WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING January 24, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES WATCHDOG TO PROTECT IRRATIONAL INVESTORS Investors cannot be counted on to make rational choices so regulators need to “step into their footprints” and limit or ban the sale of potentially harmful products, the head of the UK’s new consumer protection watchdog said yesterday. In his first big interview since starting work last autumn, [...]
In defence of hedge funds: Institutional investors are giving a vote of confidence January 19, 2012 THE latest hedge fund performance figures show the average fund was down nearly 5 per cent in 2011, and have prompted some to say: “The hedge fund model is broken”. It is worth noting that global shares, according to the MSCI All-Country World Index, were down 9.4 per cent in 2011, but nobody is arguing [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING January 18, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES TWO BANKS IN DANGER AS DEADLINE APPROACHES European regulators are convinced that two of the continent’s banks will fail to produce credible plans to plug capital deficits by Friday’s deadline, exposing both to the risk of full or partial nationalisation. Officials said that it looked “almost inevitable” that a fresh injection of state [...]
Miners and banks push FTSE to highest end since October January 18, 2012 BRITAIN’S top share index nosed ahead yesterday to close above 5,700 points for the first time since the end of October 2011, as strength in heavyweight miners and banks countered falls in integrated oils. The FTSE 100 ended the day up 8.42 points, or 0.2 per cent, at 5,702.37, just below the intra-day peak of [...]
No Lolcats for a day? Now you’ve got me really angry January 18, 2012 The internet is angry. Yesterday icanhascheezburger.com threatened to go offline. And if you take away my pictures of cats yawning, so help me God I’ll cut you. It wasn’t just Lolcats, either. Reddit switched off. And something called Wikipedia (which, as a journalist, I’ve never visited). It was a dark day for the internet. Literally: [...]
FTSE slips as Eurozone downgrades sap confidence January 16, 2012 The FTSE 100 edged down in early trading as the Eurozone crisis sapped confidence with France losing its Triple A rating and Greece teetering on the brink of a disastrous default. Markets are now worried the Eurozone’s bailout fund, EFSF, might lose its Triple A rating after France, the fund’s second-largest guarantor, was stripped of [...]
Banks lead FTSE up after bond auctions boost January 13, 2012 Banks led the FTSE 100 up this morning as they were buoyed by tentative signs of recovery in the Eurozone. European shares and the single currency rose after positive comments on the region’s outlook from the European Central Bank and the success of Spain’s bond auction yesterday. Meanwhile Italy launched a €4.75bn bond auction today. [...]
Cloud gaming is here – we ask if it was worth the wait January 11, 2012 Video games have come a long way since Mario helped to win over a generation of (almost exclusively) boys in the 1980s. Titles like Modern Warfare 3 are more profitable than most blockbuster Hollywood movies. The complexity and depth of games like LA Noire or the Bioshock franchise lend a cultural weight to an industry [...]
The man gunning for Sky in the battle to be king of the movies January 9, 2012 IT’S a brave man who takes on BSkyB. The UK’s undisputed champion of subscription TV continues to go from strength to strength, seemingly impervious to the problems facing its biggest shareholder. But there is a new kid in town who wants to muscle in on the action. Netflix launched its video streaming service in the [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS January 9, 2012 ARM HOLDINGS FinnCap rates the Cambridge-based chipmaker as a “hold” with a target price of 575p, saying the company is at the heart of the mobile revolution, with its low power products ubiquitous in smartphone and tablet processors. The broker says the shares are “worth picking up on a bad day”, with plenty of upside [...]