 | May 12, 2010 |
Kill the Competition: easyJet divide ... Pound rises ... Bank complaintsTop storiesThe Times: Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, a board director of easyJet, publicly criticised Andy Harrison, the budget carrier’s "overrated" chief executive. http://tinyurl.com/2auadsj The Daily Telegraph: The pound broke through the $1.50 mark as David Cameron’s coalition Government took charge. http://tinyurl.com/2e2agjh The Times: UK banks handled a million more complaints last year after they were forced to deal with a huge backlog about bank charges. http://tinyurl.com/2w5cjwa Comment Anatole Kaletsky in The Times: Politicians are being bullied into making rash decisions. Just look at the euro bailout. http://tinyurl.com/37prhu3 David Prosser in The Independent: We shouldn’t think that a pick-up in manufacturing suggests we have successfully rebalanced Britain's economy. http://tinyurl.com/37ox6au David Leonhardt in the New York Times: The US will probably not face the same kind of crisis as Greece, for all sorts of reasons. But the basic problem is the same. http://tinyurl.com/2d2mp2e Upside The Times: UK industrial output jumped at its fastest pace in eight years in March, lifting expectations of improved economic growth in the first quarter. http://tinyurl.com/2435fjx New York Times: The four big US banks managed to make money from trading every single day during the first three months of the year. http://tinyurl.com/2afr5lw The Times: The UK taxman withdrew a hefty fine issued against a man who made a mistake when trying to claim a rebate for overpaid taxes. http://tinyurl.com/25rcrv8 Downside The Times: Fashionair, an upmarket fashion website co-founded by Simon Fuller, closed after CKx, its US owner, pulled the plug on funding. http://tinyurl.com/28umd32 New York Times: US regulators examining the causes of the stock market free fall last Thursday are looking closely at heavy selling by a single trader. http://tinyurl.com/26mr3z2 The Daily Telegraph: The UK would have to fend for itself if ongoing uncertainty led to a meltdown in the financial markets, a French finance official warned. http://tinyurl.com/2b36pwy Mergers and shakers The Times: The threat of foreclosure over EMI lifted after Guy Hands, the head of the music label’s owner Terra Firma, secured £105 million ($156 million) for a bail out. http://tinyurl.com/2c4dxd4 New York Times: Peter Chernin, the former News Corporation executive, is in the early stages of assembling his own entertainment enterprise. http://tinyurl.com/27n574x The Times: Orange and T-Mobile, the telecoms firms, revealed that their merged company will adopt the corporate name "Everything Everywhere". http://tinyurl.com/2emv5pd Around Asia The Times: Toyota, the Japanese car giant, made a 112 billion yen (£805 million, $1.2 billion) quarterly profit despite major vehicle recalls. http://tinyurl.com/2fnrdck Wall Street Journal: The Bank of Korea kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged at an all-time low of 2 per cent. http://tinyurl.com/23fthqk Bloomberg: The US Transport Secretary rode on a fast magnetic-levitation train in Japan, which is trying to sell its technology overseas. http://tinyurl.com/2c8rn44 Look ahead The Times: Enterprise Inns, Britain’s second-biggest pub company, may be ready to restore dividend payments next year. http://tinyurl.com/2a669hu Wall Street Journal: Starbucks, the US coffee giant, plans to roll out a second coffee brand, Seattle's Best Coffee, by autumn. http://tinyurl.com/23hk2co The Times: Samsung, the South Korean conglomerate, will sink $21 billion (£14 billion) into its green technology and healthcare businesses over the next ten years. http://tinyurl.com/2eyf4yb MARKETS FTSE 100 5,334.21 down 1% (Tuesday close) Dow 10,748.26 down 0.3% (close) S&P 500 1,155.79 down 0.3% (close) Nasdaq 2,375.31 steady (close) Nikkei 10,464.80 up 0.5% (latest) Hang Seng 20,167.26 up 0.1% (latest) Currencies Sterling $1.4897/1.1779 euros (latest) Euro $1.2647 (latest) Commodities Brent crude $80.27 down 22 cents (latest) West Texas crude $75.88 down 49 cents (latest) Gold $1228.20 up $7.90 (latest) New York Reuters: The Dow and the S&P 500 fell in a volatile session as fears that a bailout for Europe won't solve the region's deep-seated problems blunted an improving US economic picture. Entertainment company Walt Disney rose 1.3 per cent in regular trade but fell 2.9 per cent in extended-hours trading on disappointing results in its media network division. During the regular trading session, Canadian gold miner Goldcorp rose 6.3 per cent as gold prices rose to an all-time high. Energy giant Exxon fell 0.5 per cent on lower oil prices. On the Nasdaq, biotech firm Gilead Sciences rose 2.3 per cent on a share buy-back plan. Consumer products maker Church & Dwight fell 3.4 per cent on a weak earnings outlook. US-listed shares of carmaker Toyota rose 0.9 per cent on better-than-expected results. http://tinyurl.com/38ujlyu Asia Bloomberg: Asian stocks rose in morning trade after car makers forecast higher earnings and gold advanced to a record. Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker, rose 2.6 per cent after saying annual profit will increase by almost half. Isuzu, Japan’s largest maker of light-duty trucks, rose 4.9 per cent after forecasting a more-than-doubling of net income. Among Australian gold miners, Newcrest Mining rose 2.4 per cent, Lihir Gold rose 2.3 per cent and Eldorado Gold rose 9.8 per cent. OZ Minerals, the Australian copper and gold producer, rose 3.3 per cent on an analyst’s upgrade. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 0.4 per cent to 119.26 in morning trade. http://tinyurl.com/22s35zm Michael Beh michaelwbeh@gmail.com London The world’s biggest metals trader has tapped 76 banks for a $10.2 billion (£6.8 billion) loan that moves a mega-merger and London listing one step closer. Glencore International, founded by the billionaire financier Marc Rich and owned by a coterie of its senior traders, said last month that it was after $7 billion of loans. But, after banks fell over themselves to stump up cash, the amount raised by the secretive Swiss company jumped. Glencore, the latest in a string of commodity companies to take advantage of lower interest rates and higher metals prices, will use the loans to refinance its debts and strengthen its balance sheet. That should burnish Glencore’s credit rating ahead of a potential flotation in London or merger with the mining conglomerate Xstrata, also Swiss-based, in which it already holds a 34 per cent stake. Xstrata fell 42p to £10.50 on a difficult day for miners generally. The sector was under pressure after Chinese inflation ran to its highest in 18 months in April. China is a hungry consumer of the world's natural resources and those inflation figures fanned fears that Beijing may lift interest rates to tackle rising prices. But more expensive borrowing there would also curb China's demand for metals, oil and other commodities. That unsettled the price of metals and of those companies that dig them from the ground. Kazakhmys, the Kazakh copper miner, was among those to be hardest, falling 55p to £12.70. After the euphoria of Monday - when the FTSE 100 enjoyed it best day for almost 18 months - the stock market came back to earth with a bump. London’s leading index gave back 53.21 of the previous day’s 264-point jump, closing at 5,334.21. Moody's Investors Service took the shine off the unprecedented €750 billion (£650 billion) of emergency funding made available by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund to try to stop the Greek debt crisis spreading. The company, which rates the likelihood of default on debt, took the unusual step of confirming that it was indeed thinking about possibly cutting its rating on Greece and Portugal. That sent the pound and the euro lower against the dollar and hit stock markets. Gary Parkinson Gary.Parkinson@thetimes.co.uk |
