City Moves for 15 August 2014 | Who’s switching jobs August 14, 2014 KPMG Yael Selfin has been appointed as a director in the firm’s economics and disputes practice. She joins from Edymar, a boutique consultancy she created and led. She has also been a partner at Volterra, and held the position of head of macro consulting at PwC. Jersey Finance Robert Christensen has been appointed chairman of [...]
Best of the Brokers for 15 August 2014 August 14, 2014 To appear in Best of the Brokers, email your research to notes@cityam.com DOMINOS PIZZA PLC Numis have given the pizza takeaway company a “buy” rating with a target price of 710p. Analysts believe the company still has significant growth prospects and expect both petrol and food costs to decrease. They expect accelerating store expansion. INFINEON [...]
Legal & General’s Nigel Wilson sends slap in the face to Breedon as associates shudder – Inside Track August 13, 2014 Nigel Wilson has hardly put a foot wrong since replacing Tim Breedon, his po-faced predecessor, as chief executive of Legal & General just over two years ago. While investors are happy with the outspoken Geordie, however, his fellow insurance bosses are not – at least not after his latest bombshell dropped yesterday. Confirming [...]
Analyst Views: What did you make of Ladbrokes’ performance during the first half of 2014? August 12, 2014 PATRICK COFFEY | BARCLAYS While the Digital performance is likely to excite the bulls, we believe these results throw up many questions which are central to the debate. Marketing as a percentage of revenue was 31 per cent in the first half. A key debate is how this marketing spend progresses and how much re-investment [...]
Top of the Bots: Twitter’s users not all they seem as 23 million revealed to be robots August 12, 2014 The concept of Twitter bots is an amusing one. We’re imagining legions of automatons sitting behind their iMacs in a dark room, pressing the tweet button with mechanically superior bot fingers and spamming us with mega lolz. But Twitter bots are a reality (albeit slightly different, it’s just a computer) and yesterday the social [...]
Half of shares in food giant Bakkavor going on sale August 11, 2014 Shareholders in ready meal supplier Bakkavor have hired Barclays to sell down their stakes in the food giant, it emerged yesterday, Almost half of the shares in the firm could be sold as a result. One quarter of the firm is owned by Icelandic lender Arion Banki, which was formed from the wreckage of Kaupthing [...]
New Barclays chair should be female – CNBC Comment August 11, 2014 It’s time for a woman to be the chair of Barclays. And yes, simply because she is a woman, it would make things better. Rona Fairhead, the former Financial Times boss and finance director of parent company Pearson, is rumoured to be on a shortlist to take over from Sir David Walker next year. She [...]
South African central bank rides to the rescue of stricken lender August 10, 2014 TROUBLED South African lender African Bank Investments (Abil) was yesterday chopped up into a good bank and bad bank by authorities in a bid to rescue the stricken lender. The South African Reserve Bank (Sarb), the country’s central bank, placed the lender under creditor protection while it raises more funds. A 940m rand (£560m) capital [...]
Rona Fairhead in running for Barclays chairman job August 10, 2014 Long serving HSBC non-exec director Rona Fairhead could be a frontrunner to take over as Barclays’ chairman, it emerged over the weekend. The former Financial Times chief executive could replace outgoing chairman Sir David Walker, though no formal timetable has been laid out. Sir Howard Davies is also thought to be a candidate. Barclays declined to [...]
Banking brain drain: Four unintended consequences of post-crisis regulation August 10, 2014 Since the financial crisis, governments have made wide-ranging changes to the way financial institutions are regulated. In particular, regulators have focused on the amount and type of capital that banks and other financial institutions must hold, and set new standards as to how they must interact with consumers and markets. This has given rise to [...]