BEHIND THE SCENES FOR OSCAR HIT’S LEGAL FIXER February 7, 2012 PAUL RENNEY, a lawyer at Keystone Law, almost collected the Bafta for The King’s Speech – except the film’s producers were faster out of their seats than he was. Renney, as the hit’s legal adviser, was a stand-in at the event for screenwriter David Seidler, who was “annoyed” at not being flown over from the [...]
FTSE flat as $90bn Glencore deal agreed February 7, 2012 The FTSE 100 was flat as further delays to Greek debt restructuring created more confidence sapping uncertainty – but the talk of the market was the agreed $90bn (£56bn) merger of Glencore and Xstrata. After rejecting a proposed new bailout deal which demands strict labour reforms and other austerity steps Greek leaders today meet in [...]
Westerman goes east in Goldman’s reshuffle February 6, 2012 FOLLOWING in the footsteps of Richard Campbell-Breeden (Asia) and Chris Barter (Moscow), Goldman Sachs is moving Matthew Westerman to Hong Kong to become co-head of its investment banking division for Asia outside of Japan. Westerman, whose recent deals include the Prada IPO and the HSBC rights issue, was recently global head of equity capital markets [...]
FTSE dips as Greece D-Day arrives February 6, 2012 The FTSE 100 slipped as the deadline for Greece to accept a new bailout or face a default which could trigger financial shockwaves across the globe arrived. Greece must tell the European Union by the end of today whether it accepts the stringent terms of a new bailout deal amid reports of divisions within the [...]
Truth about banker pay: It’s falling February 5, 2012 BRITISH investment bankers are braced for deep slashes to their pay packets after a slowdown in trading saw their US rivals cut bonuses by up to 30 per cent. Industry insiders say that UK bankers are looking at a pay cut of 20-50 per cent – in addition to thousands in job cuts – contrary [...]
Why the debate has gone all wrong February 5, 2012 PART of the problem in Britain today is that public debate is taking place in a fact-less vacuum. People have no interest in what is really happening to investment bankers’ pay and prefer to ignore the regulatory revolution across all of finance, including banking, fund management, private equity, trading, accountancy and insurance. Take pay: as [...]
Bank of England expected to release another £50bn of quantitative easing February 5, 2012 ECONOMISTS widely expect at least another £50bn of quantitative easing (QE) to be announced by the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) on Thursday. Committee members including governor Mervyn King have dropped clear hints that they will buy more government bonds to lower interest rates and boost demand, slowing inflation’s rapid decline with the [...]
FTSE flat as investors eye key US jobs data February 3, 2012 THE FTSE was flat in early trading as investors awaited key US jobs data due out later. US non-farm payrolls are forecast to rise by 150,000 after a 200,000 increase in December, while the unemployment rate was expected to remain static at 8.5 per cent. On the domestic data front the UK service industry picked [...]
Tullow Oil to ditch BAML as its broker February 2, 2012 TULLOW Oil, the FTSE 100 oil explorer, yesterday parted company with its long-standing corporate brokers, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) and RBS Hoare Govett, appointing Barclays Capital and Morgan Stanley in their place. BAML’s position had been precarious ever since the bank parted company with corporate broker Andrew Osborne in November. Osborne, whom Tullow described [...]
BarCap’s mandate on $5bn float shows its growing clout February 2, 2012 BARCLAYS Capital’s claims to be one of the major players in the world of equity capital markets will only have been enhanced by its inclusion as one of the book-runners in Facebook’s $5bn flotation. It is the only UK-based bank on the list and that alone can act to reinforce the view that it picked [...]