IBM’s $1.4bn move to buy software firm May 24, 2010 IBM plans to buy Sterling Commerce from AT&T for about $1.4bn (£970m) in cash, extending the technology behemoth’s portfolio of business software. The move comes amid a flurry of software acquisitions by International Business Machines, Oracle and SAP, as they look to sell a broad set of products and services to large corporations. IBM, led [...]
Campbell soups up US sales May 24, 2010 CAMPBELL Soup posted a higher-than-expected quarterly profit as a promotional spending push led to increased sales in its key US soup market after two straight quarters of declines. The world’s largest soup maker also said yesterday that it expected full-year earnings to come in at the high end of its previous forecast, keeping a cautious [...]
American house sales jump to a five month high on the back of tax credit May 24, 2010 AMERICANS rushed to benefit from a tax credit for first-time homeowners during April, pushing house sales up 7.6 per cent. The five-month high is due in part to an $8,000 (£5,540) offer of government-funded credit for new homeowners, which expired on 30 April. The increase in sales was the highest jump in a decade and [...]
China strikes conciliatory note over currency fears May 24, 2010 CHINA struck a conciliatory note in talks with the United States yesterday. It vowed to spur domestic demand and keep a guarded opening to exchange rate reform, which the Obama administration says is needed to rebalance the global economy. The US treaded softly on the subject and welcomed Beijing’s long-standing pledge to reform the yuan [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS May 24, 2010 IMPERIAL TOBACCO Nomura upgrades Imperial Tobacco to a “buy” rating from “neutral” and has a new, “conservatively realistic” price target of 2,000p, providing upside potential of 14 per cent. It said that although it has concerns over low- to medium-term underlying profit growth these are reflected in the current price. ANGLO AMERICAN UBS retains a [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS May 24, 2010 Matrix Group Matrix Group has expanded its investment banking business after appointing Paul James as chief operating officer (COO) of the investment banking arm. James moves into the role with immediate effect and joins after 20 years experience in investment banking. He was most recently COO of global banking and markets HSBC and has previously [...]
Don’t assume the sell-off is a great buying opportunity May 24, 2010 AT THE end of last week, equity markets slumped further into the red and some even entered a technical correction – that is, they are now down more than 10 per cent from their recent peaks. The S&P 500 is down 11.1 per cent from its latest high while the UK blue-chip index is off [...]
FORK IN THE ROAD FOR THE PRICE OF OIL May 24, 2010 DAVID MORRISON CFD MARKET STRATEGIST, GFT GLOBAL equities have taken a hammering over the past month. A whole host of issues which had been simmering on the back-burner have begun to boil over. The European sovereign debt crisis, concerns over the effects of tighter financial regulation and the continuing withdrawal of liquidity by the Chinese [...]
CFD ANALYST PICKS May 24, 2010 TECHNICAL STRATEGIST JOEL KRUGER My pick: Long FTSE 100 at 5,000 Expertise: Technical analysis Average time frame of trades: 5-10 days We had to wait the entire week, but our counter-trend long recommendation was finally triggered on Friday. The market dropped through our psychological barrier to trade slightly below 5,000, before bouncing into the close [...]
Tensions within the Eurozone put the single currency’s future at risk May 24, 2010 RESEARCH DIRECTOR, FOREX.COM JANE FOLEY IT SEEMS improbable that fiscal issues in a small country such as Greece could make the government of a country as large as the US worried about contagion. Yet this is exactly what has happened. This is only so, of course, because the US government is mindful of its own [...]
