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Economics
G20: World leaders at the G20 summit in London pledged to pump $1
trillion into the International Monetary Fund. They also ordered a crackdown
on tax havens and excessive corporate pay as well as a push to encourage
free trade and a sale of IMF gold reserves to help poorer countries.
House prices: Figures from Nationwide Building Society showed that the
average house price rose by 0.9 per cent during March to £150.946. This took
the annual rate of decline to 15.7 per cent, up from the 17.6 per cent
decline reported in February.
Lending: Banks and building societies plan to increase lending to
individuals and businesses in the next three months, a Bank of England
survey showed. Nearly 15 per cent more banks said they expected to see “a
small increase” in lending. But they also forecast a rise in the number of
borrowers defaulting on their repayments.
Construction sector: The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and
Supply/Markit construction purchasing managers’ index rose to 30.9 in March,
from 27.8 in February.
Eurozone interest rates: The European Central Bank cut eurozone
interest rates by a less than expected quarter point to a record low of 1.25
per cent. Jean Claude Trichet, President of the ECB, said he did not rule
out more rate cuts in future months.
US unemployment: The number of American workers filing new claims for
jobless benefits rose last week to its highest level in more than 26 years.
Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits rose by 12,000 to a
seasonally adjusted 669,000 in the week ending March 28, from an upwardly
revised 657,000 the week before. The figure was the highest since October
1982.
Banking
& finance
Norwich Union: The household insurer, owned by Aviva, plans to cut
almost 1,700 jobs in the UK as it nears the end of a three-year cost-cutting
drive. Hundreds of jobs will go in Norwich, where general insurance and the
RAC roadside recovery unit are based, and in York in the life insurance
division.
Swiss Re: The reinsurer plans to cut 10 per cent of its global
workforce of 11,500 to help to reduce costs by SwFr400 million (£244
million) by 2010.
Meinl Bank: Julius Meinl V, the owner of the Austrian private bank, has
been arrested in Vienna on suspicion of offences including breach of trust
and fraud.
UBS: The US Justice Department has brought its first complaint against
an individual as part of its crackdown on clients of UBS who used the Swiss
bank to place money offshore. Steven Rubinstein, a Florida accountant, has
been was accused of filing a false 2007 tax return. UBS has been forced by
the Justice Department to hand over the names of clients who avoided US
taxes.
Royal Bank of Scotland: The part-nationalised banking group will come
under pressure from shareholders to explain why three independent directors
who presided over the bank’s near collapse have remained on the board,
receiving pay of more than £100,000 each.
Serious Fraud Office: Ten senior case officers have left the Serious
Fraud Office with payouts of up to £200,000 each. The total bill could be £2
million.
Construction
& property
Taylor Wimpey: The housebuilder is understood to have reached an
agreement with key eurobond holders that should pave the way for a deal that
will end uncertainty over the company’s future and help it to restructure
its £1.55 billion debt pile.
Treveria: The London-listed property investment group, which used to be
managed by Dawnay, Day Treveria, reported a full-year pretax loss of €283.6
million (£260 million), compared with a profit of €33.6 million last time,
and said that it would not pay a final dividend.
Consumer
goods
US tobacco industry: American politicians voted overwhelmingly to give
the Government unprecedented powers over the US tobacco industry, including
new curbs on marketing tactics and cigarette ingredients.
Anheuser-Busch InBev: Lotte Group, the South Korean retail
conglomerate, has rejoined the bidding for AB InBev’s Oriental Brewery unit
after being briefly ejected from the process.
Engineering
Boeing: The US aerospace group said that it had delivered 121 jetliners
in the first three months of 2009, a 5 per cent rise from last year, despite
weaker demand. Executives say they expect to fulfil all orders scheduled for
2009.
Bombardier: The Canadian aerospace company has cut its workforce in
Belfast by 1,000 after a severe downturn in the private jet market.
Retail Motor Industry Federation: The UK car industry’s retail division
said car sales for March are expected to have fallen by about 28 per cent as
it stepped up its calls for a scrappage scheme to be introduced in Britain.
Health
Elan: The Irish drugs maker and Wyeth, its US partner, are to stop
testing the highest dose of bapineuzumab, their experimental Alzheimer’s
treatment, because of safety concerns. The decision to discontinue the final
stage Phase III studies follows a review of cases of vasogenic edema, or the
build-up of fluid in the brain.
Sanofi-Aventis: The French pharmaceuticals company said it is expanding
in emerging markets by buying Laboratorios Kendrick, the Mexican generic
drugs maker, for an undisclosed sum.
Industrials
BASF: The German chemicals group says it has found a way to prevent
cavity-causing bacteria from attacking teeth, a development that could be
seen in toothpaste, mouthwash and even sweets as early as next year.
