Capita wins £145m congestion charge contract ahead of toll-hike January 14, 2014 Capita, which helped set up the congestion charge for London in 2003, has won back the contract to run the scheme, five years after losing it to IBM. The outsourcing group reckons the contract is worth £145m in revenues over five years – meaning it’s likely to make up just 0.9 per cent of Capita’s annual [...]
Cameron’s ‘non’ to popularity-boosting affair and why Miliband’s cost of living crisis could come unstuck January 14, 2014 It was a lively lobby briefing for journalists in Westminster this morning, with the PM’s spokesman (who just happens to be of French descent) being pressed on whether David Cameron might consider having an affair in order to boost his popularity ratings. Unsurprisingly the answer was a very diplomatic “non,” which sent tittering journalists off [...]
US retail sales thump estimates in December January 14, 2014 A nice strong beat for the US economy. Retail sales grew by 0.2 per cent in the US this December, while economists had only expected growth of 0.1 per cent. Some bad news in revisions to earlier data however. November's growth has been knocked down from 0.7 per cent to 0.4 per cent. And traditional [...]
Does Nest reveal Google’s robotic ambitions? January 14, 2014 Over the past year Google has been acquiring nearly a dozen technology hardware firms – of its 20 total acquisitions – firms that make everything from airborne wind turbines to robotic dogs. While many of these companies are working on crazy projects that could take decades, if ever, to reach the market, they all point [...]
Barclays names Shell as its top pick for 2014 January 14, 2014 Barclays has given Royal Dutch Shell’s new chief executive Ben Van Beurden the ultimate vote of confidence by declaring today that the oil major is its top pick for 2014. Low-profile internal candidate Van Beurden replaced Peter Voser at the start of the year, surprising some investors who had expected finance chief Simon Henry to [...]
One year on and Europe is still finding horsemeat where it shouldn’t be January 14, 2014 It is exactly a year since horsemeat was first discovered in processed beef product sold by a several of Britain’s leading supermarkets, throwing the spotlight on the food industry’s supply chain in UK and in Europe. Overall in the UK less than 0.3 per cent of products tested positive for horsemeat above the UK Food [...]
Government immigration cap would see debt to GDP rise to 120pc by 2062 January 14, 2014 The OBR has crunched the numbers to see what happens to the national debt at varying rates of immigration. If the UK sees net inward immigration of 140,000 per year the national debt hits 100 per cent of GDP in 50 years' time. At zero it hits 140 per cent. The reason migrants help the [...]
Energy bosses to be grilled by MPs over Christmas outages January 14, 2014 December saw hundreds of thousands of homes without power as severe weather hit networks. Now MPs want to question energy bosses over the disruption. On 21 January they'll be called before the Energy and Climate Change Committee. Committee chair Tim Yeo MP said that they "will be questioning the distribution companies responsible and asking them [...]
Mega deals have returned – but European banks are losing out to US rivals January 14, 2014 As global merger and acquisition activity springs back into life after a period of relative inertia, it's worth noting that the likely benefactors amongst bank advisers to these mega deals are likely to be increasingly American. While the likes of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch find themselves set [...]
Good news chocoholics: The sweet stuff is getting cheaper January 14, 2014 Welcome data from the statisticians if you're a fan of cocoa-based sweet things. The Office for National Statistics has reported that as food product prices fell by 0.5 per cent between November and December, the main contribution came from a drop "in the price of chocolate and food preparations containing cocoa". Product prices in that [...]
