- Cameron, Obama call for 'immediate plan'
- Miners and financials jump, ABG rockets
The Footsie finished over two per cent higher on Wednesday afternoon as miners and financial stocks surged on speculation of future changes to monetary policy in Europe.
The European Central Bank (ECB) decided once again to leave its key interest rate unchanged. The decision to leave the rate at 1% is more or less in line with the analyst consensus, although some economists were calling for a rate cut due to recent indications of falling economic activity in the Eurozone. In the subsequent press conference, however, ECB President Mario Draghi said: "We monitor all developments closely and we stand ready to act".
Draghi also said that a few members, though not many, had called for lower rates: this was a "significant turnaround", according to analyst Philip Shaw from Investec. "Overall we have not changed our views as a result of the press conference. We remain reasonably convinced that the ECB will bring the refi down again by 25 basis points to a new low of 0.75%."
Nonetheless, Draghi shied away from in any way promising a new round of long-term financing for banks (shorter term loans, however will be freely available until at least year's end). Some observers see in such a decision a desire on the part of the central bank not to make-up for governments' lack of action. Having said that, the ECB President seems to have weighed in favourably on the topic of the European Stability Mechanism injecting funds directly into banks," indicate analysts at Digital Look.
"It's now down to Ben Bernanke tomorrow to provide a further boost to the markets in order to keep the recent rally going," said analyst Craig Erlam from Alpari, drawing attention to tonight's release of the Federal Reserve's Beige Book.
In other news, Germany may be preparing a plan that will allow Spain to recapitalise its banks with the help of European partners but without having to implement additional economic reforms, according to official German sources.
After a phone conversation UK Prime Minister David Cameron and US President Barack Obama have said that there needs to be "an immediate plan" to resolve the sovereign debt crisis in Europe.
In domestic news, the Markit/CIPS UK construction purchasing managers' index for the month of May came in at 54.4 points, a three-month low, versus the 55.8 seen in April. Nevertheless, the consensus estimate was for a reading of 54.2.
FTSE 100: Miners and financials lead the rise
Miners surged today on the back of stronger metals prices. Meanwhile, Australian gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 1.3% during the first three months of the year, well ahead of the 0.6% growth expected by analysts, boosting the outlook for metals demand. Vedanta Resources, Randgold Resources, Fresnillo, Kazakhmys and Anglo American all finished the day over 7% higher. Also helping the sector were reports of Chinese authorities fast-tracking infrastructure investments.
Hedge fund manager Man Group, which had lost 40% of its share price in 2012 so far, was among the best performers after Citigroup upgraded its rating on the stock to buy, saying that "Man is now at the end of its downgrade cycle." However, the US broker did cut its earnings estimates for the group today.
Banks too were putting in a strong performance. Barclays announced this morning that its subsidiary Absa Bank has agreed to buy the accounts and receivables relating to the private label store cards of Edcon Proprietary in South Africa for around 0.8bn. Also to be had in account, Barclays is entitled to recover roughly $1.8bn of disputed assets and interest related to Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, a US federal judge said, reversing a decision by a federal bankruptcy judge. Lloyds revealed that it is to sell a portfolio of Australian real estate loans for 388m. Meanwhile, HSBC said that the merger of its Omani operations with Oman International Bank has been approved and completed.
RBS's shares were trading over the 200p mark today after a share consolidation, which has had the counter-balancing effect of reducing the number of shares each shareholder owns while at the same time increasing the value of each share. Nevertheless, even based on Friday's adjusted share price, RBS shares were still sharply higher, as banking stocks made gains.
Heading the other way was Vodafone after going ex-dividend, meaning that new shares do not have the right to the group's latest pay-out. Vodafone also announced this morning that it is talking with Australian peer Telstra about buying its New Zealand subsidiary, TelstraClear. According to the Financial Times, the deal could be worth around A$300-400m, or 191-255m.
