Welcome to today's round-up of business news from The Times: what we're
saying, what they're saying
Top stories
The Times: West Bromwich Building Society, the West Midlands-based
society, made a last-ditch attempt
to secure a debt-for-equity swap with its key bondholders.
New York Times: BlackRock, the US investment firm, will buy
Barclays Global Investors from Barclays, the UK bank, for $13.5 billion
(£8.2 billion).
The Times: UK and German government talks effectively
opened the auction for Vauxhall, the carmaker, to new bidders.
Comment
David Wighton in The Times: West Bromwich is the guinea
pig testing a new instrument to give it enough capital to soldier on
for a while.
Hamish McRae in the Independent: The dollar's days as the prime world
reserve currency are numbered but the road to dethroning it will be long
and bumpy .
Jonathan Weil on Bloomberg: America’s most powerful banks are turning
in their government money and that means it’s party time again on Wall
Street.
Upside
The Times: The pound surged to its highest
levels this year on investor confidence that the British economy is
emerging from recession.
Financial Times: Koenigsegg, the Swedish producer of supercars, will
buy Saab , General Motors’ Swedish premium brand, together with
Norwegian investors.
The Times: Microsoft, the software giant, will release its Windows 7
operating system in Europe without its
Internet Explorer web browser .
Downside
Wall Street Journal: The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank differ
in their forecasts for the course of the global economic crisis.
The Times: Keydata Investment Services, the insolvent investment firm, mis-sold
£250 million ($414 million) of income bonds and savings plans.
Independent: BT, the telecoms group, wants to charge
content providers to send video over its network but rival broadband
companies do not agree.
Mergers and shakers
The Times: Setanta Sports is in last-ditch
talks with an unidentified white knight rescuer, in an attempt to stave
off the broadcaster’s imminent collapse.
New York Times: Exxon Mobil, the oil and gas giant, and TransCanada,
the Canadian pipeline operator, will build a natural
gas pipeline from Alaska to the US mainland.
The Times: Alexander Lebedev, the Russian owner of the Evening
Standard, is close to a deal to buy
The Independent and The Independent on Sunday newspapers.
Around Asia
The Times: China will not make a binding
commitment to reduce carbon emissions, jeopardising the prospects for a
global pact on climate change in December.
Bloomberg: Japan will keep
investing in US Treasuries despite China and Russia expressing doubts
about dollar-dominated assets.
Wall Street Journal: Bank of China, a state-owned commercial bank, will reduce
its ratio of foreign-currency assets by focusing on new yuan loans.
Look ahead
The Times: British Airways wants airline passengers to pay
an extra tax to cover carbon emissions and airlines to buy carbon
permits from 2013.
New York Times: France and Germany delayed
the decision of whether to proceed with Airbus’s troubled A400M
military transport plane by six months.
Wall Street Journal: A least three big US banks are expected to start
repaying government bailout funds next Wednesday.
MARKETS
FTSE 100 4,461.87 up 0.6% (Thursday close)
Dow 8,770.92 up 0.4% (close)
S&P 500 944.89 up 0.6% (close)
Nasdaq 1,862.37 up 0.5% (close)
Nikkei 10,142.43 up 1.6% (latest)
Hang Seng 19,024.43 up 1.2% (latest)
Currencies
Sterling $1.6528/1.1742 euros (latest)
Euro $1.4076 (latest)
Commodities
Brent crude $71.58 down 21 cents (latest)
West Texas crude $72.45 down 23 cents (latest)
Gold $954.70 down $7.30 (latest)
New York
Bloomberg: US stocks rose,
sending the S&P index to a seven-month high. Schlumberger, the
world’s largest oilfield-services provider, rose 4.9 per cent and Chevron,
the second-biggest US energy company, rose 2.4 per cent on higher oil prices.
Bank of America, the largest US lender by assets, jumped 8.3 per cent on
an analyst’s upgrade. Fifth Third, Ohio’s biggest bank, rose
5.9 per cent and Regions Financial, based in Alabama, rose 9.3 per
cent on an analyst’s upgrade. Best Buy, the biggest US
electronics retailer, fell 3.4 per cent on concerns of lower consumer
spending. Palm, the maker of the Pre phone, rose 12 per cent on news
of a new chief executive. UnitedHealth Group fell 6.5 per cent on an
analyst’s downgrade.
Asia
Bloomberg: Asian stocks rose
in morning trade led by consumer and financial shares. LG Electronics,
the world’s third-biggest handset maker, rose 2.9 per cent and Li &
Fung, the biggest supplier of clothes and toys to Wal-Mart and Target,
rose 3.4 per cent on higher US retail sales figures. Korea Zinc, the
world’s second-largest zinc producer, rose 2.2 per cent and Mincor
Resources rose 4.5 per cent on higher metal prices. OZ Minerals,
an Australian mining company, rose 14 per cent on an asset sale to China
Minmetals Group. Nomura Holdings, Japan’s No. 1 brokerage, rose
5.1 per cent on an analyst’s upgrade. Virgin Blue, Australia’s
second-largest airline, rose 7.9 per cent on an analyst’s recommendation. Mitsubishi
Heavy Industries, Japan’s largest heavy-machinery maker, rose 6.1 per
cent on reports of a new Australian project. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index
rose 0.8 per cent to 105.87 in morning trade.
Michael Beh
michaelwbeh@gmail.com
London
Carnival, the world’s largest cruise ship operater, lost 38p at £15.19, making
a loss of 15 per cent since in the three weeks since it talked down the
impact of flu. It may warn today with second quarter figures that bookings
are down, hit by worries over the pandemic.
The FTSE 100 closed up 25.12 at 4461.87, helped by rising financial stocks as
investors became increasingly confident that Britain’s recession was nearing
an end, if it was not already over.
Barclays was the top gainer, up 16p at 304.5p helped by talk of an
imminent deal on the sale of its BGI division. Royal Bank of Scotland lifted
1.8p to 39.7p and Lloyds rose 1.7p to 66.7p.
Invensys, the railway signalling engineer rose 12.5p to 241.5p as
Goldman Sachs, in a bullish note on the whole sector, raised it from neutral
to buy and its price target from 185p to 325p.
Robert Lindsay
robert.lindsay@thetimes.co.uk
AGENDA
Edinburgh Worldwide Inv H1
Ferrexpo Plc RGM
Independent News & Media Plc s/holders
Lookers Plc AGM
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