NEW! Investment Companies Centre

Tuesday newspaper round-up: Bradford & Bingley, Bank of Ireland, BP

Related Companies

Related Indices

Related Sectors

News for Spread Betters

PreviousPrevious
NextNext

There's a new Investor Edition of CMC Markets' spread betting platform... and it's exclusive to DigitalLook.com users...

Get full details about Marketmaker:Investor Edition here. Advertisement

Date: Tuesday 08 Jul 2008

LONDON (ShareCast) - Bradford & Bingley is heading for one of Britain’s most expensive rights issues with a £55m bill to raise only £400m, according to information released to shareholders.

Moody’s, the ratings agency that downgraded B&B on Friday, increased the pressure by saying that the bank had 30 days to inject tens of millions of pounds into an £8 billion mortgage securitisation vehicle called Aire Valley, reports the Times.

The Bank of Ireland has slashed commercial lending, telling some British customers it has shut its doors to new business for three months. The bank has been one of the most aggressive lenders to the UK property sector and its decision to limit funding will have repercussions for struggling developers looking for already limited finance, reports the Telegraph.

Robert Dudley, the chief executive of TNK-BP, has survived another attempt to oust him from the Russian oil group, but BP's partners in the joint venture have pledged to continue their campaign to force him from his post and are likely to turn to the courts, reports the Telegraph.

There are new signals today that Britain is on the brink of recession, with confirmation that the bulk of the economy is sliding rapidly into a severe downturn. In the strongest evidence yet that the slump is accelerating, an authoritative survey of 5,000 companies reveals what it calls a menacing deterioration in prospects in the past quarter. The findings from the British Chambers of Commerce show that conditions in the services sector, three quarters of the economy, are already at their worst since the last recession in the early Nineties says the Times.

The government is paying out £3m a year in benefits to imprisoned criminals, a new report has revealed. The Public Accounts Committee uncovered the fact that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been paying out significant sums to fraudsters in prison - despite the fact that they lose any rights to social security payments when convicted, writes the Telegraph.

UK oil companies Shell and Esso have agreed to sell assets in the North Sea to the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company, Taqa. The deal with Taqa, whose majority owner is the Abu Dhabi government, involves six offshore and two sub-sea oil fields located in the East Shetland basin, reports the Telegraph.

Linda Cook, the head of gas and power at Royal Dutch Shell, has moved into pole position to be the first woman chief executive of a major international oil company, after Peter Voser, the company’s chief financial officer, was reported to have dropped out of the race says the FT.

Credit rating agencies failed properly to manage conflicts of interest in assigning top ratings to bonds backed by subprime mortgages and other assets, the Securities and Exchange Commission has concluded. The rating agencies, which are paid by the issuers whose securities they rate, have come under criticism for failing to act quickly enough to warn investors about the risks of investing in complex "structured" securities. Ratings analysts are often managed by the same people who run the business side of such firms, reports the FT.

Several of Britain's largest banks have failed to pass on the benefits of a fall in "swap rates" over the past three weeks, with some even raising the prices of their fixed-rate mortgages at a time when they would usually be cutting rates, reports the Independent. Halifax increased the price of some of its fixed-rate mortgages by an average of 0.1 percentage points last week, while Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest increased their rates by as much as 0.4 per cent since swap rates peaked in mid-June.

Mystery bidders are circling Concateno, the corporate drug- testing business. Concateno is understood to have hired investment bank UBS to carry out a strategic review after receiving several unsolicited approaches, The Daily Telegraph can reveal. It is believed any deal is likely to see Concateno taken over at a 30% premium to the current price, reports the Telegraph.

Digital Look have been voted
"Best Research and Information Provider"

4th Floor, Bankside House, 107 Leadenhall Street, London EC3A 4AF.
Registered in England and Wales (registered no. 3678570).