Welcome to today's round-up of business news from The Times: what we're
saying, what they're saying
Top stories
The Times: Lloyds TSB is in talks
with sovereign wealth funds and UK insurance groups about selling stakes in
a merged Lloyds-HBOS banking group.
The Times: HSBC, Britain’s biggest bank, will
not pass on this week’s expected Bank of England rates cut and Abbey,
the second biggest lender, will raise its rates.
Daily Telegraph: The chief executive of Barclays wrote
to all staff to defend the bank’s decision to raise £5.8 billion ($9.1
billion) from Middle Eastern investors.
Comment
David Wighton in The Times: Lloyds TSB has managed to sweeten
the acquisition of HBOS for its shareholders thanks to a large helping
of Government fudge.
Richard Tyler in the Daily Telegraph: Big
banks need small firms as customers more than small firms need the big
banks.
Adam Jasser on Reuters: The former communist countries of central
Europe are belatedly waking up to
the status of the euro as an economic sanctuary.
Upside
The Times: Virgin Media has secured approval from its banks to postpone
repayments on its £4.3 billion ($6.8 billion) debt for an extra three
years.
The Times: Ryanair, Europe's largest airline, will cut
fares by up to 20 per cent this winter to maintain passenger numbers in
the face of the economic downturn.
Reuters: MasterCard, the world's second-largest card network, posted better-than-expected
earnings , sending its shares up almost 9 per cent.
Downside
The Times: Unemployment will top 7
per cent as Britain suffers the longest and deepest recession of the
EU's big economies, the European Commission predicts.
New York Times: US car sales tumbled
last month with General Motors down 45 per cent, Chrysler down 35 per cent,
Ford down 30 per cent and Toyota down 23 per cent.
The Times: Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank, lost
almost $1 billion ($635 million) in a hedge fund this year and may be
set to record its first quarterly loss.
Mergers and shakers
The Times: Tiscali, the troubled Italian broadband provider, is in
talks with BSkyB to sell its UK broadband business to the satellite
broadcaster.
Daily Telegraph: The French Government has threatened
to seize control of the country's banks unless they help stabilise the
economy by stepping up lending.
The Times: Skipton Building Society will
take over smaller rival Scarborough to create a building society with
860,000 members and £16 billion ($25.2 billion) in assets.
Around Asia
New York Times: South Korea will
cut taxes and increase spending by $10.9 billion (£6.9 billion) to
stimulate its economy.
Reuters: PricewaterhouseCoopers, the global accounting firm, plans
to hire about 2,000 graduates in China next year despite the global
credit crunch.
Financial Times: China’s national aircraft manufacturer has secured the first
overseas order for its regional jet, worth about $750 million (£475
million).
Look ahead
The Times: Concerns that Vodafone could be the next telecommunications
company to issue a profits warning
increased ahead of next week’s results announcement.
New York Times: Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the private equity firm, will
delay until next year the first step in its plans to publicly list.
Daily Telegraph: Angela Spindler, the managing director of Debenhams, will
quit the department store chain at the end of November after less than
10 months in the role.
MARKETS
FTSE 100 4,443.28 up 1.5% (Monday close)
Dow 9,319.83 down 0.1% (close)
S&P 500 966.30 down 0.3% (close)
Nasdaq 1,726.33 up 0.3% (close)
Nikkei 8,897.87 up 3.7% (latest)
Hang Seng 14,015.00 down 2.3% (latest)
Currencies
Sterling $1.5768/1.2526 euros (latest)
Euro $1.2588 (latest)
Commodities
Brent crude $60.22 down 22 cents (latest)
West Texas crude $63.77 down 14 cents (latest)
Gold $728.00 up $1.20 (latest)
New York
Reuters: US stocks ended
little changed on Monday as investors were unwilling to place big bets
before the presidential election. Telephone company Verizon rose 3.6
per cent and rival AT&T rose 3.9 per cent after an analyst
declared them safe havens. The Nasdaq was boosted by gains in the biotech
sector as Biogen rose 8.8 per cent on two analysts’ upgrades.
Elsewhere in the biotech sector, Gilead Sciences rose 3.2 per cent. General
Motors fell 2.3 per cent after reporting plunging sales. Chevron
fell 1.2 per cent as the price of oil dropped. Goodyear rose 5.4 per
cent on a smaller-than-expected decline in profit.
Asia
Bloomberg: Gains on the Japanese
market helped Asian stocks rise as lower borrowing costs boosted
optimism. Mizuho, Japan's second-largest bank by revenue, rose 4 per
cent and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Japan's largest bank, rose
4.2 per cent. Shinhan Financial, which controls South Korea's
third-biggest bank, rose 5.3 per cent. Panasonic, the world's largest
maker of consumer electronics, rose 4.7 per cent on its plan to buy Sanyo. Singapore
Telecommunications, Southeast Asia's largest telephone company, fell 6.4
per cent on a lower profit forecast. Nissan, Japan’s third-largest
carmaker, fell 8.5 per cent as it halved profit forecasts. The MSCI Asia
Pacific Index gained 0.9 per cent to 88.56 in morning trade.
Michael Beh
michaelwbeh@gmail.com
London
Shares in Tesco came under pressure yesterday after analysts at Société
Générale said that the supermarket giant had lost its safe-haven status. The
broker said that the supermarket group faced a weakening UK grocery market,
with the ebb tide of easing inflation set to reveal poor underlying volumes,
given that its sales growth had become increasingly dependent on high food
price inflation. It concluded that it sees no prospects for positive news
from Tesco for “some time to come” and that poor news from a stock seen as
safe will be severely punished. Société Générale subsequently downgraded its
rating on the stock to “sell” from “hold” and Tesco’s shares fell almost 2
per cent. Overall, the FTSE 100 extended last week’s gains rising over 1.5
per cent, up 65.94 points to 4,443.28. Mining stocks continued their recent
recovery, boosted by rising metals prices and favourable currencies. Kazakhmys,
the Kazakh copper miner, led the index, rising over 18 per cent. Barclays,
down 4 per cent, was among the big fallers with several brokers downgrading
the bank after its fundraising with Middle Eastern investors. Vodafone
fell 2.2 per cent amid market talk that the telecoms giant may be guiding
analyst expectations lower.
Robert Lindsay
robert.lindsay@thetimes.co.uk
AGENDA
INTERIMS
Kewill
Marks & Spencer
Umeco
FINALS
Associated British Foods
Innovation
Punch Taverns
OTHER RESULTS
Antofagasta (Q3 output)
BG Group (Q3)
Prodesse Investment (Q3)
St James's Place (Q3)
AGMs
Craneware
JP Morgan Overseas IT
TRADING STATEMENTS
Balfour Beatty
Croda International
Punch Taverns
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