Best of the Brokers for 21 July 2014 July 21, 2014 To appear in Best of the Brokers, email your research to notes@cityam.com BRITISH LAND COMPANY Barclays has maintained its “overweight” rating, increasing the target price to 936p from 695p. The broker believes that British Land’s underlying real estate values should continue to increase, with a spike in office rents, as well as a modest increase [...]
UK banks to face “in-depth” competition inquiry that could see major lenders broken up July 18, 2014 The UK's banking sector is set to face a fresh competition inquiry that could lead to sweeping changes across the industry with British lenders at risk of being broken up. As expected, in an initial into the industry published this morning, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) decided that there should be an "in-depth" [...]
Inside Track: Intelligent Energy deal hasn’t been looking too clever July 17, 2014 I was sitting with an investment banker from one of the City’s bulge bracket banks yesterday who was describing the performance of London’s new issues this year as “broadly positive”. Of course, this statement is true, as far as it goes. But there have been some well publicised cases, such as Saga and Card Factory, [...]
London Report: West’s sanctions on Russia and Malaysia jet crash hit FTSE July 17, 2014 BRITISH airline shares fell sharply yesterday on news that a Malaysian Airline Boeing 777 had been shot down over eastern Ukraine. The FTSE 100 finished 46.35 points down, or 0.68 per cent, on 6,738.32, while gold added $20 to $1,322 an ounce on increased tensions caused by the west’s tougher sanctions on Russia. British Airways [...]
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 [...]