Glencore beats forecasts with £7.9bn earnings March 4, 2014 INTEGRATED miner-trader Glencore Xstrata yesterday pleased investors and analysts with consensus-busting earnings, in its first full-year results since the completion of its merger. Adjusted earnings of $13.1bn (£7.86bn) were flat but beat company-compiled estimates by seven per cent and Barclays forecasts by five per cent. Core profit from Glencore’s trading arm rose 17 per cent, [...]
A trade war with Russia would be Lehman Bros 2 March 3, 2014 MORALITY and foreign policy make uneasy bedfellows. In 1997, when Tony Blair called for an ethical foreign policy, the country cheered; 17 years later, any politician calling for such idealism would be laughed out of town. After 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, the Arab Spring and so on, a battlehardened realism is the order of the [...]
Robust growth in euro industry as UK improves March 3, 2014 MANUFACTURERS in the Eurozone reported further solid growth in February, while UK industry continued to expand at a robust pace. The headline reading of data firm Markit’s purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for the manufacturing sector was 53.2 in the euro area this February. The figure was down slightly from 54 in January, the highest level [...]
City Matters: Tighter immigration controls risk London’s position as a global business hub March 2, 2014 IMMIGRATION is a sensitive subject at the best of times. So when figures published last week showed that net migration had climbed to 212,000 in the year to September 2013 – well above the government’s target of reducing it to below 100,000 by 2015 – it was inevitable that critics would attack the current system [...]
Watch out for wearable tech at MWC 2014 February 26, 2014 Keep your friends close and your technology closer: the latest wrist-friendly gadgets Mobile World Congress is a phone geek’s dream – a time when the great and good of the mobile industry showcases what we can look forward to for the rest of the year. While recent years have been somewhat thinner on the ground [...]
What the other papers say this morning – 26 February 2014 February 25, 2014 FINANCIAL TIMES Osborne under pressure to cut taxes George Osborne, chancellor, is under pressure from Tory MPs to use next month’s Budget to announce pre-election tax cuts to offset the prospect of a politically damaging rise in interest rates before polling day. One Tory MP said the idea of the Bank of England raising base [...]
Asian shares jump after bullish day on Wall Street February 25, 2014 Asian shares a regaining some momentum after a bullish day on Wall Street helped ease fears over Chinese credit contraction. An unexpected rise in German business sentiment provided further reason for optimism over the Eurozone recovery. The Nikkei has jumped 1.4 per cent while the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index is up a more modest [...]
Markets hit fresh highs February 24, 2014 BOOMING stocks hit fresh highs on both sides of the Atlantic yesterday as upbeat investors kept on pumping cash into equities, fuelled by economic recovery and low interest rates. The surge in stocks follows a flood of merger and takeover activity, with Facebook’s $19bn (£11.4bn) buyout of messaging service Whatsapp last week setting the tone [...]
What you need to know before the open February 24, 2014 European markets are expected marginally lower this morning, following Asian counterparts, which were left unsatisfied by the G20’s commitment of an extra $2 trillion in output over the next five years. The UK market posted its third successive gain last week, but things in the rest of Europe and the US weren’t as positive, following [...]
Asian markets riding high on US data February 21, 2014 Asian markets are bouncing back in the wake of better than expected US manufacturing data. US factory activity accelerated at its fastest pace for nearly four years in February, according to Markit’s preliminary US manufacturing purchasing managers’ index. The US Labour Department also showed there were fewer applications for unemployment benefit last week. The results [...]