KILL THE COMPETITION
Welcome to today's round-up of business news from The Times: what we're saying, what they're saying, from Michael Beh
Tuesday, October 20, 0730 GMT
Top stories
The Times: The UK Government backed away from speculation that it will impose a windfall tax on banks to punish them for paying excessive bonuses.
The Daily Telegraph: Royal Bank of Scotland, the state-backed bank, will pay 11 new bankers £5 million ($8.2 million) in bonuses.
The Times: Apple's profits rose by 47 per cent on record sales of its iPhones and Macintosh computers.
Comment
Ian King in The Times: The question is whether the Financial Services Authority's new loan rules now risk throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Damian Reece in the Daily Telegraph: The people with the power to change banks, without many of the unintended consequences of regulation, are shareholders.
William Pesek on Bloomberg: It seems like the globe is experiencing a bubble in bubbles.
Upside
The Times: Major advertising firms backed Microsoft and Yahoo!'s plan to work together to challenge the dominance of Google in internet searching.
Wall Street Journal: The European Commission will propose rules to make companies trade derivatives in a less-risky way.
New York Times: The US senate introduced legislation to limit overdraft fees charged by banks.
Downside
The Times: Talks between British Airways and unions representing the airline's cabin crew broke down and industrial action seems inevitable.
The Daily Telegraph: Experts warned that homeowners will struggle to remortgage their properties under the Financial Services Authority's strict new rules.
The Independent: General Motors may slash jobs throughout its European car making operations if Brussels blocks the sale of GM Europe to Magna.
Mergers and shakers
The Times: National Express, the besieged transport company, asked rival Stagecoach for further financial details of its merger proposal.
Wall Street Journal: Carl Icahn, the investor, offered to underwrite a $6 billion (£3.7 billion) loan to CIT, the commercial lender.
The Times: Standard Life, the Edinburgh-based insurer, named David Nish, its finance director, as its new chief executive.
Around Asia
Bloomberg: Orders at Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest software exporter, rebounded to levels before the financial crisis.
Nikkei: Yukio Hatoyama, the Japanese Prime Minister, wants Yoshifumi Nishikawa, the president of Japan Post, to quit before a review of postal privatisation.
Reuters: Raj Rajaratnam, a board member of the Indian School of Business and founder of Galleon Group, was charged over a hedge fund insider-trading scheme.
Look ahead
The Independent: Yell Group, which publishes the Yellow Pages, delayed a deadline for support for its debt restructuring plan to next Monday.
New York Times: The New York Times, the US newspaper, plans to eliminate 100 newsroom jobs by the end of the year.
Wall Street Journal: The luxury-goods industry will not fully recover from the current downturn until 2011 or 2012.
MARKETS
FTSE 100 5,281.54 (Monday close)
Dow 10,092.19 up 1% (close)
S&P 500 1,097.91 up 0.9% (close)
Nasdaq 2,176.32 up 0.9% (close)
Nikkei 10,347.58 up 1.1% (latest)
Hang Seng 22,331.37 up 0.6% (latest)
Currencies
Sterling $1.6408/1.0947 euros (latest)
Euro $1.4988 (latest)
Commodities
Brent crude $78.08 up 31 cents (latest)
West Texas crude $79.85 up 24 cents (latest)
Gold $1067.60 up $9.50 (latest)
New York
Reuters: US stocks rose as optimistic investors rode a wave of solid quarterly earnings. Apple, the iPhone maker, rose 7 per cent in extended trade on better-than-expected results. After the bell, chip maker Texas Instruments rose 2 per cent on better-than-expected results. During regular trading, heavy equipment maker Caterpillar rose 6 per cent on an analyst's upgrade. Newspaper publisher Gannett rose 8.2 per cent and diversified manufacturer Eaton rose 5.7 per cent on good results. US-traded shares of the Canadian fertilizer maker Potash rose 6.5 per cent on reports of a possible investment by miner BHP Billiton.
Asia
Bloomberg: Asian stocks rose in early trade as earnings reports boosted confidence in the global recovery. Komatsu, the world's second-largest maker of construction machinery, rose 2.5 per cent on reports the company will report a quarterly profit. Its rival Hitachi Construction Machinery rose 2.3 per cent.
Murata Manufacturing, the world's largest capacitor maker, rose 2.7 per cent and Advantest, the world's biggest maker of equipment used to test computer memory chips, rose 1.4 per cent after Texas Instruments and Apple posted better-than-expected earnings. BHP Billiton, the world's largest miner, rose 1.7 per cent and rival Rio Tinto rose 2.1 per cent on higher oil and metals prices. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 0.8 per cent to 121.32 in early trade.
Michael Beh
michaelwbeh@gmail.com
London
Football fans may have enjoyed an exciting start to the new season but the dearth of draws and dominance of the big teams has haunted bookies. No surprise then that shares in William Hill soared more than 10 per cent yesterday after the group said full-year retail profits would be in line with expectations, despite an "extraordinary" year for sporting results.
The FTSE 100 marked the 22nd anniversary of Black Monday by hitting a new high for the year, soaring 91.30 points to 5,281.54, driven by gains in commodity and property stocks.
Anglo American gained almost 5 per cent and Xstrata was up 4 per cent on stronger metal prices. British Land added 4 per cent after Evolution upgraded its rating on the commercial property group to buy.
Peter Stiff
Peter.Stiff@the-times.co.uk
