Upbeat banking earnings bonanza predicted this week, as analysts forecast revenue bump for JP Morgan January 8, 2017 All eyes will be on Wall Street later this week, as the US' banking behemoths get set to reveal their fourth quarter, and latest full-year, results. JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and Bank of America are scheduled to be the first out of the gate, as the trio are due to deliver their results on Friday 13 [...]
A new US intelligence report says Russia helped Trump win the US election, but gives little evidence of how January 7, 2017 The Russian government helped Donald Trump win the US election by discrediting his rival Hillary Clinton, US intelligence agencies said in a report released last night. "We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election," the report said. "We further assess Putin and the Russian government developed [...]
Jamie’s Italian to slim down with restaurant closures January 6, 2017 Jamie's Italian is slimming down. The celebrity chef's restaurant group is shutting six of its outlets, which are likely to be sold in the first quarter of this year. The Brexit vote has been weighing on the business, and Jamie's has decided to close the restaurants which aren't getting enough people through the door. Campaign group [...]
A big year, but it won’t Trump 2016’s shocks January 6, 2017 2016's events made fools of most pundits, and looking back at my column exactly a year ago, I fared little better. True, I correctly said that Santander UK would re-engage in an effort to buy Royal Bank of Scotland's Williams & Glyn unit, but I was well wide of the mark arguing that the FTSE-100 [...]
A liberal Brexit means continued EU-UK cooperation – but this time as equals January 6, 2017 Brexit means something remarkably straightforward: at some point before the middle of 2019, the UK will no longer be under the jurisdiction of any EU court or legislature. The fact of our impending departure does not, however, mean cutting ourselves off from Europe. If Brexit is easy to define, the details of what our post-EU relationship [...]
Tullow Oil finance boss to take medical leave January 5, 2017 Ian Springett, the chief financial officer at Africa-focused oil giant Tullow Oil, will take an extended leave of absence from the company in order to undergo treatment for a medical condition, the company said today. Springett will be replaced temporarily by Les Wood, Tullow's vice president of finance and commercial, who joined the company in 2014. The [...]
Is your business ready to cheat Stephen Hawking’s AI prediction? January 5, 2017 Scientist Stephen Hawking: Artificial intelligence research crucial to the human race. Maybe so, but not this year. We are, however, going to witness another step change in the way we do business. Artificial intelligence (AI), big data and the internet of things will move along the hype curve and become everyday life. Game-changing bots will [...]
Make 2017 a year of celebration – not the suffocation of London’s Night Time Economy January 5, 2017 We live in interesting times. This term, actually a Chinese curse, reflects all the hope, possibility and opportunity of a period – as well as the worst that we can imagine from it. What has been “interesting” recently is the overwhelming cultural and political view that the British public is a nasty species that requires [...]
Trading house Vitol nabs $1bn pre-finance oil deal with National Iranian Oil Company January 4, 2017 Vitol, the world's largest oil trader, is understood to have sealed a $1bn (£814m) pre-financing deal with Iran's national oil company. It has agreed to loan the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) $1bn equivalent in euros, guaranteed by future exports of refined oil products, sources told Reuters. The deal is the first major contract signed between Iran and [...]
Former EU ambassador Sir Ivan Rogers “couldn’t be trusted” by ministers says Iain Duncan Smith January 4, 2017 Senior Conservative Iain Duncan Smith has branded Britain's former ambassador to the EU "untrustworthy", a day after his sensational resignation. Sir Ivan Rogers quit yesterday, writing an email to staff which accused the government of “muddled thinking” on Brexit. Speaking on the Today programme this morning, Duncan Smith linked that leaked email to previous reports of Rogers warning [...]