Barclays bonuses cut by £450m February 27, 2013 Sky News reports that Barclays will be reducing its staff bonus pool by £450m. This comes as a result of the Libor-rigging scandal, and is in excess of the £291m fines imposed by US and UK regulators. Barclays will still award £1.8bn in bonuses to staff. This has not yet been confirmed by Barclays. The [...]
Did the UK’s double-dip happen? February 27, 2013 Sky's Ed Conway has looked more closely at the ONS' re-estimate of GDP for the first quarter of 2012. The present estimate shows a contraction of only -0.083 per cent. Ed notes that re-estimates are common practice: The ONS continuously updates its estimates of economic growth in previous years as new, more comprehensive data flows in. [...]
Hungary enough to eat a horse February 26, 2013 A watchdog has now found horse masquerading as beef in Hungary, as near daily revelations start to give a picture of the scale of this continent-wide mislabelling scandal. Data from Kantar today showed that sales of frozen burgers in the UK are down 43 per cent in the four weeks to February 17, and frozen [...]
Berlusconi projected to seize Senate win February 25, 2013 Senate projections are in: Rai: Berlusconi 31 per cent, Bersani 29.5 per cent, Grillo 25.1 per cent, Monti 9.6 per cent Sky: Berlusconi 31 per cent, Bersani 29.7 per cent, Grillo 26 per cent, Monti 8.2 per cent The euro heads back down against the dollar: (Source: Yahoo! Finance) The [...]
Italian markets positive as voting closes February 25, 2013 Voting has closed in Italy, and Sky has released instant polls (not exit polls) that show the centre-left clearly in the lead as we predicted earlier: Bersani 34.5 per centBerlusconi 29 per centGrillo 19 per centMonti 9.5 per cent While the outcome is not yet certain and will largely depend on voting in Lombardy, markets [...]
Private equity firm Doughty mulls listing cable ties maker February 24, 2013 CABLE ties manufacturer HellermannTyton yesterday emerged as the latest company to be eyeing a float on the London Stock Exchange this year. Doughty Hanson, the private equity firm which acquired HellermannTyton in 2005 for around £300m, has hired Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to work on the listing, Sky News reported yesterday. The news comes [...]
Yarde miles better than England star Ashton, insists Exiles coach February 24, 2013 LONDON Irish boss Brian Smith insists wing Marland Yarde is better than Chris Ashton and should be playing for England after he lifted London Irish away from the Aviva Premiership drop with a 30-19 win over London Wasps. Fellow England wing hopeful Christian Wade crossed in the first half to cancel out a Shane Geraghty [...]
Competition body slams audit firms February 22, 2013 THE COMPETITION Commission will this morning find that the Big Four accountancy firms have too much control over the industry, and call for measures to encourage Britain’s largest companies to change auditor regularly to boost competition. In its long-awaited provisional report, the commission is expected to find no evidence of collusion, but will raise concerns [...]
London’s new issues market is thawing, but slowly February 22, 2013 Not so long ago I asked an investment banker in London how long he and his colleagues had deliberated before deciding to float a Salford-based materials technology company called Luxfer in New York. “About 30 seconds,” he said, quickly and pointedly. But then this was October last year and the new issues market in London [...]
Plans to force firms to switch auditors don’t go far enough February 21, 2013 BANKS, ratings agencies, now auditors: the firing line of financial sub-industries being dragged kicking and screaming into a post-crisis world continues to lengthen. As soon as tomorrow, the Competition Commission will pave the way for an overhaul of the Big Four accountants with a proposal to enforce mandatory rotation of their major audit clients at [...]