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
Friday, November 27, 0730 GMT
Top stories
The Times: The crisis with Dubai's state corporation sent shares plunging, battered currencies wiped £14 billion ($23 billion) from the value of British banks.
The Times: Borders UK, the bookshop chain, went into administration, putting 1,150 jobs at risk and raising the prospect of a firesale before Christmas.
The Times: For the second time in a fortnight, a trading glitch halted trading on the London Stock Exchange for three hours, coinciding with a huge sell-off.
Comment
Ian King in The Times: As investors fear their Middle East fortunes are built on sand, so other countries may suffer in a repricing of risk.
Damian Reece in Daily Telegraph: There's trouble in the pipeline as Ofwat boss fails to spot the cracks.
Carl Mortished in The Times: If Dubai's rulers thought they could bury their bad news over a long holiday weekend, they were badly advised.
Upside
The Times: Britain's retailers remain optimistic about the Christmas shopping season after higher-than-expected November sales volume.
The Independent: Anthony Bolton, the veteran Fidelity guru, to move to Hong Kong to set up a new fund that would invest in China.
Daily Telegraph: Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, backed down on his threat to strip National Express of its East Anglia and C2C rail franchises.
Downside
The Times: A ruling by Ofwat, the industry regulator, to mean millions of British households face water bill rises of up to a third.
Daily Telegraph: UK's nuclear inspectors to tell Areva to improve the safety of its heavily criticised reactor and raise on rival Westinghouse's designs in key areas.
The Times: BAE Systems, Europe's largest defence contractor, to make 642 workers in its technology systems business redundant.
Mergers and shakers
The Times: Eric Daniels determined to remain at helm of Lloyds Banking Group despite pressure to resign; investors get behind £13.5 billion rights issue.
New York Times: Reeling from its losses in the US subprime mortgage industry, HSBC looks to benefit from growth in China and other emerging markets.
The Times: The University of Manchester accepted £25 million ($41 million) from Tesco then published misleading figures on the supermarket's policy on carrier bags.
Around Asia
The Times: Yukio Hatoyama, Japan's Prime Minister, said his nation risked returning to recession, but analysts suspect a scare tactic to aid budget moves.
New York Times: China sets a target to slow the growth of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, a day after the US set a provisional target.
The Times: AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical company, to move all production of raw materials for drugs offshore, mainly to China.
Look ahead
The Times: Savers to an extra five weeks to declare offshore accounts before the "new disclosure opportunity" ends; the deadline moved to January 4.
New York Times: A lobby group said China faced a protectionist backlash next year because its manufacturers were saddled with overcapacity.
The Times: With the trial of B. Ramalinga Raju to begin within a month, investigator say the scale of the Satyam scandal has doubled to 140 billion rupees (£1.85 billion).
MARKETS
FTSE 100 5,194.13 down 3.2% (Thursday close)
Dow market closed
S&P 500 market closed
Nasdaq market closed
Nikkei 9,213.51 down 1.8% (latest)
Hang Seng 21,600.70 down 2.8% (latest)
Currencies
Sterling $1.6412/1.0982 euros (latest)
Euro $1.4944 (latest)
Commodities
Brent crude $76.87 down 12 cents (latest)
West Texas crude $75.92 down $2.04 (latest)
Gold $1189.30 up 70 cents (latest)
New York
Reuters: US financial markets closed to mark Thanksgiving. The US stock market will close early today at 1pm (1800 GMT).
Asia
Bloomberg: Asian stocks slumped in morning trade, dragging the MSCI Asia Pacific Index down the most in eight weeks, on concern over losses stemming from Dubai. Obayashi tumbled 13 per cent in Tokyo after Daiwa Securities said Japanese builders may not receive some revenue from Dubai. Honda lost 3.3 per cent as the dollar traded near a 14-year low against the yen. BHP Billiton, the world's largest mining company, slumped 3.3 per cent in Sydney after crude oil and copper prices dropped. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index sank 1.8 per cent to 115.49 in morning trade.
Myles McIvor
London
The FTSE 100 suffered its biggest one-day fall for eight months yesterday amid concerns about Dubai's debts and the state's potential impact on other countries.
The index dropped more than 3 per cent, down 170.68 points at 5,194.13, with £14 billion wiped off the value of the banking sector amid worries about its exposure to Dubai's borrowings.
The sell-off was made worse because US markets were closed, with a lack of direction from Wall Street adding to the uncertainty, and investors were happy to take profits ahead of the end of the month.
On an eventful day, reminiscent of the peak of the financial crisis, traders also had to deal with a server outage at the London Stock Exchange, which brought dealing to a halt for about three and a half hours. Barclays was the biggest faller, down 8 per cent. London Stock Exchange lost 7.4 per cent amid fears Dubai could sell its near 21 per cent stake in the exchange. Severn Trent was one of only three blue chip gainers, up 3.8 per cent, after a ruling by Ofwat, the regulator, on how much water companies can spend and charge customers was more favourable to the industry than expected.
Peter Stiff
Peter.Stiff@the-times.co.uk
