S&P CASTS DOUBT ON BANK REVIVAL August 26, 2010 RATING agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) cast doubt on the strength of the UK banking sector’s recovery yesterday, saying lenders had been buoyed by a rising economic tide. The claim, made after this month’s bumper first-half earnings season, was immediately rebuffed by banking industry figures. While institutions realise they have been helped by an improving [...]
Tullow slides on Ugandan project delay August 25, 2010 OIL explorer Tullow faced tough questions over its plans in Uganda yesterday, as shares dipped despite a 152 per cent increase in pre-tax profit in the last six months. Its $10bn (£6.6bn) project on oil fields once owned by Heritage stalled in January, after the Ugandan government disputed Heritage’s capital gains tax payments on the [...]
Cameron takes stock after 100 days in power August 17, 2010 TONY Blair, who releases his memoirs next month, says his biggest regret was not doing enough during his early years in power. He wasted his first 100 days – and indeed much of his first term – basking in the glory of Labour’s landslide win. By the time he turned his attention to public service [...]
Reflections on the Philip Green saga August 16, 2010 MY first contact with Sir Philip Green came around two decades ago when he was running a small public company called Amber Day. I had written a two paragraph story for the Independent newspaper which provoked the retailing tycoon to scream down the phone at me the following day. “I cut out your article out [...]
Aegon cash call fears grow as capital shrinks August 12, 2010 FEARS of a fresh rights issue overshadowed a consensus-beating second quarter performance from Dutch insurer Aegon yesterday, after the firm said its capital buffer had fallen. Shares in Aegon fell 3.5 per cent to €4.37 (£3.60) as the life and pensions firm said tougher requirements from ratings agency Standard & Poor’s meant its reserve capital [...]
BarCap to cut hundreds of jobs in an effort to cut costs August 10, 2010 BARCLAYS Capital is expected to announce hundreds of redundancies as early as today, affecting back office staff across the firm’s global operations. It is understood the layoffs are intended to cut costs to compensate for a sharp fall in market activity in the second quarter. The investment banking arm was responsible for around 87 per [...]
Why I’m bearish about house prices August 5, 2010 ONE of the big lessons of the recession – and of several previous downturns, including Britain’s crisis in the early 1990s and the secondary banking crisis of the 1970s – is just how important property is to modern economies. Bubbles in housing or commercial property are invariably devastating; they almost always take the economy down [...]
BarCap makes lion’s share of profit despite revenue drop August 5, 2010 PROFIT at Barclays Capital made up 87 per cent of the banking group’s overall earnings, though much of its £3.4bn profit was due to unexpected one-off items and credit changes. While pre-tax profit for the half had almost trebled compared to the first half of 2009, this includes a £851m gain on its own credit. [...]
London & Stamford stock to move to main market August 5, 2010 AIM-LISTED property investor London & Stamford is seeking shareholder approval for a switch to London’s senior stock market as part of a plan to adopt tax-efficient REIT status. The Guernsey-based company, set up by veteran real estate entrepreneurs Raymond Mould, Patrick Vaughan and Humphrey Price, was formed in October 2007 to snare discounted properties after [...]
Xstrata to pump $5bn into new mines August 3, 2010 Mining group Xstrata said it would pump over $5bn (£3.14bn) into new mines and keep targeting organic growth rather than acquisitions, after more than doubling first-half earnings per share on higher metals prices. Xstrata – the world’s biggest exporter of coal used in power plants – said it had approved $4.2bn to build the Las [...]