Lehman lawyers in attempt to claw back $10m from BarCap November 17, 2009 LAWYERS representing Lehman Brothers have filed a $10bn (£5.9bn) court case against Barclays Capital over assets transferred during Lehman’s bankruptcy. Alvarez and Marsal, the consultancy hired after Lehman filed for insolvency, wants to claw back ‘windfall’ profits it claims BarCap received after buying the New York group. Lawyers say the contract agreed in September 2008 [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING November 12, 2009 FINANCIAL TIMES NATIONAL EXPRESS FACES EUROSTAR BILLNational Express could be saddled with a bill of up to £32m to cover losses made by Eurostar, the cross-Channel rail service. The indebted transport group, which gives up its lossmaking East Coast rail franchise tonight, is the leading shareholder in a consortium that manages the UK end of [...]
More pain for restaurants as firms cut back on Christmas November 12, 2009 THE number of restaurants falling into insolvency is set to rise again next year after one of the quietest corporate Christmases on record. The industry’s woes over the financial crisis have been well publicised by the difficulties experienced by the UK’s celebrity chefs. Gordon Ramsay revealed earlier this year that his restaurant empire had teetered [...]
CHOOSING SURVIVAL OVER LITIGATION November 11, 2009 MARCUS MCCAFFREYPARTNER, FORENSIC SERVICES, BAKER TILLY WHERE previous recessions have seen problems of funding, this time round global financial liquidity has shrunk to unprecedented levels. There are still few re-financing options and what is available is only on offer to those entities with strong balance sheets or guarantees. One result of this is that international [...]
DIRECTORS: PREPARE FOR INSOLVENCY November 10, 2009 JULIAN TURNERPARTNER, REED SMITH LAST week the Insolvency Service released its statistics for the third quarter, showing that the number of company insolvencies – including liquidations, administrations and receiverships – were slightly lower than they were for the second quarter of the year, but significantly higher than for the same period in 2008. There were [...]
CFOs still trust bankers November 10, 2009 INVESTMENT banks may have lost the trust of their clients, but bankers themselves have managed to maintain client confidence and loyalty, according to a new survey. More than a quarter of chief financial officers, treasurers and mergers and acquisitions bosses quizzed said they had lost trust in the banks, mainly due to fears of insolvency. [...]
A Tobin tax would destroy London without making the world safer November 8, 2009 It is imperative that Gordon Brown’s proposals to levy a Tobin tax on financial transactions be defeated. Such a tax would be a disaster: it would endanger Britain’s economic interests and do nothing for ordinary taxpayers or the stability of the financial system. Championing such a scheme reflects a failure to engage with the real [...]
Personal insolvency on the rise November 5, 2009 The Insolvency Service is today expected to reveal that the number of people filing for personal insolvency in the third quarter of the year topped 30,000 for the second successive quarter as rising unemployment takes its toll on individuals’ bank accounts. Louise Brittain, a partner at Deloitte, said: “This figure is staggering, and unfortunately the [...]
Car sales get a boost from scrap scheme November 5, 2009 THE government’s “cash-for-bangers” sweetener scheme helped boost new car sales by nearly a third last month, compared to the same time last year. The incentive programme contributed to a 32 per cent rise in new car sales to 168,942 in October against 128,352 a year ago – the fourth monthly increase in a row and [...]
The long arm of US litigation is reaching over the Atlantic October 27, 2009 A COURT case launched in New York this month by shareholders from England, France and the Netherlands against French media company Vivendi, alleging fraud, has struck fear into European executives worried that they too might find themselves on the receiving end of US litigation. It is rare for the American courts to allow foreign shareholders [...]