Date: Friday 18 Jun 2010
Tony Hayward, the chief executiveof BP, was accused of refusing to co-operate with a congressional investigation into the Gulf oil spill yesterday after repeatedly avoiding questions during a hostile eight-hour dressing down on Capitol Hill.Congressmen vented their fury at Mr Hayward as he repeatedly rebuffed questions about safety measures on the doomed Deepwater Horizon rig, arguing that he could not pre-empt ongoing investigations in the disaster, the Times reports.
Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund is set to take over Songbird, the listed owner of Canary Wharf, as the Gulf state steps up its London spending spree. The Qatar Investment Authority, which already owns Harrods and stakes in Barclays and the London Stock Exchange, plans to spend more than £700m to mop up the 76% of Songbird that it does not already own, The Times has learnt.
Tesco is on a collision course with activist investors over executive pay. A major American investment group, affiliated to trade union-sponsored pension funds with holdings in the supermarket group, last night urged shareholders to vote against Tesco’s remuneration report at next month’s annual general meeting. CtW Investment Group is incensed that Tim Mason, the boss of Fresh & Easy, Tesco’s fledgeling American chain, earned £4.3m in salary and bonuses last year despite steep losses. CtW said Mr Mason was being rewarded for running a “floundering” loss-making business, the Times reports.
The cost of cancelling landline telephone contracts early is set to fall by up to 85% after Ofcom said it was slashing the charges levelled by BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk. Up until now, customers with months left to run on contracts could be forced to pay up to £120 in penalty charges to switch providers. However, following an investigation, the regulator ruled that the charges were excessive and deterred people from moving. Ofcom is investigating similar charges in the mobile and pay-TV markets, the Times reports.
More than two million middle-class families will lose their entitlement to child tax credits worth hundreds of pounds a year after Nick Clegg said they did not "need" the benefit. The Deputy Prime Minister signalled that the move would form part of next week's emergency Budget, insisting it was not "unreasonable" to expect the middle classes to make sacrifices, the Telegraph reports.
Former enterprise tsar Lord Sugar has warned that the coalition Government's plan to increase capital gains tax (CGT) could have a "devastating impact on enterprising people" and that entrepreneurs' relief of £2m does not provide enough of an incentive.Entrepreneurs' relief provides business owners with a one-off 10% rate for the first £2m of capital gains before reverting to 18%, the Telegraph reports.
Fitch Ratings has warned that it may take massive asset purchases by the European Central Bank to prevent Europe's sovereign debt crisis escalating out of control. Brian Coulton, the agency's head of sovereign ratings, said German members of the ECB appeared to be blocking the sort of muscular intervention in southern European bond markets needed to restore the shattered confidence of investors, the Telegraph reports.Europe’s leaders made a fresh attempt to restore confidence in its financial system with a decision to publish detailed results of tests on the health of 25 big European banks. The so-called “stress tests” initiative was approved at a European Union summit in Brussels on Thursday, where the leaders united behind a call for a general levy on European banks to ensure they contributed to the cost of overcoming the financial crisis, the FT reports.
Banks are not practising what they preach and have failed to learn important lessons from the financial crisis, according to Hector Sants, chief executive of the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Speaking for the first time since Chancellor George Osborne announced the break-up of the FSA in his Mansion House speech on Wednesday, Mr Sants said there was "clearly a gap between what they [major institutions] claim to believe and do and what they actually do", the Telegraph reports.
Standard Chartered is set to take a stake in Agricultural Bank of China and is forming a strategic alliance with the Chinese lender, which wants to raise more than $23bn in what could be the world’s biggest initial public offering. The agreement is StanChart’s first significant partnership with a big Chinese lender and brings the UK-based bank into line with global rivals such as HSBC that have already established tie-ups on the mainland, the FT reports.
AOL has offloaded Bebo, the social networking site that once threatened the dominance of Facebook in the UK, for a tiny fraction of the $850m (£575m) it paid for the company two years ago. The exact sum of money that changed hands in yesterday's deal was so small that AOL did not have to report it. It is understood to be below $10m, putting the original acquisition in contention for the highly competitive title of worst purchase by a major internet company, the Independent reports.
Countrywide, Britain's largest residential estate agency and property services group, has agreed to buy most of its upmarket rival Hamptons International.The Countrywide chief executive, Grenville Turner, called the move a "major breakthrough" for the two companies and said Countrywide would purchase the UK, European, Asian and Latin American businesses of Hamptons from Dubai-based Emaar Properties, the Independent reports.
US companies are signalling a desire to buy back their own shares at the highest rate in months as record levels of cash pile up on balance sheets. Companies announced 27 new buy-back programmes last week totalling $18.5bn (€14.9bn), the most since February, according to data from TrimTabs. Walmart alone announced a $15bn plan, which included $4.7bn from a previous programme, the FT reports. 
No comments:
Post a Comment