CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS January 12, 2012 Association of British Insurers The ABI board has appointed Robert Talbut, chief investment officer of Royal London Asset Management, as chairman of the ABI investment committee. Previously the committee’s deputy chairman, he takes over from Alain Dromer, CEO of Aviva Investors. Talbut is a member of the Listing Authority advisory committee and an alternate on [...]
MARIO’S BEMUSING MUSINGS ON BEAUTY January 11, 2012 THE GREAT Pyramids of Giza? An ugly pile of weirdly-angled rocks. The Statue of Liberty? Just a rusty shard of copper wearing a silly hat. The Colosseum in Rome is still far too paltry a landmark, but at least we’re getting warmer geographically. No, for the human race’s biggest achievement, one must go to Brussels. [...]
KPMG profit for UK falls five per cent January 8, 2012 PROFESSIONAL services firm KPMG is poised to announce a five per cent dip in profit for the UK this morning, despite a revenue lift of seven per cent. In the twelve months to 30 September 2011, profit dropped from £416m to £396m, while revenues rose from £1.6m to £1.7m. The partners’ profitpool fell to £683,000 [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS January 4, 2012 AFREN JP Morgan Cazenove rates the oil and gas company as “overweight” with a target price of 98p after it announced earlier in the week it had achieved an exit rate production level of 55,400 barrels a day, ahead of target. The broker says even at lower production levels Afren is still in a reasonably [...]
Mission: Partially Successful December 22, 2011 Film MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 4 Cert: 12A *** By Steve Dinneen International espionage isn’t a glamorous business. It largely consists of grubby encounters between council members expatriating mundane information about the state of local transport systems. The arrest in New York last year of Russian spy Anna Chapman – who went on to pose for Maxim [...]
WHAT’S ON THIS CHRISTMAS OUR GUIDE TO KEEPING BUSY UNTIL THE NEXT CITY A.M. December 22, 2011 Must-see shows • Slava’s Snowshow is the hottest ticket in town this Christmas. The Russian clowning show with a very big twist has been running for decades but it hasn’t been in London for 15 years. Children and adults alike will be moved and amused by the antics of the cheeky, silent actors with a [...]
Petropavlovsk chief steps down December 20, 2011 Petropavlovsk’s chief executive Pavel Maslovsky has swapped the boardroom for the senate floor, resigning from the Russian gold miner after being appointed a member of parliament in Russia’s far east region of Amur. The region is home to many of the London-listed miner’s key operations. Maslovsky, co-founder of the firm once known as Peter Hambro [...]
Saudi prince buys $300m Twitter stake December 19, 2011 SAUDI Prince Alwaleed has bought a $300m (£193m) stake in social networking company Twitter, leading to speculation that the micro-blogging site is inching closer to a public offering. However, it has been revealed that this transaction will not affect Twitter’s bank balance, as the shares were bought in a secondary purchase from existing stakeholders and [...]
RAPID RESPONSES December 19, 2011 US independence I greatly enjoyed Matt Ridley’s article on shale gas [In America, the shale gas revolution is creating jobs and growth. It can here too, last Thursday]. I believe it to be an important part of the USA’s strategy for becoming self sufficient in energy once more. The implications of America weaning itself off [...]
Banks hit by Vickers as North Korean leader dies December 19, 2011 The FTSE 100 was solid this morning but the festering Eurozone crisis continued to sap confidence in riskier assets and banks were down as the government confirmed that they would be hit with the full impact of the Vickers Report. But the agenda was dominated by the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, sparking [...]