Wall St fuelling new dot.com bubble April 4, 2011 WITH the benefit of hindsight, bubbles are shockingly easy to spot. From Dutch merchants staking fortunes on the price of tulip bulbs to Chinese investors fighting for empty properties, the idiocy is always self-evident – eventually. At the time, however, it seems to make perfect sense to throw good money after bad. Somewhere deep in [...]
Chinese growth will benefit City of London too April 3, 2011 With the debate over how to stimulate UK economic growth still raging, one area we can ill afford to neglect is strengthening our trading relationships through commercial diplomacy. Emerging economies are expected to account for over 50 per cent of global growth over the next five years. Some people view this change in the economic [...]
CHILL OUT FOR PRINCE ON POLAR MISSION March 30, 2011 COLD comfort for Prince Harry, who has arrived at Base Camp at Svalbard in Norway to join the Walking for Wounded team before they set off for the North Pole tomorrow on April Fool’s Day. But Harry’s training regime under expedition leader Inge Solheim is no joke – on Wednesday he spent the day cross-country [...]
Peking over the top of China’s Great Currency Wall March 29, 2011 THOUGH there is constant talk of China’s rise, currency investors often find themselves frustrated by the apparent wall between them and the Chinese currency. However that doesn’t mean that those wishing to take a position on China’s currency, the renminbi (RMB) are without options. On first inspection, the Chinese currency seems as rigidly controlled as [...]
Heron Tower rent hunt hots up as McDermott moves in March 27, 2011 US LAW firm McDermott Will & Emery becomes the first tenant to move into the Heron Tower on Bishopsgate today, kicking off a new round of marketing to fill the remaining 37 floors. McDermott is moving into the eighth and ninth floors of the 46-storey skyscraper, taking 25,000 square feet of space for a rumoured [...]
THE TIPSTER March 27, 2011 LAST week’s budget certainly gave a fillip to the construction industry. The sector has hardly had an easy ride since the free-flow of credit dried up in 2008, but with some of the froth knocked out of the market, progress seems to have been emerging in recent months. Housebuilder Bellway will be releasing its interims [...]
Stanley Gibbons launches online trading site March 25, 2011 Stanley Gibbons said that it is planning to trade online while wealthy Chinese stamp collectors have helped to boost its profit. The stamp specialist will launch an online trading platform early Autumn 2011. There will be a charge to use it for buying and selling, so creating revenue for the historic firm. Overall sales in [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING March 24, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES BARCLAYS AT CENTRE OF LIBOR INQUIRY Barclays is emerging as a key focus of the US and UK regulatory probe into alleged rigging of benchmark interbank lending rates that are the reference point for $350,000bn in financial products, people familiar with the investigation said. Investigators are probing whether communications between the bank’s traders [...]
Look east for high ISA returns with a fund invested in Asia March 23, 2011 Despite interest rates that are no match for inflation, savers still fail to make full use of their ISA allowance. However, if they are saving for the long-term, and are prepared to deal with volatility in the short-term, they might be better off using their ISA allowance to invest in an Asian exposed fund instead. [...]
Tea total: a new brew sensation March 23, 2011 WHAT do the credit crunch, European leveraged capital markets and looseleaf tea have in common? The answer is Ajit Madan, who left his job at Societe Generale when the credit crunch rendered his slice of the pie a mere shadow of its former self, to follow his entrepreneurial dreams. “It was a part of the [...]