City Moves for 26 October 2015 | Who’s switching jobs October 25, 2015 KPMG Catherine Grum has been appointed head of the professional services firm’s family office. She joins from Salamanca Group, where she was head of the private office. Grum has also previously worked as head of wealth advisory, for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, at Barclays Wealth & Investment Management, and for the private client [...]
Banks come to fore as sector to report results – London Report October 25, 2015 BANKING results season is upon us, with three of the big four reporting this week. And on the economic front, third-quarter GDP figures are expected to show that the economy is slowing down due to weaker construction and manufacturing output. Corporates Royal Dutch Shell and BG Group also report in with updates, as does sector [...]
Is Barclays chairman John McFarlane right to say that bonuses encourage people to cut corners? October 25, 2015 Alex Edmans, professor of finance at London Business School, says Yes. High pay is indeed justified if an executive has generated long-term value. However, bonuses are typically paid according to short-term performance. They can encourage executives to “cut corners” by ignoring the long-run consequences of their actions, and focus narrowly on their impact on short-term [...]
Barclays suffers”technical issues” as some customers are unable to access cash October 25, 2015 Barclays has suffered technical problems which have prevented customers from accessing their accounts. The bank told customers on Twitter that it was experiencing issues with some of its services on Saturday morning, but still had "high volumes of customers" calling on Sunday morning. We’re currently still seeing high volumes of customers calling us this morning, please [...]
At the close: S&P 500 recovers from early year losses on tech giants’ results while FTSE 100 touches two month high October 23, 2015 The People's Bank of China may have cut interest rates for the sixth time since November on Friday, but even without its actions the S&P 500 would have made gains after Google, Amazon and Microsoft's share prices soared. As the markets opened in the US, shares in the three companies went crazy, with Amazon's stock opening nine per cent [...]
Pearson’s share price is falling for the third day in a row and showing no signs of letting up October 23, 2015 Pearson's share price is trading down for the third consecutive day, and not showing any signs of reversing. In late morning trading the FTSE 100-listed publisher's share price was down 4.4 per cent at 908.6p, having closed 4.9 per cent down yesterday. On Wednesday Pearson's share price fell 15.95 per cent, after it issued a profit warning, saying conditions in its markets [...]
Fashion and Finance London: Blue-blooded broker Guy Winterflood follows latest fashion October 23, 2015 If you want to see the best, and worst, dressed people in the City making awkward chit chat and swapping personal phone numbers tonight, be sure to head to Fashion and Finance – a “networking” event devoted entirely to the singletons of London’s fashion and business worlds. Social Concierge, the City-focused matchmaking service behind the [...]
Forex scandal: Barclays, HSBC and RBS agree to £600m fine for foreign exchange rigging October 22, 2015 Three of Britain’s biggest banks were slapped with a $924m (£600m) bill for rigging foreign-exchange markets yesterday. Barclays, HSBC and RBS agreed the bill during a US federal court hearing, according to reports from Sky News. Barclays agreed to pay $384m, HSBC $285m and RBS $255m, people with familiar with the settlements said. French bank [...]
City Moves for 23 October 2015 | Who’s switching jobs October 22, 2015 SQUIRE PATTON BOGGS The law firm has appointed Dale Huxford as of counsel in its corporate practice in London. He joins from BroadTech Global. Huxford was also formerly a member of the emerging companies group at Orrick in London, where he provided legal services to early and growthstage technology companies. STRAWBERRY STAR The property company [...]
Cameron’s kowtow: Submission is not the route to success in China October 22, 2015 It was 2012 when I was first asked to make a bribe in China, just shy of a year after moving there. On the counsel of a business licence consultant, I was “advised” to offer remuneration to a mid-ranking member of the local Communist Party Neighbourhood Committee for swaying a potential decision in our favour. [...]