RBS AXES 500 MORE STAFF September 27, 2010 ROYAL Bank of Scotland (RBS) will shed up to 500 jobs from its investment banking arm, it announced to staff yesterday. City A.M. understands the redundancies – most of which will affect London-based employees – will be in the bank’s backroom departments with its IT and marketing departments likely to be most affected . Client-facing [...]
Price of gold could hit $1,500 September 27, 2010 THE price of gold could reach record highs of up to $1,500 (£949) an ounce in the next twelve months delegates at the London Bullion Market Association (LMBA) annual conference said yesterday. The majority of delegates saw the price of gold rising to $1,406 an ounce by September next year but 32 per cent of [...]
GOVERNANCE TRAINSPOTTERS GET KNICKERS IN A TWIST OVER FLINT September 27, 2010 IT’S been a tiring week for HSBC, which is currently juggling the handling of a full-scale management game of musical chairs, the fallout from its leaky succession-planning AND a band of disgruntled sticklers for corporate governance among its shareholder base. So it’ll come as a welcome surprise for the bank to learn that a conservative [...]
Wal-Mart set to offer $4bn for Massmart September 27, 2010 WAL-MART is in talks to buy South Africa’s Massmart, in a $4bn (£2.52bn) deal that would give the US retailer a big presence in fast-growing Africa and boost its emerging markets strategy. Wal-Mart has made a non-binding proposal of 148 rand (£13) per Massmart share, valuing it at around 30 billion rand (£2.7bn), a premium [...]
The Square Mile’s retail revolution September 27, 2010 IN the thrust and frenzy of City life, it’s crucial to have somewhere you can take yourself for a bit of quiet repose, if only while you wolf down a sandwich at lunchtime. Problem is, such spaces are rather thin on the ground in the Square Mile – but in a month’s time, one of [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING September 26, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES GOLD SALES AT EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANKS DRAW TO HALT Europe’s central banks have all but halted sales of their gold reserves, ending a run of large disposals each year for more than a decade. The central banks of the eurozone plus Sweden and Switzerland are bound by the Central Bank Gold Agreement, which [...]
Banks threatening to quit UK over new plans September 26, 2010 FOR SOME time now, the City of London has warned of a “tipping point” – a point in time where the benefits of being based in the UK no longer outweigh the tax and regulatory burden. Many commentators have dismissed this warning as an empty threat from an industry looking for a return to the [...]
David Ross considers dismantling debt-laden property firm Kandahar September 26, 2010 THE CO-FOUNDER of Carphone Warehouse is set to break up his property empire and dispose of debt-laden assets, according to reports yesterday. David Ross has hired property consultants Jones Lang LaSalle and Cushman &Wakefield to advise on the options for his Kandahar Group retail property company, reported the Sunday Telegraph. Neither company could confirm the [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS September 26, 2010 Barclays Leigh Clifford, the chairman of Qantas Airways, is to step down from his role as a non-executive on the Barclays board at the end of the month. Clifford joined the bank’s board in October 2004. In addition to his position at Qantas, he is also a director of engineering giant Bechtel Group and a [...]
WORLD’S RICHEST RACK UP THE BILLIONS September 23, 2010 GOOD times are rolling back, steadily and surely, if the latest Forbes rich list is anything to go by. Amid all the doom and gloom last year, well over three quarters of the 400 billionaires on the list saw their wealth tank, with almost $40bn (£25bn) draining out of the coffers of the top ten. [...]