Three cheers for the stars of the Square Mile October 28, 2010 LAST night was truly an exciting and exceptional occasion: City A.M.’s inaugural awards celebrating the best and brightest of London’s business, financial and investment communities. Our inaugural awards ceremony saw more than 450 guests in their finery roll up at the Grange Hotel at St Pauls. Our winners, unique in that each was initially chosen [...]
CITY WELCOMES A DOSE OF FESTIVITY AND OPTIMISM October 28, 2010 “AN EVENING of festivity and optimism” was the way in which our editor Allister Heath introduced City A.M.’s inaugural awards ceremony last night, and the evening did not fail to live up to expectations. After years of gloom-mongering and banker-bashing, what better way to acknowledge the role of the City in bringing the economy back [...]
Barclays weighs up costs of quitting UK October 27, 2010 SENIOR executives at Barclays Bank are weighing up the costs of moving the group’s headquarters from London to overseas, most probably New York. The bank’s executives, including at board level, have spent a great deal of time poring over the issue over the past few weeks. While no final decision has been taken, they have [...]
Time running out to halt City exodus October 27, 2010 IMAGINE the scene. It’s late 2011; Bob Diamond, Barclays’ boss, is posing with New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg in front of the firm’s New York headquarters. Bloomberg is boasting to the local media about how much he expects his city to make in extra tax receipts from Barclays’ relocation, which has just been completed. Meanwhile, [...]
NAB sees UK profits double October 27, 2010 THE owner of Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banks announced a rise in full year pre-tax profits of over 50 per cent yesterday after it advanced £4.7bn in mortgages and wrote down fewer bad debts. National Australia Bank (NAB) said lending had been subdued in the year to 30 September but that it was “firmly on track” [...]
PIMCO’S GROSS ISSUES WARNING OVER A BRAZEN PONZI SCHEME: QE October 27, 2010 PIMCO’S resident bond expert Bill Gross yesterday, in his usual verbose fashion, issued a stark warning over the upcoming second round of quantitative easing (QE) in the US – dubbing it no less than a “Ponzi scheme” on the part of the Federal Reserve. “Check [sic] writing in the trillions is not a bondholder’s friend; [...]
TONIGHT WILL BE A NIGHT FOR HEARTY CELEBRATION October 27, 2010 THIS evening will see 450 guests in their finery roll up at the Grange hotel at St Paul’s, as City A.M. proudly hosts its first ever awards ceremony honouring the UK’s business stars and City luminaries. The award winners will come from a diverse range of sectors, from investment to retail banking, fund management and [...]
Investors: You have nothing to lose but your premiums October 27, 2010 BACK in 2002, covered warrants were launched on the London Stock Exchange with grand fanfare. And nobody cared. The products turned out to be something of a flop, with only £886,000 changing hands in the first week of trading. There is nothing intrinsically bad about covered warrants, however. In fact, they are quite remarkable – [...]
Strong GDP growth dashes chances of further QE October 26, 2010 THE UK’s unexpectedly strong growth last quarter will mean the Bank of England will keep the presses off and delay any restart to quantitative easing (QE), according to City economists. Preliminary growth figures released yesterday showed that the economy smashed consensus forecasts of 0.4 per cent to surge 0.8 per cent from July to September. [...]
Brit insurance has accepted £888m offer October 26, 2010 BRIT Insurance yesterday accepted a formal offer from private equity firms Apollo Management and CVC Capital Partners, which values Brit at up to £888m. The offer from Apollo and CVC, which have formed a new company called Achilles to make the offer, values the Lloyds of London insurer at £10.75 per share but includes a [...]