FTSE 250: African Barrick Gold sparkles late on
Shares in gold miner African Barrick Gold (ABG) surged in afternoon trading after its US parent company announced that it has replaced its President and Chief Executive Officer Aaron Regent with Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Jamie Sokalsky.
"On behalf of our board, I would like to thank Aaron for his significant contribution to Barrick's development. We are fully committed to maximising shareholder value, but have been disappointed with our share price performance," said Barrick's founder and Chairman Peter Munk.
Energy firm Premier Oil rose after seeing an encouraging drilling result on the Carnaby exploration well 28/09-5A in the Central North Sea Block 28/9.
FTSE 100 - Risers
Vedanta Resources (VED) 963.50p +9.05%
Barclays (BARC) 187.80p +8.24%
Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 5,980.00p +7.65%
Kazakhmys (KAZ) 714.50p +7.44%
Fresnillo (FRES) 1,472.00p +7.37%
Man Group (EMG) 80.85p +7.09%
Anglo American (AAL) 2,091.00p +6.93%
Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 213.20p +6.65%
CRH (CRH) 1,121.00p +6.56%
Antofagasta (ANTO) 1,053.00p +6.26%
FTSE 100 - Fallers
Vodafone Group (VOD) 168.95p -2.71%
Tate & Lyle (TATE) 643.00p -1.61%
British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSY) 670.50p -0.89%
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) 1,470.00p -0.81%
Smith & Nephew (SN.) 590.50p 0.00%
Severn Trent (SVT) 1,761.00p +0.06%
Next (NXT) 2,993.00p +0.07%
Whitbread (WTB) 1,843.00p +0.16%
Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets (MRW) 276.80p +0.18%
Weir Group (WEIR) 1,485.00p +0.20%
FTSE 250 - Risers
African Barrick Gold (ABG) 400.20p +14.54%
Talvivaara Mining Company (TALV) 147.20p +14.11%
New World Resources A Shares (NWR) 305.80p +13.68%
Centamin (DI) (CEY) 72.35p +11.05%
Aquarius Platinum Ltd. (AQP) 71.65p +10.57%
Avocet Mining (AVM) 161.60p +10.31%
Afren (AFR) 114.50p +9.78%
Petropavlovsk (POG) 425.60p +9.66%
Lonmin (LMI) 765.50p +9.51%
PayPoint (PAY) 698.00p +8.72%
FTSE 250 - Fallers
Supergroup (SGP) 285.90p -5.02%
Dixons Retail (DXNS) 12.84p -4.68%
RPS Group (RPS) 198.70p -3.21%
Bumi (BUMI) 320.00p -3.03%
Logica (LOG) 107.00p -2.73%
Home Retail Group (HOME) 71.50p -2.72%
JD Sports Fashion (JD.) 665.00p -2.71%
Spirit Pub Company (SPRT) 49.75p -2.45%
Booker Group (BOK) 84.10p -2.21%
Senior (SNR) 192.00p -2.19%
BC
London 2012: torchbearers picked by sponsors keep flame of commerce alive - The Guardian
Throughout their descriptions of the 70-day Olympic torch relay, the London 2012 organisers talked of having tracked down "8,000 truly inspirational people from across the UK". But while most of the torchbearers were picked through this process, some people – including one of the world's richest men – managed to get on the torch relay by another means: working for, or being affiliated with, one of the London 2012 sponsors.
More than 1,200 spaces were allocated to the International Olympic Committee, the British Olympics Association, and to staff working for Games sponsors – whose picks included company directors, Russian newspaper editors, and even an official at the US's Food and Drug Administration.
Help Me Investigate the Olympics, a crowdsourced news coverage site dedicated to London 2012, looked into torchbearer slots handed out by one particular sponsor, Adidas.
While, generally, slots had been given to junior or mid-level employees, Adidas had also selected Christos Angelides, the £900,000-a-year senior director at Next, which has a retail partnership with Adidas covering the Olympics. Other Adidas slots went to people in the marketing team who had worked on the company's sponsorship.
