CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS August 25, 2011 Berenberg Bank The private bank has strengthened its new London private banking operation, launched in January, by appointing Max White as a director to focus on clients in the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the North West. White (pictured) joins from Morgan Stanley, where he spent eight years in the private wealth management [...]
Barnes thrills with English storytelling at its terse best August 24, 2011 THE SENSE OF AN ENDING BY JULIAN BARNES Jonathan Cape, £12.99 IN the past, I have found Julian Barnes – most famously author of Flaubert’s Parrot – less tractable than his contemporaries. If given the choice between Ian McEwan – of whose even-shorter novella On Chesil Beach this book reminds me – or Martin Amis, [...]
Wealth destruction the new normal August 23, 2011 WEALTH preservation is now the name of the game in the West. The challenge, for most people, is not to make more money: it is to try and preserve what they have. Declining equity and property prices, ultra-low interest rates, lowish pay rises, elevated inflation and increasing taxes are combining to squeeze nearly everybody. This [...]
RESTAURATEURS FLOCK TO RENT 1 BISHOPSGATE IN CITY’S DINING BOOM August 22, 2011 IT IS not big enough for the new headquarters of the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority, which requires a capacious 100,000 square feet. But the four vacant office units at 1 Bishopsgate have attracted a “healthy level of interest” from insurance, finance, shipping, software and law firms – even a handful of hedge funds [...]
Balfour Beatty sees profit rise as order book fills August 17, 2011 Infrastructure contractor Balfour Beatty said first-half underlying pretax profit rose four per cent, in line with expectations and lifted by a one-off gain from the sale of investments. The company, which operates in 80 countries and whose projects include the refurbishment of London Blackfriars station and the building of Hong Kong’s West Island metro line, [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING August 16, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES CITIC ARM TO PRESS AHEAD WITH HK LISTING Citic Securities is to go ahead with a planned Hong Kong listing that could raise up to $2bn for the Beijing-based financial services group. Bankers say that the listing is likely to take place by the beginning of September. The decision comes as many other [...]
Office space take-up in the City stays flat August 14, 2011 TAKE-UP of office space in the City remained at its lowest level since 2009 in the last quarter, according to new research by Equipe. There have been no moves to offices larger than 50,000 sq ft in the last six months, with take-up of office space at just 834,000 sq ft, slightly down on the [...]
Stringfellow speaks out on his naked ambition August 14, 2011 ARE you really 100 per cent libertarian?” Peter Stringfellow asks a room of Adam Smith Institute supporters. “I consider myself a libertarian but I do question myself occasionally. I want the freedom to compete, but I don’t necessarily want other people to have the freedom to compete with me.” The audience laughs. He is speaking [...]
Stepping into the property market of the new world order August 11, 2011 WITH debt and financial turmoil gripping the economies of Europe, North America and Japan, it’s not hard to look at the rise of India, China and Singapore and sense a coming shift in global power. Recent headlines have been staggering: last year, David Cameron led the largest British trade delegation to India in living memory, [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING August 10, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES HONG KONG EXCHANGE HIT BY HACKERS Computer hackers forced the Hong Kong stock exchange’s website to crash, prompting the bourse to suspend trading in the shares of seven companies including HSBC and the exchange operator itself. The cyberattack, which deprived investors of important announcements from listed companies, came just hours before Hong Kong [...]