CITY SETS OFF HALF A TONNE OF FIREWORKS November 14, 2010 LONDONERS were treated to one of the capital’s biggest public fireworks displays of the year on Saturday, as the Lord Mayor’s grand finale boasted nearly half a tonne of fireworks. The show’s 800-year old parade was three miles long this time – twice as long as the route it followed from Temple to Bank – [...]
How to avoid the dog funds November 11, 2010 AN ASTONISHING £13bn is languishing in so-called dog funds, which persistently fail to deliver returns for investors, according to BestInvest’s biannual Spot the Dog report published earlier this week. Spot the Dog branded Jupiter as the worst performing investment house in terms of the value of assets in dog funds. Also among the main culprits [...]
PERSONAL FINANCE NEWS November 11, 2010 FLEXIBLE DRAWDOWN SUITABLE FOR MOST Over 90 per cent of financial advisers think that flexible drawdown would be a suitable retirement solution for their clients, according to research conducted by pension product provider Suffolk Life. Suffolk Life’s John Moret said: “Industry statistics suggest that the number of new drawdown cases in 2010 is likely to [...]
CITY PAYS ITS DEEPEST RESPECTS TO BRITAIN’S FALLEN WAR HEROES November 11, 2010 SILENCE blanketed the City of London yesterday at 11am, to mark the anniversary of Armistice Day, the end of the First World War. The largest remembrance ceremony took place at Lloyd’s of London, where 5,000 members of the insurance market gathered on the trading floor to watch on as their chairman Lord Levene and Lord [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS November 11, 2010 Collins Stewart The investment banking group said yesterday it will open a new derivatives desk, headed by Roger Sharma (pictured) and Brad Dunstan. Sharma and Dunstan, who become co-heads of European equity derivatives, joined this week from inter-dealer broker Icap, where they had been working in senior derivatives sales since the beginning of last year. [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS November 10, 2010 Aveva The engineering software group has appointed James Kidd to its board as its new chief financial officer, effective from the beginning of next year. He replaces Paul Taylor, who has been finance director for the past decade. Kidd, 40, has been at Aveva since 2004, including four years as head of finance. A chartered [...]
LISTED PRODUCT NEWS November 10, 2010 SOURCE ENTERS SWISS ETF MARKET Source entered the Swiss ETF market earlier this week with the listing of 15 exchange-traded commodities (ETC) on the SIX Swiss Exchange. Source has initially listed 14 T-ETCs (Treasury Bill-secured ETCs) that track S&P GSCI total return commodity indices and one physical gold P-ETC that tracks the spot gold price [...]
Five reasons for investing with ETFs November 10, 2010 IT HAS not been an easy few weeks for exchange-traded products (ETP). First, analysts as good as wrote off physically backed industrial metal exchange-traded commodities (ETCs) before they had even been launched. And earlier this week, an American report from the Kauffman Foundation criticised ETPs, arguing they might pose a greater threat to the markets [...]
StanChart hires 4,000 staff in Asia November 9, 2010 Standard Chartered yesterday revealed it will create 4,000 jobs in Asia, fuelling fresh fears that London is missing out on a global banking jobs boom. A StanChart spokesman told City A.M. the majority will be based in Singapore, with some in Indonesia. The announcement came as David Cameron and George Osborne arrived in Beijing to [...]
Barclays sees profits tumble November 9, 2010 INVESTORS reacted positively yesterday despite Barclays unveiling quarterly pre-tax profits of £1.27bn (excluding own credit), a 28 per cent drop on last year. Including own credit losses – the effect of mark-to-market write-downs – profit plunged 76 per cent to £327m. Barclays stock climbed by over three per cent throughout the day in part due [...]