Santander scoops 318 RBS branches after £4.5bn boost August 4, 2010 SPANISH giant Santander fired a warning shot across the bows of UK lenders yesterday, agreeing to buy 318 branches from Royal Bank of Scotland and preparing to reshuffle its global operations. Santander will become the fourth-largest bank on the high street after it takes over the outlets from RBS for £1.7bn. The deal, due to [...]
…but UK services growth continues to slow down August 4, 2010 GROWTH in Britain’s services sector slowed sharply last month, confirming analysts’ forecasts that economic activity will have cooled during the third quarter of the year. The leading Markit/CIPS purchasing managers’ index (PMI) fell to 53.1 from 54.4 in June, a slightly greater drop than economists had expected and the fourth fall in five months. The [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS August 4, 2010 BNY Mellon Curtis Arledge, formerly chief investment officer for BlackRock’s fundamental fixed income portfolio, is to join BNY Mellon as vice chairman of the corporation and chief executive of BNY Mellon Asset Management. Arledge also previously worked as co-head of US fixed income at BlackRock, and has over two decades of asset management and investment [...]
Lenders sell off Connaught loans August 4, 2010 Lenders to troubled housing maintenance firm Connaught have begun to sell off their loans to private equity firms. Barclays has already disposed of its exposure, while other non-primary lenders Bank of Ireland and Lloyds are understood to have made moves to sell out. “It’s just a sensible move to get rid of such risky assets,” [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING August 3, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES BARCLAYS OFFLOADS LOANS IN STRUGGLING CONNAUGHT Lenders to Connaught have started selling their loans to the company, in a sign of their concern about the state of the embattled social housing maintenance group. Barclays, one of Connaught’s syndicate of banks, which is led by Royal Bank of Scotland, on Monday night sold its [...]
Rock falls into the red but its bad arm heals August 3, 2010 NORTHERN ROCK’S boss insisted there was no timetable for returning the bailed-out bank to private ownership yesterday as it slumped to a £142.6m loss in the first half. Chief executive Gary Hoffman said there was no deadline for a sale of the “good” part of Northern Rock, which holds savings accounts and lends new mortgages, [...]
Construction growth slows down in July August 3, 2010 CONSTRUCTION activity in the UK dropped sharply to a four-month low last month, according to a leading survey published yesterday. The Markit/CIPS purchasing managers’ index for the construction sector fell to 54.1 in July from 58.4 in June, highlighting concerns that activity in the sector may have peaked. However, this is the fifth consecutive month that the [...]
GOODHART: IF I WERE ON TODAY’S MPC, I’D WANT TO BE PUT TO SLEEP August 3, 2010 ATTENDEES at the London School of Economics’ (LSE) monetary policy conference yesterday morning were treated to an A-list talking heads line-up, with former members of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) Sir John Gieve and Charles Goodhart joining Fitch Ratings’ Brian Coulton to discuss interest rates. Unfortunately, the audience was not about to flatter its illustrious [...]
FTSE closes flat as Monday’s zeal for banks wanes and energy firms recover August 3, 2010 BRITAIN’S top shares ended steady yesterday as strength in oils offset falls in banks following weaker-than-expected US data that stoked concern about the strength of the economic rebound. The FTSE 100 closed down 0.63 point at 5,396.48 following a 2.7 per cent gain on Monday to a three-month closing high. “Weak US data in the [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING August 2, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES LIVERPOOL FC AUCTION ATTRACTS GLOBAL INTEREST Global interest in the auction of Liverpool Football Club intensified on Monday with prospective bidders emerging from Hong Kong and the Middle East. Chinese sports entrepreneur Kenneth Huang has made an approach to Liverpool’s bankers Royal Bank of Scotland and US-based Wachovia seeking support for a deal, [...]