Monsanto: The US agricultural biotech group, which focuses on
genetically engineered seed, said that its second-quarter profits were down
by 3.2 per cent to $1.09 billion (£739 million), compared with $1.13 billion
a year ago.
Leisure
Prezzo: The Italian pizza and pasta restaurant chain said the casual
dining market had become more competitive in the economic gloom and warned
that there was unlikely to be an improvement this year. A £7.6 million
write-down on property sent its full-year pre-tax profits to £3.9 million,
compared with £7.7 million last time.
Tourism: Jeremy Hunt, the shadow Culture Secretary, declared that
tourism could generate an extra £22 billion for the economy and create
50,000 jobs if the Government took action to help the industry and simplify
the structure for promoting it.
Southampton Football Club: The club has been formally put up for sale
after its parent called in Begbies Traynor, the administrator.
Media
Maxim: The men’s monthly magazine is to stop printing in Britain and
confine its UK version to the internet, where it still attracts 500,000
visitors a month. Launched in 1995, Maxim was selling 328,000 copies a month
at its 2000 peak, but sales have slumped in recent years and had dipped to
46,000 by the second half of 2008 — a year-on-year fall of 41 per cent.
Shed Media: The television production company behind shows such as
Supernanny credited its “outstanding” performance in the United States for
helping its full-year adjusted pre-tax profits to rise by 46 per cent to
£11.9 million, from £9.9 million in the 16 months to December 31, 2007.
Gross profits from the United States now make up 30 per cent of the group’s
total earnings, from 26 per cent a year earlier.
Natural
resources
ConocoPhillips: The American oil company said that lower prices for oil
and natural gas and significantly lower worldwide marketing margins are
expected to hurt its first-quarter results.
Retailing
Mothercare: The specialist retail chain reported a rise in sales but
said margins will come under pressure from the falling value of sterling.
Like-for-like UK sales rose by 3.7 per cent in the 11 weeks to March 28,
while total international sales surged by 40 per cent.
Dreams: The beds retailer said that total full-year sales had risen by
16 per cent to £194 million, with operating profits up by 18 per cent,
although the privately owned company declined to give like-for-like figures.
Some 30 new stores were opened during 2008 and it said that it plans to open
another 30 in 2009, taking its total to 232.
Booker: The cash-and-carry company, based in Northamptonshire, said it
was planning to open its first store in India as buoyant sales defied a
tough economic backdrop. The group, which counts 4,100 Indian restaurants
and thousands more Indian-owned businesses among its UK customers, will open
the site in Mumbai by the end of the summer. A team from Booker has been
reviewing the Indian market for the past year ahead of the move.
PPR: The French luxury retail group is in exclusive talks with Hugues
Mulliez about the possible sale of Surcouf, the computer and technology
equipment shops. Mr Mulliez is the founder of the Young’s chain for IT
products. Surcouf has five shops and a website which receives 1.5 million
hits per month. It employs 700 people.
Support
Services
Hexagon Human Capital: Shares in the executive recruitment group fell
heavily after it warned that its executive search business had struggled
during the second half of the year and that offer talks for the company had
been terminated.
Technology
Nortel: The Canadian maker of telecoms equipment announced that it was
launching software which could save mobile phone operators up to a third in
energy and cost savings. Nortel said it had tested the software during
February with China Mobile Communications, the world’s largest mobile
operator.
Morse: The London-listed IT group said that it has appointed Guy
Millward as group finance director. He joins from Kewill, where he held the
same post.
Telecoms
Global telecoms: Industry leaders said that the global telecoms
industry can help the world out of recession by creating 25 million jobs
over the next five years, if regulation becomes less intrusive and if it
gets the spectrum it needs. In an appeal to the G20 summit in London, the
signatories say they are prepared to spend $550 billion (£374 billion) to
build mobile broadband networks, boosting global GDP by between 3 per cent
to 4 per cent over five years.
Vodafone: Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank, has added shares in
the London-listed mobile phone group, based in Berkshire, to its “conviction
buy” list, while cutting its recommendation on Telefónica, Vodafone’s
Spanish rival, to “sell”.
Ofcom: The telecoms regulator said that mobile phone companies
operating in Britain must cut the rates they charge each other for
connecting calls to their networks by up to 21 per cent in real terms.
Transport
Aer Lingus: The Irish airline said that it had seen a surge in bookings
during March to a monthly record of more than one million passengers.
Association of European Airlines: The industry body said that passenger
traffic on European airlines had fallen by nearly 5 per cent in the first
two months of the year and could decline by another 10 per cent in March as
the economic downturn continues. Airlines had cut back their flights as
demand slumped, but not quickly enough to avoid financial loss, the
association said.
Utilities
National Grid: The energy network operator said that the recession is
likely to cut gas demand by about 6 per cent during the next six months,
compared with last year.
