LONDON | The UK’s trade body of financial mutuals AFM is not happy. The organisation this week launched a frontal attack against taxpayer-aided listed banks and their directors’ bonuses. Who could blame them? After all, in the City race, mutual insurers, friendly societies and others have lost most ground: for instance, the sector’s insurance services today represent around 6% of the British market, while their share stood at over 50% just 15…
LONDON | Spanish president Mariano Rajoy stepped on to Downing Street but talked instead to the City of London. It will not be the last time that this happens. The shift in the UK’s relationship with most European Union country members should be a troubling sign of the declining power Whitehall and the Houses of Parliament retain amid one of the most crude economic downturns seen in some decades. Then…
LONDON | Andrew Cole, director at Baring Asset Management announced this week that the investment firm has expanded its purchase programme of Italian debt. Baring believes that European Central Bank interventions in the markets, improving liquidity available to European financial entities, have proven to act as a barrier against higher risk trends. Mr Cole said that euro zone economic forecasts look gloomy this year and will possibly remain weak in 2012,…
LONDON | PAVE Platform on Wednesday announced the suspension of its plans for an ultra-fast marketplace focusing on Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American listed equities and ETFs. The Spanish equity market is one of the few major markets in Europe where deregulation and increased competition have yet to arrive and the Barcelona-based project’s aim was to bring in competition. The lack of capital resources, though, has forced it to admit defeat,…
LONDON | Will Moody’s tear out the British triple-A badge before those precautionary 18 months go? If the rationale of the warning issued by the financial risk ratings agency to the Coalition government is that the European neighbourhood may in the near future find even harder to charm investors and so will drag the island’s economy with them towards deeper recession, then the top award became meaningless long ago. Markets know this, but still,…
LONDON | Even those who in principle appear at ease before the Bank of England’s new printing money operation have had but an apathetic attitude. The bank’s Monetary Policy Committee voted this week to increase the size of its asset purchase programme, financed via issuance of central bank reserves, by £50 billion –to a grand yet still temporary total of £325 billion– and friends, and foes, saw it coming without quite seeing…
LONDON | For all the sovereign chin-ups the British prime minister David Cameron draws in every occasion he finds himself summoned to Brussels and Sarkozy’s financial transaction tax is mentioned, the savings gained in the name of the City of London would amount to just €8 billion. Mr Cameron and his euro sceptic troops, barricaded behind a loud sector of the British society too prone to vent their frustration over…
LONDON | Sentiment among the UK’s small and medium-sized manufacturers fell for the third quarter running in the three months to January, as output stagnated and orders decreased against a backdrop of heightened economic and political uncertainty, the CBI said. Of the 350 respondents to the CBI’s latest quarterly SME Trends Survey published on Monday, 26% said output rose while 25% said that it fell, and the resulting balance of +1%…
A curated selection of links we hope can enlighten us all; some come from our corner, some do from other corners of the net. And as always, our comment widgets are anxious to get your suggestions. UK, could you just cut the banker-pay drama and legislate like Spain? New York sues banks that used electronic system for fraud over mortgages Is insider-trading crackdown the cause of hedge fund’s poor results? Why…
LONDON | Lloyds TSB, the 40pc taxpayer-owned British bank, wondered how much savings UK families have and how this compare to Germany and China. Its researchers came up with some answers: the British household savings ratio (saving proportion of a consumer’s disposable income) has seen a steep downward trend over the past decade, in contrast with the other two countries. The results from Lloyds new survey were set alongside numbers…