Qantas cuts spending and drops orders June 15, 2011 AUSTRALIA’S Qantas Airways will slash spending by A$700m (£459m) and plans to cancel aircraft orders as it battles waning demand, soaring fuel costs and investor displeasure, with its shares trading near multi-year lows. Qantas, which suffered a blow to its reputation after an Airbus A380 accident last year forced it to ground its flagship aircraft, [...]
Inflation hits the poor and pensioners June 13, 2011 INFLATION is harming the UK’s poor and pensioners more severely than people on higher incomes, research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) revealed today. The figures compound worries about further hikes in household energy prices, which will see those on lower incomes holding back on heating their homes, the report warned. Domestic fuel costs [...]
Bellway upbeat as home sales and orders rise June 10, 2011 House developer Bellway has posted a better than expected view of its market, describing its spring selling as “healthy”. Its average home unit sales rate was 111 properties per week in the four months to the end of May, up nine per cent on the same period in 2010. Average selling prices were up four [...]
Dovish Bank holds rates again June 9, 2011 THE Bank of England is increasingly expected to anchor interest rates at their historic low for the duration of 2011, prompting lenders to slash the interest on fixed rate mortgages. Two-year fixed rate loans dipped to their lowest cost since the beginning of the year yesterday as Bank rate was held at 0.5 per cent [...]
Inflating away the UK’s national debt June 9, 2011 ONCE again, the Bank of England chose to keep interest rates on hold yesterday. It is now looking like it won’t be raising rates until next year at the earliest. Forget about strict inflation targeting; its new policy appears to be to keep monetary policy as loose as possible for the foreseeable future, as long [...]
Interest rates to stay at 0.5 per cent in June June 9, 2011 Interest rates in the UK will remain on hold at 0.5 per cent for another month, the Bank of England has said. Its decision to hold the ultra-low rate for a 27th month comes after renewed fears over fragility in the UK economy, while concerns over growing inflation have subsided. The decision to hold rates [...]
Fitch to downgrade US if debt repayments missed June 8, 2011 AMERICA could lose its AAA credit rating if the government fails to raise its debt ceiling and subsequently misses interest payments in August, leading ratings agency Fitch warned yesterday. Some Republicans have been flirting with the notion that a brief US default might be an acceptable price to pay if it forces the White House [...]
From Prussia with love: an undercover bond market June 6, 2011 THE demand for covered bonds has been on a steady rise for the last decade. It’s a trend driven both by institutional investors looking to their perceived safety compared to traditional forms of securitisation and their use as collateral in the shoring up of Eurozone credit operations. Covered bonds are typically seen as especially safe [...]
A SECURITISATION COMEBACK GATHERS PACE IN EUROPE June 6, 2011 DURING the global financial crisis, Europe’s securitisation market effectively shut down. But since January there has been a flurry of new issuance, across an ever-widening array of asset classes, some of which had been dormant for years. While the early stages of recovery in 2010 were marked by a narrow focus on transactions backed by [...]
Goldman files subpoenaed by prosecutor June 2, 2011 GOLDMAN Sachs yesterday admitted that it has been subpoenaed by the Manhattan district attorney as part of a US probe into wrongdoing during the financial crisis. The news caused its shares to plunge 3.4 per cent initially, with its peers Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase dropping 1.9 per cent and 2.6 per cent respectively [...]