Tesco tills ring for Christmas with 4.9 per cent sales hike January 12, 2010 TESCO has had its best Christmas in three years after slashing prices and offering double Clubcard points to get customers through the door. Britain’s biggest supermarket chain said yesterday that like-for-like sales at its UK stores jumped by 4.9 per cent during December and early January. Tesco reported a 35 per cent surge in sales [...]
Disappointing results from Alcoa rock mining stocks January 12, 2010 BRITAIN’S top share index closed 0.7 per cent lower yesterday as commodities and banks led the retreat over concerns that China’s move to tighten banks’ reserve requirements may slow global economic recovery. The FTSE 100 index closed down 39.36 points at 5,498.71, dropping back after hitting a 16-month intraday peak at 5,600.48 on Monday. China’s [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS January 12, 2010 KBC Peel Hunt The mid and small cap corporate broking firm has made three senior hires. Stuart Duncan joins Peel Hunt’s equity research team from The Royal Bank of Scotland. Mark McGuinness, previously co-head of sales trading at Numis Securities, joins as a director in the sales trading team. Duncan and McGuinness join Andrew Chapman [...]
FINES ALONE WON’T MAKE FSA CREDIBLE January 12, 2010 ROBERT FALKNER REED SMITH LLP LAST year the FSA began talking the talk, with a number of policy speeches about the need for enforcement to “deliver credible deterrence”. Indeed, 2009 was a record year for bank fines. FSA rules for the registration of directors and senior managers – persons holding significant influence functions – for [...]
Clegg calls for break-up of biggest City banks January 11, 2010 LIBERAL Democrat leader Nick Clegg will try to break up large banks like Barclays and HSBC if he finds himself in government after the next election. “The age of universal banking has to come to an end,” Clegg said as he launched his general election campaign yesterday. Asked if he was making an implicit threat [...]
Virgin and Tesco banks are unlikely to upset big players January 11, 2010 THE UK’s top five banks will continue to dominate the market despite the recent glut of negative publicity. A new report from Datamonitor suggests new players entering the market have “missed the boat” and should have launched in the direct aftermath of the banking crisis. Customer inertia is seen as the biggest stopping point for [...]
Barclays wins Dubai foreclosure January 11, 2010 Barclays won Dubai’s first foreclosure cases yesterday, clearing the way for lenders holding $16bn (£10bn) of Dubai home loans to take action when borrowers don’t pay. Islamic lender Tamweel PJSC, the emirate’s biggest mortgage bank, estimates about three per cent of its mortgages are in default. Dubai’s property market recently turned sour after heating up [...]
Strength in energy issues is offset by weakness in miners January 11, 2010 BRITAIN’S leading share index ended flat yesterday with strength in energy issues countering a sell-off in miners, weak financial issues and uncertain progress on Wall Street. At the close, the FTSE 100 index was up 3.83 points, or 0.1 per cent, at 5,538.07, having touched a 16-month intraday peak of 5,600.48 early in the session. [...]
BANKERS STAY QUIET ON UNITED BOND DEAL January 11, 2010 CITY bankers are not usually backwards in coming forwards when it comes to getting publicity for their transactions, so why the reticence yesterday when it came to taking the credit for Manchester United’s £500m bond issue. United’s initial press release was as brief as could possibly be, with no mention even of the banks involved [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS January 11, 2010 Weir Group Jon Stanton will join the company this Spring as group finance director. Stanton, 42, arrives from Ernst & Young where he has worked since 1988. He has been a partner in the London office since 2001 with responsibility for the audit of several FTSE 100 clients, including Invensys, Hanson and InterContinental Hotels. Stanton [...]