Welcome to today's round-up of business news from The Times: what we're
saying, what they're saying
Top stories
The Times: A skills shortage
at Britain’s main nuclear safety regulator threatens to delay construction
of new reactors.
Telegraph: Plans to allow increased Government borrowings could
see demands for higher wages and strikes.
Reuters: Apple shares fell 10 per cent after it said it did
not expect to meet forecasts for this quarter, despite increasing
profit 30 per cent last quarter.
Comment
Gerard Baker in The Times: It is clear that the financial system is
still desperately fragile but for now, though, doomsday
has been averted - again.
Damian Reece in the Telegraph: Andy Hornby, the chief executive of
HBOS, must become the Scrooge of UK
banking – tightfisted and a kill-joy on growth plans.
Jeremy Gaunt in Reuters: Investors no longer believe emerging markets
can dodge the credit crunch and are
moving back into developed ones.
Upside
The Times: Domino’s, the UK’s biggest pizza delivery company, recorded
a 30 per cent rise in profits as
the middle-classes trade down from restaurants to takeaways.
Reuters: Bank of America profit fell
less than expected last quarter at 41 per cent, and its shares rose 3.9
per cent.
The Times: Barclays and Abbey announced
rate cuts as the cost of an average two-year fixed-rate mortgage fell
below 7 per cent for the first time in weeks.
Downside
The Times: The investment banks underwriting HBOS’s unpopular £4
billion ($8 billion) rights issue took a £100 million ($200 million) paper
loss .
Bloomberg: American Express, the biggest US credit-card company,
reported second-quarter profit fell 37 per cent on rising
consumer defaults .
Telegraph: The General Trading Company, a store favoured by London’s
wealthy young people, or Sloane Rangers, collapsed
into administration .
Mergers and shakers
The Times: Jerry Yang, the chief executive of Yahoo!, averted
a boardroom coup by offering three board seats to Carl Icahn, the
billionaire who had plotted against him.
Bloomberg: Brocade Communications Systems, the world's largest maker of
switches for data-storage networks, will buy
Foundry Networks for $3 billion (£1.5 billion).
Telegraph: Paul Davidson, who recently floated his pipe-fitting company
Fluid Leader on the Plus Market and is known as "The Plumber", has bought
Spanish football club Real Mallorca .
Around Asia
Financial Times: Computer problems forced the Tokyo Stock Exchange to halt
futures trading ; trading in regular shares was as usual.
Bloomberg: Donald Trump Jr plans to set up a fund of as much as $1
billion (£500 million) to buy
property in India .
Reuters: Petrovietnam, Vietnam’s state oil group, and Siam Cement,
Thailand's top industrial conglomerate, will build
a $3.77 billion petrochemical complex in Vietnam’s south.
Look ahead
Bloomberg: Hurricane Dolly is forecast to hit Texas on Wednesday; it initially
pushed oil prices up but they eased because it is expected to miss
production areas.
The Times: Scottish & Southern Energy won approval for Europe's largest
onshore windfarm and will begin construction of the £600 million ($1.2
billion) project this year.
Bloomberg: Markets speculated the Reserve Bank of New Zealand would cut
interest rates on Thursday, pushing its dollar lower against most
currencies.
MARKETS
FTSE 100 5,404.30 up 0.5% (Monday close)
Dow 11,467.34 down 0.3% (close)
S&P 500 1,260.00 down 0.1% (close)
Nasdaq 2,279.53 down 0.1% (close)
Nikkei 12,991.59 up 1.5% (latest)
Hang Seng 22,507.93 down 0.1% (latest)
Currencies
Sterling $2.0018/1.2571 euros (latest)
Euro $1.5924 (latest)
Commodities
West Texas crude $130.64 down 40 cents (latest)
Gold $968.00 down $4.30 (latest)
New York
Reuters: US stocks slipped on
Monday, but dismal results after the bell from a raft of companies set an
uglier tone for Tuesday. In the drug sector, Merck's stock slid 6.2
per cent and Schering-Plough sank 11.6 per cent. Credit card company American
Express saw its shares fall 7 per cent on a poor profit report. In the
technology sector, Yahoo! Lost 3.5 per cent, and Microsoft
fell 0.9 per cent. Bank of America shares rose 3.9 per cent on a
better-than-expected profit report.
Asia
Bloomberg: Asian commodity stocks
rose after metals prices climbed, countering declines in technology
companies. BHP, the world's largest mining company, rose 1.8 per
cent. In Japan, Itochu, which has a stake in Russia's Sakhalin oil
projects, rose 6.3 per cent and Inpex Holdings, Japan's largest oil
and gas explorer, rose 2.1 per cent. Samsung Electronics fell 2.7 per
cent. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index gained 0.5 per cent in morning trade.
Michael Beh
michaelwbeh@gmail.com
London
Sir Martin Sorrell’s WPP was one of the biggest fallers in the
FTSE 100 on fears it would end up winning Taylor Nelson Sofres after all.
The advertising agency lost 4 per cent. There is talk its bid rival, German
media giant GfK is struggling to raise the funds to trump Sir Martin.
TNS fell 2.5%, still just above WPP’s offer - worth 262p at
yesterday’s close. On Friday Collins Stewart analysts moved WPP from hold
to sell, with a 400p price target pointing out that in the advertising
downturn of the early 1990s ad agencies took another 18 to 21 months to
trough after newspaper share prices had reached their bottom and they only
recovered after GDP growth began to increase.
The FTSE 100 rallied 27.9 to 5404.3 driven by commodity stocks as metals and
oils prices recovered from recent falls.
Ferrexpo, the Ukrainian iron ore miner, rose 8 per cent, while Lonmin
lifted 5 per cent and Kazakhmys 5 per cent
Land Securities lifted 6 per cent and British Land 4 per cent as
the property sector was boosted by Minerva, up 67 per cent,
confirming that Limitless of the United Arab Emirates had offered 160p
subject to due diligence.
Robert Lindsay
robert.lindsay@thetimes.co.uk
AGENDA
INTERIMS
None scheduled
FINALS
None scheduled
AGMs
Apace Media
Ascent Resources
FKI
Johnson Matthey
McKay Securities
Protherics
Severn Trent
EGMs
Burani Designer Holding
TRADING STATEMENTS
Great Portland Estates
SCi Entertainment Group
Severn Trent (Q1)
Vodafone
ECONOMICS
BoE’s King, Gieve to appear before Treasury Select Committee on banking reform
(0945 BST)
Treasury officials to appear before Treasury Select Committee on banking
reform (1045 BST)
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