 | April 27, 2010 |
Kill the Competition: German promise ... Overhaul delay ... BA colludesTuesday, April 27, 0730 GMTTop stories The Times: Germany issued an emergency statement promising aid to Greece as bond market investors pushed up the interest rate on two-year Greek debt to almost 14 per cent. http://tinyurl.com/28bkp5p Wall Street Journal: Republicans delayed financial regulation legislation in the US Senate, throwing sweeping overhauls into a period of uncertainty. http://tinyurl.com/233lprf The Times: A court heard that four British Airways executives fixed the price of fuel surcharges in a secret deal with rival airline Virgin Atlantic. http://tinyurl.com/22l4b8g Comment Ian King in The Times: Lloyd Blankfein, the Goldman Sachs chief executive, will have to tread carefully as he appears before a US Senate sub-committee. http://tinyurl.com/2393ors Jeremy Warner in The Daily Telegraph: The oil industry's handling of disasters holds useful lessons for banks. http://tinyurl.com/32fuwyd David Prosser in The Independent: Exodus? What exodus? Our tax system is not as bad as the critics claim. http://tinyurl.com/3x2544e Upside The Times: Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs’ chief executive, gave unusually frank and contrite testimony to a US Senate committee over the bank’s role in the financial crisis. http://tinyurl.com/2dnc6qe The Daily Telegraph: Industrial and engineering firms helped drive FTSE 100 higher with forecasts for better-than-expected profits. http://tinyurl.com/282yqwp The Independent: Advertising targeted at UK mobile phone users jumped 32 per cent last year, despite a contraction in the wider advertising market. http://tinyurl.com/35nnnor Downside The Times: UK Coal will sell thousands of acres of land that had been set aside to develop pits after production problems prompted a cashflow crisis. http://tinyurl.com/25bqlal The Daily Telegraph: US regulators are likely to conduct a "belt and braces" review of deepwater oil drilling safety in the wake of BP's Gulf of Mexico disaster. http://tinyurl.com/36fgldm The Times: Economic recovery may be threatened by UK businesses in financial distress being unable to pay their debts, Begbies Traynor, the insolvency group warned. http://tinyurl.com/288jbgw Mergers and shakers The Times: Capital Group, the Prudential’s biggest shareholder, secretly held talks to orchestrate a potential break-up of the insurer. http://tinyurl.com/23o4tzg The Independent: Chloride, the power supply protection group, rejected a £723 million ($1.1 billion) takeover bid from Emerson Electric, its US rival. http://tinyurl.com/25dm895 The Times: Bank of Ireland plans to raise €3.4 billion (£2.9 billion, $4.5 billion) in an attempt to limit the scale of state ownership. http://tinyurl.com/23dlolc Around Asia Wall Street Journal: Google, the internet search giant, lost Chinese internet search revenue in the first quarter to its rival Baidu. http://tinyurl.com/2f6t2ax The Times: Bids in an online auction of 3G mobile phone licenses in India are "going beyond rational levels", warned analysts. http://tinyurl.com/2el3g53 Wall Street Journal: South Korea's economy grew at a faster pace in the first quarter than initially estimated on rising exports and a pickup in demand. http://tinyurl.com/2b3amqm Look ahead New York Times: Realtors, home buyers and sellers in the US are rushing to complete sales agreements before home purchase tax credits expire this week. http://tinyurl.com/26czt9k The Times: Customers who paid for hampers from Farepak are expected to receive less than £50 ($77) each when liquidation of the Christmas savings club is finalised. http://tinyurl.com/2895gdb New York Times: A decision by the US government on the nation’s first offshore wind farm is to be made this week. http://tinyurl.com/23lkw8a MARKETS FTSE 100 5,753.85 up 0.5% (Monday close) Dow 11,205.03 steady (close) S&P 500 1,212.05 down 0.4% (close) Nasdaq 2,522.95 down 0.3% (close) Nikkei 11,118.82 down 0.4% (latest) Hang Seng 21,281.79 down 