defended its controversial trades with insurer AIG during the financial crisis. In a nine-page submission to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) investigating the root causes of the crisis, Goldman said it priced collateral on the best available market information at the time. Critics of the bank say it deliberately discounted prices [...]
Ex-bankers in new venture August 2, 2010 THREE former Morgan Stanley real estate bankers have launched a new advisory and property re-structuring firm. John Carrafiell, Sonny Kalsi and Fred Schmidt have launched GreenOak Real Estate, to take advantage of an expected surge in distressed loan disposals, along with asset firesales and mortgage-backed security (MBS) workouts in Europe, Japan and America. GreenOak has [...]
ONWARDS MEANS UPWARDS FOR MACE August 2, 2010 MACE, the private construction company building the Shard skyscraper (pictured above), posted a 30 per cent rise in profit to £19.3m yesterday. The builder of the London Eye and British Museum courtyard said the growth stemmed from expansion into UK infrastructure and projects in Vietnam, Africa and the Middle East. Turnover increased 18 per cent [...]
Xchanging set to cut costs as deal delay hits August 2, 2010 SHARES in outsourcing group Xchanging took a battering yesterday after it announced lower-than-expected revenues for the year due to delays in big contracts. The FTSE 250-listed firm’s shares fell 16.5 per cent after it said that procurement had been hit by continued client uncertainty, eventually closing down 12.5 per cent at 175p as the worst [...]
Unions plan national walkout August 2, 2010 BRITAIN is facing another winter of discontent, after unions were urged to coordinate strike action and plan a series of national walkouts. The Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union has called on public sector workers to down tools at the same time, in protest against swingeing cuts planned by the coalition government. The union, run [...]
TNT sees hurdles in sale of mail to private concern August 2, 2010 EUROPEAN parcel and letter delivery group TNT’s chief executive yesterday said he saw challenges to a private sale of its postal unit after the company said it would split its mail and express units by next year. Peter Bakker said that while it was open to all offers, private equity and trade buyers could find [...]
