Barclays in key hiring from rival February 29, 2012 BARCLAYS Capital has demonstrated its ambition to become a leading player in UK investment banking, hiring Mark Astaire, head of corporate broking, from rival Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Astaire, who is now on three months’ gardening leave, joins his former colleague Richard Taylor at BarCap, where he will be charged with driving the team [...]
CVC is set to break private equity dry spell across Europe February 29, 2012 CVC Capital Partners is to buy Nordic construction products and machinery distributor Ahlsell from Cinven and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners for €1.8bn (£1.5bn), in Europe’s biggest private equity deal since last summer. “Our acquisition of Ahlsell offers an exciting platform for growth, both organically and through acquisitions,” CVC partners Peter Tornquist and Soren Vestergaard-Poulsen said [...]
Eurozone growth stays shaky February 29, 2012 EUROZONE growth prospects looked uneven after data out yesterday showed unemployment held steady in Germany in February, where credit conditions continued to ease – and weaker signs came from France, where household spending dropped unexpectedly sharply. Eurozone inflation was revised down to 2.6 per cent in the year to January, which economists believe reflects low [...]
FTSE flat as ECB pours in more funds February 29, 2012 The FTSE 100 was flat this morning with investors awaiting another injection of cash from the European Central Bank, aimed at propping up the Eurozone. The ECB is expected to pump about 500bn euros (£422bn) into the Eurozone’s financial system to fight the region’s debt crisis, enabling banks to tap as many of the ultra-cheap, [...]
Lawyers slam retrospective Barclays tax February 29, 2012 LAWYERS yesterday railed against the retrospective £100m tax bill handed to Barclays bank by HMRC this week, saying it could set a worrying precedent. Barclays faces paying over £100m to the Treasury after the government changed the law to close a tax loophole. The bank was allegedly exploiting a rule that says profit arising from [...]
Lloyds gets the most complaints February 29, 2012 PART-NATIONALISED bank Lloyds received the most complaints among UK financial firms in the second-half of last year, data from the Financial Ombudsman showed yesterday. The Ombudsman said the various operations within Lloyds Banking Group – including the likes of Bank of Scotland and Halifax – got 20,310 complaints from July to December last year. Barclays [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS February 28, 2012 Houlihan Lokey Stephen Winningham has joined the international investment bank as managing director, and co-head of European corporate finance in the firm’s London office. Winningham was until recently head of major corporates at Lloyds Banking Group, overseeing the group’s coverage of UK and US investment grade corporate clients. Prior to this, he was global head [...]
Tax campaigners against Barclays are misinformed February 28, 2012 ON MONDAY, David Gauke, exchequer secretary to the Treasury, told a stunned House of Commons that a bank had attempted to use a tax avoidance scheme to reduce its tax bill by £0.3bn. The government would act swiftly to close this loophole. As other banks are also understood to have used this dodge, it’s hoped [...]
Barclays was at centre of tax loophole clampdown February 28, 2012 Barclays said it was the bank at the centre of a clampdown by Britain on two tax avoidance schemes that the government said would close loopholes and raise more than £500m in tax. Barclays said it notified Britain’s tax office about its plan to buy back its own bonds, on which it and other banks [...]
£67,700,000,000: The amount of tax paid by Britain’s top 100 companies last year February 27, 2012 THE TAXMAN took an extra £8.3bn from top UK companies in the last fiscal year, with big firms contributing 14 per cent more compared to the previous year. In total, the so-called Hundred Group of businesses paid an eye-watering £67.7bn in tax in the year to March 2011, according to data released by PwC this [...]