Thursday newspaper round-up: Federal Reserve, Lloyds, RBS...
Minutes from the Federal Reserve's October meeting showed that it was an "easy decision" by policymakers to end quantitative easing, writes the Financial Times. The paper says that minutes showed "little debate or dissent" over the move and underlines a more hawkish stance among the committee.
Apple Inc.
$165.00
13:04 19/04/24
EDF
€12.00
16:30 19/03/24
FTSE 100
7,895.85
16:59 19/04/24
Lloyds Banking Group
50.92p
16:34 19/04/24
NATWEST GROUP
276.70p
16:34 19/04/24
According to The Telegraph, around 8,000 investors have signed up to a lawsuit claiming Lloyds misled shareholders before acquiring HBOS in 2008. The investors, which include about 140 institutions such as charities, asset managers and pension funds, claim they lost almost £300m when approving the takeover six years ago and are seeking compensation in the region of £1 per share. The identity of the claimants, thought to include a mix of British and US investors, is not yet known but it is expected to become public over the next couple of days.
Royal Bank of Scotland has been fined £50m over the collapse of its computer systems in June 2012, The Guardian reports. The chaos left millions of customers without access to their accounts at RBS, Natwest and Ulster Bank for several days.
The Telegraph has said that UK mobile operators are to invest "tens of millions of pounds" to eliminate 'partial hotspots' in coverage. EE, O2, Three and Vodafone have all pledged to cover 89% of Britain, up from 80% currently.
The £24.5bn development of the country's first nuclear reactor, Hinkley Point in Somerset, is being reviewed in secret by the government after the builder EDF Energy admitted to delays in construction, The Times has said. The paper says politicians worry "that its completion will be delayed for years, threatening the secure supply of energy".
The Scotsman said that Scotland recorded the biggest increase in median full-time weekly earnings across the UK in 2013. According to figures published by the Office for National Statistics, Gross Median weekly earnings in the country rose by 2.1% over the year to £519.40.
According to the Financial Times, Apple will incorporate the subscription music service it acquired from Beats into its iOS operating system early 2015, thus making it available on hundreds of millions of iPhones and iPads. The move could increase the pressure on Spotify, the market leader in music streaming and it will also be Apple’s first major leap into the subscription music industry at a time when iTunes downloads are in decline.