What to do if a hedge fund comes looking for your debt May 15, 2011 WITH bank loans tricky for small businesses to get their hands on, staying in the black is becoming more difficult. While this is terribly stressful for entrepreneurs, hedge fund managers are rubbing their hands together with glee. And if the stereotype is anything to go by those nasty chaps are determined to cut themselves a [...]
GREEK DRAMA COULD LEAVE EURO IN LIMBO May 10, 2011 WHAT a difference a week makes. Last Wednesday, euro-dollar at $1.5000 looked inevitable, as rate hikes were the only focus of the market. This week, all eyes are on the debt problems in Greece, as fears about its exit from the euro have the pair trading much closer to the $1.4000 figure. Greece, which appears [...]
Linklaters names Elliott as senior partner May 4, 2011 MAGIC circle law firm Linklaters has said that Robert Elliott (pictured) will be its new senior partner from October, after David Cheyne steps down from his five-year turn in the post. Elliott has been a partner at Linklaters since 1990, having left the partnership at banking and finance specialist Wilde Sapte to join the restructuring [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS April 27, 2011 AZ Electronic Materials Mike Powell will join the board of AZ Electronic Minerals on 1 September as chief financial officer. Powell succeeds the company’s current CFO Ken Greatbatch, who will retire on 31 August after reporting the firm’s half-year results. Powell joins from Nippon Sheet Glass, where he has been group finance director for the [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS April 20, 2011 Barclays Corporate Barclays Corporate has appointed Tan Kah Chye as head of trade and working capital, joining from Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore, where he held the position of global head of trade finance for the past six years. At Barclays, Chye will use his experience in senior trade finance roles in Asia and Europe [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING April 14, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES BOSCH WARNS JAPAN CRISIS WILL SLOW GLOBAL GROWTH The impact of last month’s Japanese earthquake will cut global economic growth by a quarter of a percentage point and could put a big dent in planed increase in car production this year, the head of the world’s largest car parts supplier warned. Franz Fehrenbach, [...]
Retailers at risk of going under are on the increase April 12, 2011 THE NUMBER of retailers at risk of going under shot up for the second consecutive month in March, according to insolvency firm RSM Tenon. The number of companies deemed to be at high risk of insolvency jumped by four per cent in March, compared to the month before, and jumped two per cent compared to [...]
Depositors to get preference April 11, 2011 RETAIL depositors will become banks’ most senior creditors under plans drawn up by the Independent Commission on Banking (ICB). The commission said that it favours introducing a “depositor preference” in the debt hierarchy, “ranking (at least some) depositors above other unsecured creditors in a bank insolvency”. The aim is to minimise the likelihood of a [...]
BANKS’ NEW CAPITAL STRUCTURE April 11, 2011 Q.WHY DOES THE REPORT FOCUS ON LOSS-ABSORBING DEBT? A.Banks hold far more debt than equity. In the financial crisis that debt should have been used to absorb losses, but banks’ complexity made it difficult to decide at the time what should be written off and what should not. Instead, governments were forced to meet all [...]
FACT CHECKER April 7, 2011 “IS SPAIN next?” seemed to be the question on every economist’s lips this week even before Portugal bowed to the inevitable. A Spanish bailout would swamp the current €440bn bailout fund and could take the single currency with it. But there are good reasons to think that the debt contagion will stop short of Madrid. [...]