BORIS IS A BLONDE BOMBSHELL IN BELGIUM September 2, 2009 LONDON’S flaxen-haired mayor just can’t help making waves wherever he goes. Boris Johnson was in Brussels yesterday, lobbying the European Union over its draft directive on the alternative investment management industry, in defence of the UK’s numerous hedge funds. But though he happily deployed his usual self-deprecatory sense of humour to good effect throughout the [...]
HSBC debuts ultra-low rate on home loan September 2, 2009 HSBC has waded further into the mortgage market by offering a new deal at 1.99 per cent for borrowers who can stump up a 40 per cent deposit. The rate, the lowest ever for a home purchase or remortgage and a substantial discount on the bank’s standard variable rate (SVR) of 3.94 per cent, will [...]
THE LONDON REPORT September 2, 2009 THE benchmark share index closed flat yesterday as a retreat in financials and miners, triggered by weak US data, was offset by stronger energy stocks, after a “giant” oil find by BP. The FTSE 100 index ended down 2.15 points at 4,817.55, after it fell 1.8 per cent on Tuesday. US private employers cut 298,000 [...]
CIT to defer interest payout on notes as it fights to escape bankruptcy filing September 1, 2009 FLOUNDERING US bank CIT has said that it will not be able to make a 15 September interest payment on a tranche of 2067 notes. The bank said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it could not find an alternative method of payment, meaning that it would have to “mandatorily [...]
EBAY HANGS UP ON SKYPE IN $2BN DEAL September 1, 2009 INTERNETauction giant eBay yesterday agreed to sell a majority stake in Skype, its free internet telephone business, to a group of private investors for $2bn (£1.23bn). The consortium, which is being led by USprivate equity firm Silver Lake, includes Andreessen Horowitz – a firm run by the Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen – and London-based private [...]
CDBcreates investment arm September 1, 2009 China Development Bank (CDB) yesterday said it had set up a $5.1bn (£3.1bn) investment arm to focus on private equity deals. CDB, which has a three per cent holding in Barclays, said the unit would provide funding for infrastructure firms, energy and resources ventures and urban projects. It is hoped that the unit will help [...]
THE LONDON REPORT September 1, 2009 THE FTSE 100 shed 1.8 per cent yesterday, dragged back by weakness in banks and commodity issues, fuelling doubts over the sustainability of this summer’s strong rally. At the close, the FTSE 100 was 89.20 points lower at 4,819.70 after ending 0.8 per cent higher on Friday, when it also touched a near 11-month high. [...]
IS THE FTSE 100 RALLY A TRUE REFLECTION OF MARKET VALUES? August 31, 2009 HENK POTTS BARCLAYS WEALTH“The earnings season has given more support than anticipated, largely because firms have cut back. In the short-term we have to be a lot more cautious. But in the long term, if we are going into a period of recovery and companies are leaner and meaner, we are looking at some great [...]
Get ready to profit from an autumnal pullback in indices August 31, 2009 OPTIMISM has been returning to the markets recently, but it would be foolhardy to believe that the worst is over. Last week, David Buik at BGC Partners pointed out that after the initial crash in 1929, the markets staged a powerful rally that retraced 60 per cent of these losses. Since the 6 March 2009 [...]
CITY MOVES WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS August 20, 2009 Aviva InvestorsThe investment group has appointed John Wood as a UK equities fund manager. Wood will be responsible for running the Aviva Investors UK Growth Fund and will join in October from Artemis Asset Management, where he was a senior fund manager for the UK and Europe. Prior to that, he was head of UK [...]