The group's findings, posted by Paul Bradshaw, also noted descriptions of staff's work performance in their nominating stories, mentioning that one torchbearer had "made a fantastic contribution to the Adidas group business". Another "breathes Adidas … Her positive attitude and 'money in [the] till' approach is legendary" and a third mentioned "achieving my sales targets in every market I have worked in".
A spokesman for Adidas said the firm was restricted by Locog rules and could only offer its torchbearer slots to employees or those in its network. He added that owing to the low average age of the company's staff, not many of their children were old enough to carry the torch.
Other sponsors struck further afield for their choices: among Coca-Cola's selections were the Las Vegas resident Dr Debra Toney, who among other roles sits on a committee of the US's Food and Drug Administration.
Coca-Cola also selected Evgeny Faktorovich, the deputy editor-in-chief of a Russian paper that "supports all social initiative held by Coca-Cola" and Vonta Vontobel, the president of the Brazilian Bottlers Association of Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola, as an official torchbearer partner, was able to allocate places to members of the public – it was responsible for allocating 1,350 slots.
"Over 90% of our allocation has gone to members of the public through our Future Flames campaign, which celebrates inspirational people by giving them the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to carry the Olympic flame," said a spokesman. "A small number of our allocation has been given to some of our employees through a nomination campaign, and to our campaign ambassadors who have helped to find our Future Flames. Our remaining places have been given to our partner organisations and their affiliates."
ArcelorMittal, another organisation supporting the Olympics, was given six torchbearer slots. Two of these went to the company's founder, Lakshmi Mittal, the world's 21st richest man according to Forbes magazine, and his son Aditya, the group's chief financial officer. Among the others, however, were the US technician Angel Alvarez, who donated his kidney to a fellow worker, and Polish employee Filip Kuzniak, who cycled 600km to raise money for a colleague's daughter.
Among 50 torchbearers selected by BP were Gillian James, a member of the company's North Sea leadership team, and Carl Halksworth, the creative director of Landor, BP's design agency partner for the Olympics. As BP sponsored a particular section of the route, near Aberdeen, the remainder of its picks were made up predominantly of "onshore and offshore BP staff, young relatives of staff, business partners, and nominees from local schools, universities and charities".
The electricity giant EDF, meanwhile, included the group's former director of HR and communications among the 71 staff members chosen to carry the torch on the company's behalf.
A London 2012 spokesman said: "Staging the Olympic Games is a huge undertaking and we couldn't do it without the support from our commercial partners. The rights packages for some partners include a small number of torchbearer places that had to be filled through internal campaigns.
"The same torchbearer selection criteria applied across the whole relay – ie personal bests and/or contribution to the community."
Luxury London market grows as family home supply stays low - The Move Channel
Print
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
Source: Ivan Radford
The total supply of London's property has reached £12 billion, according to WA Ellis, who suggests that stock levels are on the up while luxury home sales become more public.
One of the agent's partners, Richard Barber, comments on the state of the capital's market: "Some very fine new instructions have come on to the market in the last two weeks across all price ranges, including two rare first floor flats in Cadogan Square, but there now seems to be a hesitancy amongst potential purchasers. Sentiment is a strong ‘driver' of the market and nothing curbs potential purchaser's enthusiasm more than the prospect of economic uncertainty - and we have that in spades!
"It is interesting to see that the total stock on the Central London market, according to Lonres[1], now sits at just over £12 billion, as opposed to an average level of £10 billion - £10.5 billion over the last six months. This may be indicative of more stock coming to the market, but also, that more expensive houses are now being openly marketed, as opposed to being quietly, but unsuccessfully ‘placed' over the Spring.
"There is of course good reason to be optimistic with regards London property and it has proved to be an excellent long-term investment and provider of steady rental yield, however this optimism must be tempered with a realistic view of the economic crisis which we are still very much amidst.
