A tale of two data sets August 2, 2011 AS IF a hundred pages of figures weren’t enough, Barclays delivered two sets of headline numbers yesterday. The first, “statutory” figures, which include the impact of a £1bn PPI provision, showed half-year return on equity (RoE) falling from 9.8 per cent to 5.9 per cent. But the “adjusted” figures told the opposite story: returns are up from [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS August 2, 2011 CBRE CB Richard Ellis has appointed Adam Wilton as a senior director in its UK debt advisory division, based in London. Wilton joins from Barclays Corporate, where he was a director of the bank’s real estate structured finance business. Wilton has 12 years’ experience covering real estate finance, securitisation and principal finance. His experience includes [...]
Barclays to axe 3,000 jobs as profit falls August 2, 2011 Barclays will cut about 3,000 jobs this year as the industry grapples with tougher regulation and the impact of a spreading sovereign debt crisis on investment banking operations. First half profits at the bank fell by a third after a drop in bond trading activity at its investment bank and a charge to compensate customers [...]
LEGAL FIRM BROADENS RECRUITING HORIZONS August 1, 2011 CITY INTERNSHIPS are notoriously hard to come by. But not for regular readers of The Capitalist such as Ratidzo Chinyuku, who wrote to Taylor Wessing partner Martin Winter asking for a work placement after reading about his charity work in her homeland of Zimbabwe in this column on 12 April. Following her successful appeal, the [...]
Cooper drops takeover bid for rival Laird August 1, 2011 LAIRD shares plunged 15 per cent yesterday after Cooper Industries announced it was withdrawing its bid for the electronics components firm, saying it is unwilling to proceed at Laird’s asking price. Cooper Industries’ two-month battle to take over the smaller British rival came to a deadlock this weekend after the two companies were unable to [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS August 1, 2011 Oracle Coalfields The mining company, which is developing a 1.4bn tonne coalfield in Pakistan’s Sindh Province, has appointed Adrian Loader, the former president of Shell Canada, as chairman of the board of directors. Loader’s former board appointments include Alliance-Unichem, Alliance-Boots and Candax Energy. He is currently a director of Holcim, a member of the Garda [...]
FTSE buoyed by US debt deal August 1, 2011 The FTSE 100 tracked global markets upwards as investors were buoyed by the breaking of the deadlock over US debt. As President Obama announced that the Democrats and Republicans had finally reached an agreement over raising the country’s debt ceiling Asian markets responded positively. Investors piled back into riskier stocks and abandoned gold as the [...]
Aldermore reaches break even August 1, 2011 New bank Aldermore has broken even, two years after its launch, and has accumulated total assets of more than £1bn, the company said on Monday. Aldermore said it now had loans of more than £800m for 9,500 customers, and had 42,000 deposit accounts. Aldermore and other new entrants such as Metro Bank, Haymarket Financial are [...]
Growth concerns and debt talks set to lower opening July 31, 2011 IT’S difficult to see any way but down for shares this morning. There’s always the potential for the US debt impasse to be overcome and an agreement on the debt ceiling to be reached any minute, but without that there is just too much uncertainty around. GFT quotes two-way prices on stock indices around the [...]
Banking on surprising the markets July 31, 2011 THIS week sees the release of interim figures from a number of UK banks, and few are holding out hope for particularly strong results. A generally weak UK economy that grew an anaemic 0.2 per cent in the second quarter, coupled with concerns about the risk of UK bank exposure to possible European default, have [...]