City A.M.’s bumper Budget preview March 17, 2014 As chancellor George Osborne gets ready to unveil the penultimate budget before the general election, we've pulled together all the expected announcements, and what others are hoping for. Deficit Due to the scale of the budget deficit Ernst & Young believe the chancellor has little room for manoeuvre in terms of giveaways. While the Office [...]
Wishes and predictions for Osborne’s budget March 17, 2014 ■ EY suggests there is little room for the chancellor to make big changes, given the spending constraints he has set for the Treasury, and that the OBR’s adjustments will be small. ■ However, the big four accounting firm expects George Osborne to make a move on the top rate of stamp duty, raising the [...]
Jimmy Choo steps towards £1bn flotation as London markets fly March 17, 2014 THE OWNER of luxury shoe designer Jimmy Choo is mulling plans for a £1bn public listing in London to tap the capital’s booming stock market. Bankers are understood to have approached its owners, Labelux, to explore plans to find external capital for the firm’s aggressive expansion plans, with an offering of about 20 per cent [...]
City Moves for 14 March 2014 | Who’s switching jobs March 13, 2014 Ashcourt Rowan The asset management firm has hired Chris Legge as head of intermediary services. He was most recently at Brewin Dolphin, where he was intermediary business development manager. Prior to that, Legge held roles at Gerrard Investment Management. KPMG The professional services firm has announced two appointments. Navdeep Arora will lead its insurance strategy [...]
City Moves for 12 March 2014 | Who’s switching jobs March 11, 2014 MHA MacIntyre Hudson The accounting firm has announced the appointment of Sarah Jarvie as a manager in its restructuring and recovery team. She has over 15 years’ experience, and was most recently at KPMG. PwC The professional services firm has appointed two data analytics partners to its financial services risk and regulation team. Nick Bouch joins [...]
High street hit by bad weather as shoppers turn to the web March 10, 2014 RETAILERS recorded a small rise in total sales in the year to February, up 0.7 per cent from the same month in 2013, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and KPMG. The data, released today, suggest that while total sales were up marginally, like-for-like transactions fell by one per cent in comparison to February [...]
Three things you didn’t know about… March 10, 2014 Senior Partner at KPMG Kevin Smith 1 Kevin used to be a drugs officer in HMRC – he joined as a junior and “went straight into the drugs cruise.” He used to take boats to pieces and put them back together again to try and find drugs. 2 He has a 1ft high zombie gnome [...]
Recruiters cheer soaring pay for jobs in London March 6, 2014 MORE recruiters in London are reporting rising salaries for newly advertised jobs than at any point in the last six and a half years, suggesting that a rapidly firming labour market is finally starting to drive up wages. Only three per cent of consultancies said that starting salaries were falling during February, against 28 per cent [...]
New UK car sales are showing few signs of braking March 6, 2014 BRITISH motorists kept buying new cars in February, industry data out yesterday showed. Registrations rose three per cent on a year ago to 68,736 cars. February is a traditionally quiet month for car purchases ahead of the new year’s number plates being released in March. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has forecast a [...]
Most British motorists wouldn’t use a driverless car March 4, 2014 The Geneva Motor Show opens today, bringing with it the car industry’s latest attempts to show off driverless vehicles – but British motorists look unlikely to adopt the new technology any time soon. Swiss firm Rinspeed is exhibiting the XchangE, a concept car based on the Tesla Model S that allows passengers to sit facing [...]