India’s railways puff slowly to private sector reform
Tentative reforms and some eye-catching projects could herald a private sector-driven shake-up of India’s creaking railways, but deeper change is needed to tackle the supply bottlenecks that still crimp growth. Once seen as a shining legacy of the British Raj and still one of the world’s biggest employers, India’s rail network crams 18 million people […]
EU to present draft law curbing auditors
Auditing firms in the European Union face more competition and curbs on their activities to restore their “tarnished” image, the bloc’s financial services chief has announced. “One can no longer say ‘move on, there is nothing to see’ on audit issues,” EU Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier told a webstreamed hearing on auditing in Brussels. […]
LSE to buy Toronto bourse making $4trn exchange
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is to buy Canada’s TMX to claw back lost market share and create the world’s fourth-largest bourse trading $4.1trn of stock a year. Shares in the LSE, first established in 1698, jumped nine percent as markets welcomed the all-share deal, and indicating a per share valuation for TMX of C$46.7, […]
UBS sees strong increase in new money in 2011
UBS said it expects to win back more money from clients in 2011 and has laid the foundations for a rebound in its investment bank as chief Oswald Gruebel turns around a bank almost felled by the crisis. UBS said it had seen improvement across all its businesses in the fourth quarter – with total […]
WTO report said to condemn Boeing subsidies
Plane maker Boeing received unfair subsidies from the US government, a World Trade Organisation report said recently, according to Boeing’s European rival Airbus. The two companies disagreed over the extent of the subsidies outlined in the report, which was delivered to the US government and the EU Commission but not released publicly. Airbus said the […]
Debt brake may be one German export too many
As Berlin presses its eurozone partners to introduce tough German-style deficit rules, first cracks are emerging in the country’s own commitment to the “debt brake” law it holds up as a model for others. Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing other European countries to enshrine binding rules based on the German legislation in their constitutions as […]
After the Great Recession, the Great Regression?
Wages, pensions, unemployment insurance, welfare benefits and collective bargaining are under attack in many areas as governments struggle to reduce debts swollen partly by the cost of rescuing banks during the global financial crisis. The EU, which long trumpeted a European social model with a generous welfare state, social partnership between unions and employers and […]
Xstrata year profit up 86%, outlook positive
Miner Xstrata reported a better-than-expected 86 percent jump in annual profit on stronger commodity prices and gave a positive outlook for 2011. The Anglo-Swiss miner said it was still assessing the impact on this year’s results from the recent flooding and cyclones in Queensland – where it has coal, copper and zinc operations – after […]
McBride warns of second wave of material cost rises
A second wave of commodity price increases and a deteriorating British grocery market will hit profits at cleaning products maker McBride, it said on February 7, sending its shares to a 24-week low. McBride, Europe’s biggest maker of own-brand household cleaning products for retailers, said a surge in the price of plastics and vegetable oils […]
Obama tries to woo business, slams ‘burdensome’ tax
President Barack Obama stepped up efforts to woo the US business community on February 7, seeking its help to tackle “burdensome” corporate taxes in a speech to a business group that has long been a fierce critic. Obama, on a drive to win over business and independent voters before the 2012 presidential election, also repeated […]
