WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING August 1, 2010 THE SUNDAYS The Sunday Telegraph INVESTORS DEMAND ETHICS AUDIT New rules should be introduced that would increase the cost of capital for companies with controversial environmental and human rights records, according to one of Britain’s largest investors. Steve Waygood, chief of sustainability research at Aviva Investors, said: “If companies were forced to publish long-term data [...]
Advisers to Aim companies face fight to retain clients August 1, 2010 COMPETITION for providing financial services to growth companies has been fierce over the past quarter, as firms listed on the Alternative Investment Market (Aim) struggle to keep their costs to a bare minimum in continuing tough market conditions. Law firms, stockbrokers and nominated advisers (Nomads) have all struggled to retain a consistent client base over [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS July 29, 2010 RBC Wealth Management The wealth manager has promoted Philip Harris to the position of head of private client wealth management for the British Isles. Harris has been at the firm since early last year, when he joined to create a domestic wealth management business. He previously founded financial advisory business Scott Goodman Harris, which was [...]
Graduates with chutzpah can find jobs July 28, 2010 IT’S tough out there for graduates. A survey by the Association of Graduate Recruiters found that for every job there are 68.8 applicants, with the number going up to 205 for jobs in food, confectionary and cosmetics. Aldi, the supermarket chain, received 12,000 applications for 50 places on its management scheme. Seventy-eight per cent of [...]
What now? Prepare for the next crisis July 28, 2010 PREDICTING the future can be a notoriously tricky business. If people declare with certainty that things will happen, they often don’t. While things that no one saw coming have a horrible habit of actually happening. The Asian financial crisis in 1997 came as everyone was talking about an “Asian economic miracle”, while the most recent [...]
Lords to quiz Big Four auditors over their role in banking crisis July 27, 2010 THE HOUSE of Lords has launched a wide-ranging review into the role of the Big Four accountants in the financial crisis. The economics affairs committee will probe auditors PwC, Ernst & Young, KPMG and Deloitte over whether they could have done more to alert investors to the risks in the banking system. The review piles [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS July 26, 2010 Deloitte The accountancy giant has appointed Nick Sanderson to head up its real estate corporate finance advisory business. Sanderson joins Deloitte as a partner from Japanese bank Nomura, where he was a managing director and head of real estate investment banking. He has also previously worked at Lehman Brothers and UBS and has 10 years [...]
City doubts over Euro stress test results July 22, 2010 EUROPE’S much-vaunted stress tests have met with deep scepticism in the City ahead of the publication of the results today, with concerns rife that the test criteria will prove too lax to settle anxieties over the health of the region’s banks. Market observers yesterday levelled criticism at the Committee of European Banking Supervisors for watering [...]
Accountants told to step up audit quality July 20, 2010 BRITAIN’S big four accountants were criticised by an independent review this morning for the “disappointing” quality of their audit work. One in ten audits produced by the major firms fell below the proper standards, the Audit Inspection Unit (AIU) said. Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers – along with smaller competitor PKF – were [...]
London shops boom but UK sales stutter July 18, 2010 LONDON shops enjoyed June sales 14.4 per cent higher than a year ago, according to research out today. The shopping boom far outstrips the rest of the UK, where like-for-like growth was just 1.2 per cent, and represents the strongest sales growth in the capital since October 2006. Research by KPMG and the British Retail [...]