City Moves for 15 May 2014 | Who’s switching jobs May 14, 2014 Deloitte Real Estate Deloitte Real Estate has appointed two senior consultants to its real estate sustainability team. Jack Wang (right) specialises in building energy data analytics and modelling, strategy and management. He joins from the National Energy Foundation. Nick Hogg has over seven years’ property sustainability experience, and previously worked in the upstream sustainability services [...]
Focus on: Pharma bosses face MPs over merger May 13, 2014 Day one of the select committee hearing on Pfizer’s planned takeover of Astrazeneca threw up questions on everything from job guarantees to the Takeover Code and Ian Read’s bizarre gold decision coin. Here’s what you need to know. IAN READPfizer chairman and chief executive I have not seen Astrazeneca’s books. Some things are sight-unseen. But the [...]
Job cuts in the City: A case study in political double standards May 8, 2014 IT’S amazing how fashions change. Just a few years ago, prior to the financial crisis, Big Pharma was demonised. It could do nothing right, and was blamed for many of the world’s ills. At the very same time, banks were lionised and lauded as the new saviours of the economy, with Alex Salmond, the leader [...]
MPs slam plan to raid accounts May 8, 2014 PLANS to let HMRC recover tax debts from anyone who owes more than £1,000 by reaching into their bank accounts were hit with criticism today. The Treasury Select Committee said that the new powers, outlined in last month’s Budget, were excessive and potentially illegal. Chair Andrew Tyrie MP said the powers were “concerning” adding: “Some [...]
Why MPs need to vote against the expensive folly that is HS2 April 28, 2014 TRAIN and tube lines are vital for London. Most people commute by rail, and projects like Crossrail or the Northern Line extension will do a huge amount of good. We need even more of them – Crossrail II sounds sensible – and to make sure that they are financed privately to minimise the burden on [...]
Buyers on the hunt for riskier big mortgages April 23, 2014 MORE than a quarter of prospective home buyers are now chasing riskier large mortgages, according to research released today, suggesting that announcements about the controversial Help to Buy scheme have driven the interest. According to Mortgage Advice Bureau (MAB), 27 per cent of house hunters are now looking to pay out less than a 10 [...]
Taxman ramps up probes into gift aid claims April 21, 2014 HM Revenue & Customs probed more than a thousand charities for their gift aid tax relief claims in the last financial year, double the number it examined in 2011-12, according to figures out today. The taxman looked into 1,057 claims compared to 510 in the previous year, statistics published by accountancy firm Wilkins Kennedy showed. [...]
What the other papers say this morning – 16 April 2014 April 15, 2014 FINANCIAL TIMES Market troubles dent Moelis flotation Boutique investment bank Moelis raised $163m from its US initial public offering after last-minute investor concerns forced it to shrink the size of its share sale and cut the price of the deal below its expected range. The IPO is the latest to come under pressure on the [...]
G4S wins new contract from HMRC April 15, 2014 Outsourcing firm G4S yesterday said it has won a £4m contract to provide facilities management services to three regional HMRC tax offices. The deal comes just a week after a ban was lifted on the firm bidding for public sector work in the wake of the prisoner tagging scandal. The three year contract with the [...]
Ukraine fatally weakened by failure to embrace real capitalism April 14, 2014 IN the dreadful communist days, Ukraine and Poland used to be equally poor. The former was part of the Soviet Union, and Poland was one of the USSR’s satellite nations, belonging to the Warsaw pact. In 1990, both countries had roughly the same GDP per capita – their economies were eerily similar. A quarter of [...]