Lloyds of London to spend £300m on new solvency rules January 26, 2011 Lloyd’s of London expects to spend £300m preparing for the European Union’s new Solvency II capital rules for insurers, the chairman of the insurance market said. “It’s a huge task,” said Peter Levene, Lloyd’s of London chairman told Reuters Insider. “It’s costing Lloyds markets just to get ready for Solvency II £300m. It’s a lot [...]
Boparan buys up Northern Foods shares January 25, 2011 BOPARAN Holdings built up its stake in takeover target Northern Foods to 11.4 per cent yesterday, after several large shareholders sold their stakes for Boparan’s 73p per share offer price. Boparan, which made its takeover bid on Friday night, said in a statement it had snapped up 22.4m shares to bring its total to 53.3m. [...]
SKY NEWS BITES THE HAND THAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE FEEDING IT January 24, 2011 SOME puzzling editorial choices have been afoot at Sky News this week. On Sunday, Gordon Brown’s disclosure that he asked the police to look into whether his phone was hacked by the News of the World topped its agenda all day. And yesterday the attack of foot-in-mouth disease that afflicted Sky Sports’ Andy Gray and [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS January 20, 2011 Lloyds Banking Group Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets has promoted Chris Birt to director in its acquisition finance team in London, reporting to Ian Sale. Birt, 33, has eight years of experience at Lloyds Banking Group after joining the corporate banking graduate scheme and has held his current position since 2006. Chris has led and co-led [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS January 19, 2011 Alvarez & Marshal Alvarez & Marsal, the global professional services firm, is expanding its European real estate advisory business in Europe with the appointment of London-based directors, Patrick Anderson and Caspar Vredenbregt. Anderson and Vredenbregt both have over 12 years of experience in real estate development, investment and finance. Prior to joining A&M, Anderson was [...]
Goldman Sachs sees 53 per cent profit fall January 19, 2011 Goldman Sachs has posted a 53 per cent decline in quarterly profit, in part reflecting lower results in fixed-income trading. Fourth-quarter net income after payment of preferred stock dividends totaled $2.23bn (£1.4bn), or $3.79 per share, compared with $4.79bn, or $8.20 a share, a year earlier. Goldman said net revenue fell ten per cent to [...]
CITY VIEWS: DOES LONDON NEED MORE AIRPORT CAPACITY? January 18, 2011 PAUL KNIGHT | LLOYDS “No, I would be against any expansion in the City. It’s already congested in the City and it’s not too much hassle to get to Heathrow. The links there are reasonably efficient as it is.” ANDREW MACEWAN | LORIEN “More capacity would be good. I flew down this morning from Edinburgh to [...]
What the other papers say this morning January 16, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES RBS DIRECTOR TO STEP DOWN FROM BOARD One of the last Royal Bank of Scotland directors to remain on the bank’s board from the days of Sir Fred goodwin is poised to step down from his role. Colin Buchan, 56, a former UBS investment banker who until recently was chairman of RBS’s remuneration [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS January 16, 2011 AllianceBernstein The global investment manager has appointed Wolfgang Kostner (pictured) to its distribution team. Having worked in London for Goldman Sachs Asset Management for nearly ten years in international marketing strategy, Kostner will now be based in Munich in his new role as vice president of strategic marketing and research. He will be concentrating on [...]
Banks support FTSE amid broad-based gains January 11, 2011 LONDON’S FTSE made strong gains today as bank shares surged and sovereign debt fears receded. Athough stocks gave back some of the day’s earlier gains by the market close, the leading index closed closed up 57.73 points or one per cent at 6,014.03. It ended a three-day losing streak and stayed ahead of the 6,000 [...]