1.4% (latest) Currencies Sterling $1.5442/1.1546 euros (latest) Euro $1.3375 (latest) Commodities Brent crude $86.55 down 28 cents (latest) West Texas crude $83.63 down 57 cents (latest) Gold $1154.50 up 50 cents (latest) New York Reuters: US stocks edged lower as bank shares fell on fears that financial reform will curb profits. Among financial stocks, JPMorgan fell 2.3 per cent and Bank of America fell 2.1 per cent. Citigroup fell 5.1 per cent after the US Treasury said it would begin selling part of its stake. Heavy machinery maker Caterpillar rose 4.2 per cent on strong results. Health insurer Humana fell 4.3 per cent on profit-taking. Whitegoods maker Whirlpool rose 10 per cent on better-than-expected results. Rental car firm Hertz Global rose 14.1 per cent after it agreed to buy rival Dollar Thrifty Automotive. Dollar Thrifty rose 10.9 per cent. Clinical research firm Charles River Laboratories International fell 15.6 per cent on plans to buy Shanghai-based WuXi PharmaTech. The US-listed shares of WuXi rose 17.1 per cent. Financial services firm Stifel Financial fell 2.4 per cent on reports it will buy rival Thomas Weisel Partners, which rose 68.1 per cent. http://tinyurl.com/292gbdb Asia Bloomberg: Asian stocks fell in morning trade, led by technology and health-care companies. Elpida Memory, Japan’s biggest maker of computer memory, fell 2.4 per cent in Tokyo and rival Hynix Semiconductor fell 3 per cent in Seoul as memory-chip prices fell to a five-week low. CSL, the world’s second-biggest maker of treatments made from blood, fell 4.6 per cent in Sydney on an analyst’s downgrade. PetroChina, China’s largest oil producer, fell 1.6 per cent and Inpex, Japan’s largest oil explorer, fell 1.9 percent on lower oil prices. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 0.4 per cent to 126.74 in morning trade. http://tinyurl.com/2dj8u6z Michael Beh michaelwbeh@gmail.com London Intertek, the Footsie test and inspection specialist, yesterday walked away from talks to buy part of a Norwegian rival after five months. That sent the shares 31p lower to £14.98, among the steepest losses by any bluechip in a generally rising market. The company - which checks that everything from teddy bears to industrial chemicals comply with safety, quality and environmental standards - still reckoned that a deal to buy the business insurance division of Det Norske Veritas was attractive to both companies. The trouble was that DNV is owned by a trust, and run on a not-for-profit basis across 40 countries. That made the clean and timely removal of the part Intertek wanted a big problem. Intertek has itself long been mooted as a potential takeover target of SGS, the Swiss leader of the testing market. Overall, the FTSE 100 rose 30.2 points to 5,753.85 amid cautious optimism that Greece was finally close to underpinning its precarious financial position with help from the European Union and International Monetary Fund. That, decent earnings from British and American companies, and takeover moves, helped investors maintain their appetite for risk. Miners and banks were among those to benefit most. The two Kazakhstan-based, London-listed miners were both better after each unveiled a deal. Kazakhmys rose 50p to £14.80 after selling 49 per cent of its Aktogay project in Kazakhstan to China's Jinchuan for $120 million (£77.7 million). The cash will contribute towards the development costs for the project which are estimated to be as much as $2 billion. Meanwhile, Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation is paying $296 million for 12.2 per cent of Northam, a South African platinum producer, as part of its plan to diversify. ENRC added 43p to £12.57. Banks were better, too. Royal Bank of Scotland, the lender 84 per cent owned by the taxpayer, rose 2.25p more to 58.05p, its best since December 2008. That prompted Ian Gordon, the well-followed banks analyst at Exane BNP Paribas, to urge clients holding the shares to cash in and sell. Gary Parkinson Gary.Parkinson@thetimes.co.uk |
