Peel Hunt staff buyout from KBC completes November 29, 2010 BROKER Peel Hunt has started life as an independent entity after completing a buyout by its staff. The buyout from former owner KBC, a Belgian bancassurance firm, was completed on Friday and values the company at £74m – a third of the £218m KBC bought it for in 2001. Peel Hunt’s employees own 75 per [...]
Munich Re is exposed to €2.4bn of Irish bonds November 29, 2010 Munich Re is exposed to €2.4bn (£2bn) of Irish government bonds – around 1.2 per cent of its total non-linked assets (see chart above). However, exposure to the Irish crisis is not as bad as some feared, according to data from Nomura. Munich Re’s exposure is double the next most exposed insurer, ZFS, which has [...]
Irish insurers in ratings warning November 25, 2010 Five insurers in Ireland have been warned they face downgrades to their credit ratings by Standard & Poor’s following its decision to downgrade Ireland’s sovereign debt. The units are Allianz’s Irish general insurance business and its Worldwide Care business, along with Aviva Insurance Europe, Irish Life Assurance and finally RSA Insurance Ireland. The Irish-based insurers [...]
PERSONAL FINANCE NEWS November 25, 2010 TRYING TO TIME THE MARKET IS COSTLY Research commissioned by Barclays Wealth has revealed that investors’ habit of chasing performance is costing more than one percentage point a year in returns. The study, which analysed fund flows between 1992 and 2009, discovered that market timing decisions by retail investors (when investing in equity mutual funds) [...]
Headhunters make progress in search for new Mecom boss November 22, 2010 MECOM, the pan-European newspaper group, has scotched suggestions that its chief executive David Montgomery is planning to stay on ahead of his scheduled departure in January next year. Montgomery was earlier this year persuaded to step down by dissident shareholders but an improving share price, combined with one of the rebels selling its stake, has [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS November 15, 2010 Barclays Barclays has appointed Paul McNamara (pictured) as MD of insurance and investments to strengthen the bank’s ability to make protection insurance more accessible. McNamara comes from Standard Life, where he was MD for group strategy and corporate finance, before which he was a director of marketing and distribution at HBOS financial services. In another [...]
Prudential sees jump in profit November 10, 2010 Britain’s largest insurer Prudential reported a 17 per cent rise in third-quarter group sales, beating expectations and helped by a pick-up in demand from emerging markets such as Asia. Prudential rivals such as Aviva, faced with slow-growing home markets, have been trying to expand business in Asia where insurance penetration remains low, with under four [...]
FUND MANAGEMENT NEWS November 9, 2010 SVM UNVEILS GLOBAL STOCKPICKING FUND Edinburgh-based SVM Asset Management will launch its first global stockpicking fund called the SVM World Equity Fund. SVM will change the name and objective of the SVM UK Alpha fund to form the new fund and the changes are due to take place, subject to approval, on 1 December. Managed [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS November 4, 2010 Aviva The insurer has hired Helen Hislop as chief financial officer and Patrick Dixneuf as chief operations officer for its European arm, with effect from 1 January. Both will be based in Paris, and will work under EMEA chief executive Andrea Moneta. Hislop replaces Tim Harris, who has moved to Aviva as deputy chief financial [...]
CITY VIEWS: HAVE YOU NOTICED THE RISE IN THE COST OF CLOTHES? November 3, 2010 STUART ESSEX | XL INSURANCE “I don’t think prices have gone up, or at least I haven’t noticed any massive change. There’s a lot of competition between clothes shops in the City, so there tends to be lots of special deals. But I have seen the price of food rising.” PHIL SPRATT | ACCENTURE “Not [...]