"While there is still undoubted enthusiasm for prime property both from domestic and international purchasers, the perceived view that every property can command in excess of £2,000 per square foot is unrealistic. Indeed, I would caution against relying entirely upon rates per square foot as a means of valuation - it is a good check measurement but by no means the whole story. Guide prices should be carefully considered and justified.
"A realistic seller should want to see two or three keen purchasers competing for their property, as nothing stigmatises a property and diminishes a vendor's position more than a long stay on the market. In short, unrealistic vendors' expectations and hesitant and cautious purchasers do not make for an active market!
"Analysis of latest figures show the government received £5,960 million pounds from stamp duty land tax in 2010 - 2011, a 20% increase on the previous year, with £1,980 million pounds coming from transactions within London. Counter intuitively, the Chancellor may find that by increasing the rate of SDLT on properties over £2 million and curbing foreign companies' ability to buy central London property by imposing SDLT of 15% (and implied future measures), that his receipts for 2012-2013 are considerably less than in previous years. Indeed, the president of the National Association of Estate Agents, Wendy Evans-Scott, has called for an extension of the stamp duty holiday on lower valued properties, to try and kick start the extremely sluggish market that exists outside of central London."
Lucy Morton, senior partner and head of lettings at W A Ellis, adds: "The herald of summer brings with it the start of the season for the family home search. We have seen a noticeable increase in families wanting to secure their homes earlier this year before the Olympics start and London goes into lockdown with traffic restrictions and an influx of visitors. Families are taking properties a couple of months early in order to avoid what many believe could bring gridlock to some of our major routes. We are already noticing an increase of security awareness in London and this will no doubt only continue over the coming months. The Olympic let market, which has been the talk of the town over the year, still hasn't really happened - and, with some hotels now releasing rooms which they had held back, we do not believe there will be a rush of demand for short lets in Central London over this period at all.
"Rent levels have remained relatively static over the last month due to the nervousness in the market with the double-dip recession. It is quite apparent that the city corporations are still not bringing in expat middle management which has resulted in increased supply between £1,000 and £2,000 per week. The most competitive area of the market is the family house market where stock levels are low and demand levels high."
Round-up: Vauxhall Ellesmere Port favourite to build the Ampera, and latest on Clinton Cards and North Wales Business Club - Daily Post
Vauxhall leads Ampera race
THE Vauxhall plant in Ellesmere Port will reportedly start building the Ampera Extended-Range Electric Vehicle in 2015 or 2016.
The Ampera is currently only built at a factory in Detroit, USA.
However, industry speculation suggests parent company General Motors (GM) is considering building the E-REV and possibly other electric cars in Europe come the 2015-16 period.
The Cheshire plant is now considered GM's favourite choice for taking on this new production run, after it was confirmed the site would build the next generation Astra, adding 700 jobs to the already 2,100 strong staff line-up.
Currently the Cheshire-based plant builds the new Vauxhall Astra, which happens to share the same platform as the Ampera.
Card workers await takeover
CLINTON Cards workers across North Wales will find out in the coming days whether their jobs are safe.
US firm American Greetings is expected to take over the last 400 Clinton Cards shops - including Rhyl, Holywell and Llandudno - later this week.
The company - once one of Clinton’s main suppliers - will reportedly pay nothing for the stores but run them as a separate business.
Card factory and WH Smith were touted as buyers but AG put itself first in line by snapping up the collapsed firm’s £35million debt.
Administrators Zolfo Cooper are closing 350 stores, with 3,000 jobs lost.
The collapse of Clinton’s, which will be sold by Friday, came shortly after high street firms Game, Peacocks and Blacks Leisure folded.
Sign up for a summer lunch
NORTH Wales Business Club will hold its summer lunch event on July 13 at Bodysgallen Hall Hotel in Llandudno.
Guest speaker is Dr Barrie Kennard, director of the Centre for Excellence for Leadership and Management Skills in Wales, who recently authored a report on Higher Level Skills Development in Wales.
