WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING July 1, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES Esma probes agencies’ views on banks The pan-European markets regulator has launched a probe into the way the big three credit rating agencies evaluate banks to determine if the process is sufficiently rigorous and transparent, its chairman Steven Maijoor told the Financial Times. The European Securities and Markets Authority has begun inspecting Standard [...]
NEED TO KNOW | AREA INSIGHT June 28, 2012 TRANSPORT Guildford is located within easy commuting distance of London but sits next to the rolling countryside so many City workers crave at the weekend. Guildford mainline station offers a frequent train service to London Waterloo taking approximately 35 minutes. A season ticket will cost £890 for three months or just over £3,000 for a [...]
Niall Ferguson warns on London’s possible fall June 27, 2012 The historian who wrote a book entitled The Ascent of Money yesterday warned that London faces a fairly rapid descent from its platform as the world’s leading financial centre unless it quickly improves its infrastructure. Niall Ferguson, the well-known history professor at Harvard University, said that infrastructure improvements, such as public transport, and in particular [...]
DMGT sells its print works site to British Land June 27, 2012 THE DAILY MAIL & General Trust (DMGT) said yesterday it has sold its printing works site at London’s Canada Water to British Land for an undisclosed sum. Analysts estimate the Daily Mail owner to have pocketed around £12m to £14m for the site. The deal will see British Land acquire the newspaper group’s freehold and [...]
RAPID RESPONSES June 27, 2012 Hester is not RBS [Re: Useless PR has turned NatWest’s woes into a corporate nightmare, yesterday] Having gone through James Hutchinson’s piece on the RBS computer failures, I was very surprised that all his attacks were directed on the person of Stephen Hester rather than the bank itself. I believe Hester has handled the situation [...]
OLYMPICS BY NUMBERS June 27, 2012 10.8m ticketholders (8.8m Olympic, 2m Paralympic). 200,000 people in the workforce. Including 6,000 staff, 70,000 volunteers and 100,000 contractors. 1500 UK firms have won over £6.3bn of Olympic Development Authority contracts. LOCOG has awarded a further £1bn. 118 overseas teams have signed pre-games training camp agreements in communities across the UK. 1m pieces of sport [...]
Regulatory hurdles for the UK financial sector to consider June 27, 2012 THE Olympics Delivery Authority (ODA) predicts 20m trips by spectators during London 2012, including some 3m on the busiest day. The resulting inevitable transport chaos is prompting businesses and employees to look closely at how best to keep operating efficiently, in particular working from home. Many financial services sector staff work in Docklands and the [...]
Upbeat outlook as Stagecoach grows revenue June 26, 2012 STAGECOACH, one of the UK’s biggest bus and coach operators, said yesterday it was confident about the coming 12 months, despite a 1.5 per cent dip in pre-tax profits to £202.5m. Revenues rose eight per cent to £2.6bn, helped by a strong financial performance at its London bus services. But its East Midlands rail franchise [...]
London 2012 will be most expensive Olympics ever June 25, 2012 LONDON 2012 is set to be the most expensive Olympics to date with a projected cost of £8.4bn, according to a report released yesterday. Researchers at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School say this equates to a 101 per cent overrun compared to the original budget of just £4.2bn in 2005. But Professor Bent [...]
It is crazy that high speed rail will fail to integrate with our airports June 25, 2012 THE Government has got High Speed Two (HS2) wrong. As one of the architects of Britain’s first high speed railway, HS1 – connecting London with the Channel Tunnel – I am in a unique position to write this. Whatever the truth behind the rumours and denials that the project is to be abandoned, the focus [...]