WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING August 3, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES BARCLAYS OFFLOADS LOANS IN STRUGGLING CONNAUGHT Lenders to Connaught have started selling their loans to the company, in a sign of their concern about the state of the embattled social housing maintenance group. Barclays, one of Connaught’s syndicate of banks, which is led by Royal Bank of Scotland, on Monday night sold its [...]
WHEAT PRICES SURGE August 2, 2010 WHEAT prices hit a two-year high yesterday of $7.11 (£4.47) a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade as worsening weather continues to ravage Russia’s grain crops and heavy rains in Pakistan are estimated to have destroyed 15 per cent of that country’s crop. Wheat prices soared 42 per cent in July, the biggest monthly [...]
Silver lining for Great Britain after securing best-ever Euro medal haul August 1, 2010 GREAT BRITAIN’S athletes swept to treble medal success in Barcelona last night to secure their best-ever return at a European Championships. Martyn Rooney led home the men’s 4x400m relay team to silver in the final event of the championships, taking the medal tally to 19 over the five days, one more than achieved in Split [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING July 29, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES LI KA-SHING PAYS £5.8BN FOR UK UTILITY EDF of France is set to sell its UK electricity networks business to Cheung Kong Infrastructure of Hong Kong for £5.8bn, 45 per cent more than the price originally suggested for the deal, according to a person close to the negotiations. The state-controlled French electricity group [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING July 28, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES ICBC SAYS IT WILL RAISE £4.26BN Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world’s largest lender by market value, said yesterday it planned to raise up to £4.26bn in a rights issue in Hong Kong and Shanghai to shore up its capital base. The rights issue is the latest in a string of [...]
PIMCO’S GROSS LOWERS THE TONE WITH A TOUCH OF TOILET HUMOUR July 28, 2010 FULL marks to Pimco managing director Bill Gross, who has excelled even his own high standards of witty repartee in his latest Investment Outlook newsletter. The most recent missive is dedicated to none other than the humble toilet – more specifically, the advent of electronic “eye” sensors in place of a manual flushing system. “It’s [...]
Russia plans $29bn state asset sell-off July 28, 2010 RUSSIA plans to sell $29bn worth of assets on the open market, a senior government official said yesterday, allaying investors fears about the transparency of the biggest privatisation since the 1990s. The planned asset sale is designed to fill budget holes that Russia is to battle for the next few years. “We will sell significant [...]
Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse snap up stakes in Bank of Moscow July 27, 2010 MAJOR international banks Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse have bought small stakes in state-run Bank of Moscow, an encouraging sign for Russia as it considers a broader sale of the state’s financial assets. As part of a $29bn (£18.6bn) fund-raising effort to plug gaps in the budget, Russia is looking at the sale of minority [...]
FUND MANAGEMENT NEWS July 27, 2010 HEDGE FUND REVIEW IS LESS THAN ROSY The Dow Jones Credit Suisse Hedge Fund Index released its first half 2010 industry review yesterday and it was fairly sober reading. The good news was that, so far in 2010, hedge funds have outperformed many global stock indices. However, the returns were far from lacklustre at 0.6 [...]
Red Knight’s bid for United may go ahead July 25, 2010 A BID to wrest control of Manchester United could be back on after a fans’ campaign against its American owners appears to have taken hold. The club was forced to humiliatingly offer a second batch of season tickets more than seven weeks after the initial deadline. Around 4,000 tickets were put on general sale by [...]