London retains its ranking as the world’s best place to do business March 18, 2012 LONDON has retained its standing as the world’s top financial centre, despite economic uncertainty, the threat of regulatory upheaval and the Eurozone debt crisis. In the Global Financial Centres Index, the UK capital scored a rating of 781, compared to 772 for New York, 754 for Hong Kong, 729 for Singapore and 693 for Tokyo. [...]
Why the bulls are building a head of steam March 18, 2012 SO it’s another week and the bull market for stocks remains intact. The S&P 500 has breached the 1,400 level for the first time since June 2008, while in Europe equities are at fresh year highs, with Germany’s Dax up over 21 per cent. The FTSE is an underperformer, but still up an acceptable seven [...]
China’s manufacturers turn to Europe for innovation March 18, 2012 CHINESE manufacturers are set to snap up a series of firms in Europe as they try to fast-track innovation and development, according to research published today. Large and medium-sized industrial firms in the emerging market economy are mulling more mergers and acquisitions, according to business advisory firm Deloitte. More than half of the senior executives [...]
Japanese help to boost UK tourist trade March 18, 2012 JAPAN’S economic recovery has fuelled a resurgence in Japanese travellers to the UK, helping to boost overall tourist spend by 46 per cent last month compared with the same period last year. Japanese shoppers spent an average of £449 per store when shopping in the UK, with overall spend up by 35 per cent in [...]
Wall Street finally out of the woods March 14, 2012 WALL STREET’S financial crisis is almost over – or so the Federal Reserve would like us to believe. It rushed out the results of its stress tests of the 19 biggest US banks last night: just four failed – in all cases relatively narrowly – a test which gauged their ability to withstand a financial shock [...]
US GROWTH MEANS THE DOLLAR-YEN BREAKOUT SHOULD BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY March 12, 2012 DIRECTOR OF CURRENCY RESEARCH, GFT IS THE North American region the last bastion of global growth? After last Friday’s strong US non-farm payrolls (NFP) and this weekend’s disappointing Chinese trade data, it certainly appears to be the case. In February, the US was able to record its third consecutive month of more than 200K new [...]
Chinese mining group picks London over Hong Kong for its £50m listing March 11, 2012 A CHINESE mining company is planning to raise $50m (£32m) by floating on London’s alternative investment market (Aim), having chosen the UK over listings in Hong Kong and Canada. Rare Earths Global announced this morning that it expects to start trading later this month, and said a $50m fundraising would give it a market capitalisation [...]
China will avert crisis despite its slowing growth March 11, 2012 PREMIER Wen Jiabao’s speech to the National People’s Congress has caused a wobble in Chinese equities and reduced the optimism that was building on China. His forecast for 7.5 per cent GDP growth in 2012 is below what some international agencies were expecting. The biggest surprise about Wen’s forecast is that it is also a [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING March 7, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES CURRENCY TRADING VOLUMES DROP Volumes in the world’s multi-trillion dollar foreign exchange market have dropped to six-year lows as nervous investors have shied away from trading the euro and central banks have continued to maintain a tight grip on the value of their currencies. SOCGEN TO FACE REGULATOR PROBE Société Générale is to [...]
THE TIPSTER March 6, 2012 THE dollar-yen pair has been on the tear since the start of February, climbing over 500 pips to hit highs not seen since May of 2011 around ¥81.84. The strong month-long trend line was broken though yesterday around ¥81.30 and it does look ripe for a correction. Look to sell any rebounds towards ¥81.40/50 with [...]