Barclays dark pool volumes bounce back after fraud allegations July 28, 2014 Trading in Barclays dark pool bounced back in early July, industry data showed yesterday. Volumes had collapsed by more than 70 per cent after Goldman Sachs was fined for wrongdoing and Barclays was accused by US regulators of lying to investors in the private trading facility. The most recent data covers the second week of [...]
Best of the Brokers for 29 July 2014 July 28, 2014 To appear in Best of the Brokers, email your research to notes@cityam.com AG BARR PLC Barclays keeps its valuation at “equal weight” despite the ongoing tough competitive backdrop and volatile consumer demand for the Irn Bru maker. Recent good weather and ongoing strong execution should mean AG Barr is set to deliver high single-digit growth. ALLIANCE TRUST PLC Winterflood [...]
CNBC Comment: Why UK banks aren’t riding the recovery July 28, 2014 THE TIES between Britain’s banks and its economy have always been close. But they have seemed even closer in the post-banking bailout era. On Friday, when RBS rushed out its second quarter results a week early (which was rather odd in itself – don’t companies usually only rush out results if they’re either worse than [...]
Lloyds fined £226m by UK and US regulators for Libor manipulation July 28, 2014 Lloyds has become the latest bank to be fined for manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor). The benchmark interest rate determines the cost of a range of credit products which have a combined value of at least $350tn, but a number of banks have been charged with unlawfully tampering with it in order [...]
Would you ride a Boris Bike to Paris? This guy just did July 28, 2014 It's designed for leisurely cycles around the city and short commutes between tube stations not epic cross-country journeys, but one man decided the Boris Bike was destined for greater things beyond the confines of Zone 6. Richard Jordan has cycled 250 miles from London to Paris on a Boris Bike, despite it being probably the [...]
Virgin America IPO takes off July 28, 2014 The US airline part-owned by Sir Richard Branson is preparing to go public after posting its first annual profit in March. Branson owns a 22 per cent stake in the airline through Virgin Group with VAI Partners, controlled by hedge fund Cyrus Capital Partners, its biggest shareholder with a 71.6 per cent stake. Barclays and [...]
Osborne drafts Lambert for market probe July 27, 2014 THE FORMER boss of the CBI and the current chief executive of Allianz Global Investors are set to be appointed to review a government-led inquiry into financial markets. Sir Richard Lambert, who ran Britain’s biggest employers’ group until 2011, will be an independent member of the Fair and Effective Markets Review, according to Sky News, [...]
Barclays’ Ashok Vaswani is hoping to turn around the UK’s most broken industry July 27, 2014 "My name is Ashok Vaswani. My role is to listen to customers, to make sure we give them what they want.” This understates his job title somewhat. Vaswani is Barclays’ CEO of personal and corporate banking, a powerful new job which has seen him take control of its global operations in retail, business and [...]
HSBC among banks accused of manipulating price of silver July 27, 2014 HSBC, Deutsche Bank and the Bank of Nova Scotia have been accused of rigging the price of silver. According to J Scott Nicholson, an investor who filed a lawsuit against them in the US, the banks abused their position of controlling the daily silver benchmark by unlawfully manipulating it to reap illegitimate rewards from [...]
BSkyB share price slides on £5.3bn deal for Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia July 25, 2014 BSkyB's share price opened 3 per cent lower this morning after announcing a long-awaited £5.3bn deal to acquire European pay TV operators Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia from Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, creating one of the biggest pay TV operators in Europe. BSkyB has offered £2.9bn in cash for 21st Century Fox’s 57.4 per [...]