Trustee for Thornburg Mortgage sues five of its banks for $2.2bn May 3, 2011 THE trustee for home loan provider Thornburg Mortgage is suing Goldman Sachs, Barclays and other banks for a total of $2.2bn (£1.3bn), blaming them for the company’s bankruptcy. The trustee filed four separate lawsuits, one of which blames a “collusive scheme” by units of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotland, Credit Suisse and UBS [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS May 3, 2011 Ashcourt Rowan Ashcourt Rowan, the wealth management division of Syndicate Asset Management, has appointed Paul Miles as director of intermediary services. Miles joins Ashcourt Rowan from discretionary fund management platform Parmenion, where he was sales director for the last three years. Miles will report to Christopher Jeffreys, Syndicate’s director of asset management, who has been [...]
Drugmaker deals buoy FTSE despite dragging miner shares May 3, 2011 DRUGMAKERS helped Britain’s top share index rise modestly yesterday, buoyed by deal activity in the United States, as traders mooted the possibility that a recent equity rally may falter. Miners hampered the FTSE 100’s progress though, hurt by easing metals prices on renewed fears about demand, with Rio Tinto off 1.6 per cent on talk [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS May 2, 2011 Brookland Partners The investment bank has appointed Griff Winkler as a director, where he will focus on expanding the firm through identifying investment opportunities from capital providers and other JV partners. Winkler joins from Hatfield Philips, where he was vice president of the non-performing commercial real estate loan group. He also brings five years of [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS May 2, 2011 ROYAL DUTCH SHELL RBS rates the oil group “buy” with a target price of £24 following the firm’s quarterly results last week. Shell’s net income was five per cent above the broker’s forecasts, mirroring BP’s strong performance earlier in the week. Only the upstream business fell short, coming in at two per cent below RBS [...]
Barclays suffers from indigestion after U-turn on Protium deal April 27, 2011 WHEN Barclays gave the name of Protium, an indigestion medicine, to an accounting trick it pulled off in 2009, the bank hardly imagined it would be forced to re-absorb most of the $12.5bn (£7.5bn) of assets that it had moved off balance sheet within 18 months. That was short-sighted, according to analysts who yesterday dubbed [...]
Barclays fails to live up to expectations April 27, 2011 BARCLAYS yesterday unveiled a disappointing set of results, prompting its shares to dip 3.26 per cent as investors lost faith in chief executive Bob Diamond’s (pictured) ability to deliver on an ambitious 13-15 per cent returns target. Pre-tax profit dropped to £1.66bn, nine per cent down on the first-quarter of 2010, with the corporate and [...]
Protium: Picking a solution out of thin air April 27, 2011 THE toxic assets that make up Barclays’ so-called Protium portfolio are aptly-named. Protium is the most common isotope of hydrogen gas, and the bank was plucking a solution out of thin air when it used a barely-disguised accounting trick to push $9.8bn of toxic assets off its balance sheet. Little wonder the manoeuvre has failed: [...]
Conoco earnings fall short of Wall St expectations April 27, 2011 CONOCOPHILIPS yesterday reported higher first-quarter earnings that fell short of Wall Street expectations as its oil and gas production and refining results disappointed. Conoco’s production, which missed the company’s and Wall Street’s targets, was hurt by civil unrest in Libya, a temporary shutdown of the Trans Alaska Pipeline system in January and asset sales, Conoco [...]
FTSE flat as investors await news of Fed’s monetary policy April 27, 2011 BRITAIN’S top share index ended flat yesterday ahead of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s news conference which could provide clues on the Fed’s future plans for its monetary policy. The blue-chip FTSE 100 was down 1.2 points or 0.02 per cent at 6,068.16, having hit a 9-week closing high on Tuesday. Volume was only 87.6 [...]