Inside Track: Under fire Glaxo should get a grip July 16, 2014 SIR Andrew Witty has been keeping his head down in recent weeks, as GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) seeks a cure for what ails it in China. It hasn’t been difficult to see GSK’s bunker mentality in evidence: at Wimbledon, its hospitality marquee was shorn of corporate branding, a flaccid attempt to disguise a legitimate business activity. If [...]
Why emotional investors drive markets – but reason usually prevails in the end July 16, 2014 Like the age-old debate of nature versus nurture, the question of whether markets are driven by emotion or reason elicits the age-old answer: a bit of both. In the long run, markets are driven by all sorts of non-emotional economic and political factors, such as GDP growth, productivity, political stability and all the things that [...]
More Britons moving banks thanks to new rules, but nowhere near the expected radical shift July 16, 2014 Measures simplifying the bank switching process in the UK have resulted in a 16 per cent increase in people moving accounts, but the figure is significantly lower than industry analysis had anticipated. New rules ensuring that the UK's 46m current account holders can swap their bank within seven days resulted in a marked increase in [...]
Lloyds Bank closes in on a Libor settlement with UK authorities July 16, 2014 Lloyds is braced to become the next bank to settle with regulators in the Libor abuse scandal, it emerged yesterday. The high street bank has been cooperating with investigations into alleged attempts by traders to fiddle the interest rate benchmark. Barclays was the first to be fined, paying £290m two years ago. RBS followed with [...]
Behind the deal July 16, 2014 LAZARD | ANTONIO WEISS 1 Weiss is the publisher of The Paris Review, a quarterly literary magazine co-founded in 1953 by George Plimpton. He was previously the magazine’s editor 2 He sits on the board of trustees at The Frick Collection, New York’s famous art museum, which includes works by John Constable, Francois Boucher and [...]
City Moves for 16 July 2014 | Who’s switching jobs July 16, 2014 Linklaters The law firm has announced the appointments of Matthew Middleditch as global head of corporate and Sarah Wiggins (pictured) as global head of client sectors. Middleditch is currently Linklaters’s Hong Kong-based head of corporate in Asia. Wiggins is a senior corporate partner. Adamant Ventures The oil & gas venture capital fund has announced the [...]
Burberry shareholders vote against Christopher Bailey pay deal July 11, 2014 Shareholders have struck a blow to Britain's iconic luxury fashion brand Burberry by voting against the proposed multi-million pound pay package for new chief executive Christopher Bailey. More than 50 per cent of those who voted at the luxury giant's annual general meeting today went against the directors' remuneration report. The lucrative package includes a [...]
Barclays ditches cashiers as it shifts to digital July 11, 2014 The face of high street banking is changing, and Barclays has decided to drop the role of traditional cashier as customers increasingly adopt digital services for managing their finances. The British bank has announced that it will be moving 6,500 employees from cashier roles to advisory roles, where they will help customers with managing [...]
Portugal banking crisis rocks markets as Espirito Santo share price plummets July 10, 2014 The spectre of a renewed Eurozone crisis reared its head yesterday, hitting shares and bond markets, as fears deepened over the future of Portugal’s biggest listed bank, Espirito Santo. Investors have lost faith in the troubled lender, fearing its assets are overvalued, while its parent group has missed a debt repayment. Portugal is barely out [...]
Bank of England holds rates as pressure to hike in 2014 builds July 10, 2014 THE BANK of England’s policymaking committee announced another month of inaction yesterday, despite the suggestion that a rate hike would now come as soon as this year. The monetary policy committee (MPC) voted once again to hold the Bank’s benchmark interest rate at 0.5 per cent, but the minutes of the latest meeting will not reveal whether [...]