Tickets £27; applications to Jean Barlow, Tal y Fan, 98 Deganwy Road, Llandudno, North Wales, LL30 1NA.
Alternatively, email: barlow777@btinternet.com.
Vauxhall buff Alisdaire completes drive of his dreams - thesouthernreporter.co.uk
IT took Selkirk veteran car enthusiast Alisdaire Lockhart 22 years of painstaking work to recreate the famous Prince Henry Vauxhall, writes Andrew Keddie.
But all that toil and attention to meticulous detail paid off in spades last week when Alisdaire fulfilled a lifelong ambition by driving his remarkable vehicle on a 620-mile journey through rural Sweden.
In so doing, he emulated the feat of Vauxhall’s legendary founding managing director Percy Kidner and celebrated in style the centenary of the model’s participation in the inaugural Great Swedish Winter Reliability Trial of 1912.
Back in April, we told the story of Alisdaire, who lives in the town’s Ettrick Terrace, as he prepared for his date with destiny.
Only 60 21-horsepower, three-litre Prince Henry models – widely acknowledged as the first British sports cars to exceed 100mph – were ever manufactured by Vauxhall and only a handful exist today.
In 1988, Alisdaire, at that time resident in Bedfordshire and a passionate afficionado of the famous UK motoring marque, set his sights of following in the tyre tracks of Kidner 100 years on.
Using original parts specially transported from Australia, he began the re-creation of the famous model, finally completing the task in Selkirk, where he relocated five years ago. And his dream of taking part in the commemorative centenary reliability trial in Sweden, organised by the Kungliga Automobil Klubb (KAK), has finally come true.
Having travelled with his prized vehicle on the ferry from Harwich, Alisdaire lined up for the first day of the trial at the Tjoloholm Rally, south of Gottenburg, on Sunday, May 20.
He told us: “The following morning, we drove along the southern route of the original event, through Jonkoping and Linkoping, arriving in Stockholm on the Tuesday for a reception at the KAK headquaters where the car was photographed with the original trophies for the event. Thereafter, the car was driven back to Gotheburg by the northern route for the return to the UK on Saturday, May 27.
“On the commemorative run, I was accompanied by Kay Mordza of the Svenska Vauxhall Register, who was a great help with all the arrangements in Sweden, and my co-driver Andrew Duerden of the Vauxhall Heritage Centre in Luton.
“In total, we covered 620 miles in 22 hours of driving time spread over four days. With the open roads and low volume of traffic in Sweden, it was easy to cruise at 55-60mph without any mechanical trouble, with fuel consumption of around 30 miles per gallon.
“To my immense pride and pleasure, my Prince Henry, now safely back in its garage in Selkirk, proved a nimble little runner and was great fun to drive with easy gear changes and a lively performance.
“It must have been very impressive in its heyday of just over 100 years ago.”
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Print this pagePolice plea after four die in crash - Belfast Telegraph
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
A Volkswagen Passat and a Vauxhall Astra collided on the A39 at Cannington, near Bridgwater, Somerset, at around 2.30pm on Tuesday.
A spokesman for Somerset Police said a 68-year-old man travelling in the Passat died, while a 73-year-old woman, a 59-year-old woman and a 76-year-old man travelling in the Astra were also killed.
Police are appealing for witnesses to contact the collision investigation unit on 101.
The accident follows another fatal crash in which three men were killed when their car careered into trees before rolling down an embankment near Oxford.
The men, aged 57, 39 and 31, were in a blue Mercedes E Class estate when the crash happened on the A4074 at Sandford-on-Thames at about 9.50pm on Monday.
Two other passengers, both women, aged 37 and 29, were injured and taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
Two of the men who died, the 57-year-old and the 39-year-old, were believed to be US citizens. No other vehicles were involved.
A spokesman for Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service said they were called to Tuesday afternoon's crash after reports that three people were trapped.
They used hydraulic cutting equipment to remove the roof of one of the vehicles so the casualties could be reached by ambulance staff.
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