Barclays has expressed a willingness to buy out Russia’s Expobank in a deal mounting to 373 million pounds in order to tap the growing Russian economy.
The Russian Expobank is currently owned by Petropavlovsk finance and operates in most of western Russia focusing on Moscow and St Petersburg. Starting operations in 1994, this bank has currently 32 branches under its wings and its net asset total as of 31st December 2007 was $186 million.
Barclays is keen to acquire the ready-made platform with the relationships and infrastructure that the Russian Expobank provides in a country with a growing economy and great potential. The deal is expected to result in an increase in Barclays’ profits by 2011.
HSBC is expected to unveil almost $16 billion in losses for the year 2007 but is still expected to generate a profit.
HSBC is Britain’s largest bank and is the last of the five main British banks, which include Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and HBOS, to reveal their annual estimates.
Although HSBC is making this 16 billion dollar bad debt write off, they still expect their profits t increase to $25 billion up from the $22 billion reported last year.
Most of the write off comes from the battering that most banks have faced in the credit situation associated with U.S. mortgage situations. The plunging U.S. housing market has however affected the U.S. owned banks a lot worse than the British banks.
The HSBC bad debt write off this year is a massive increase from the $10.6 billion write off they made for the year 2006. With no respite in sight from the ailing U.S. housing economy, investment groups have urged HSBC to sever ties with its U.S. arm and focus on the booming Asian markets.
Glaxosmithkline have decided to reduce its staff in Currabinny, Cork, by nearly a hundred employees. This move has become imperative due to a fall in the worldwide sales of a number of drugs, the ingredients of which are manufactured at this site. This, decision, the company stressed was not because of any fault in the employees’ dedication or efficiency, but merely a need to keep the situation sustainable.
This news comes as a terrible blow to Cork which has been in the pharmaceutical industry for a number of years. This is made worse by the fact that, one of the mainstays of Irish manufacturing is the pharmaceutical industry and as the traditional indigenous companies were already ailing, a lot of hopes were pinned on high profile companies such as Glaxosmithkline.
A wide variety of BBC television programmes are now available for users to download at Apple’s UK iTunes store. As per BBC, this is the first time any UK broadcaster has offered its programmes via iTunes. Every programme will cost £1.89 to users willing to download them. Once users have downloaded the programmes, they can play them on Mac or PC or even on video iPods, iPhones and Apple’s IPTV service.
The director of digital Media at BBC Worldwide, Simon Danker, said that with more and more people watching TV on iPods, this particular move will provide audiences with a huge range of alternatives to see BBC shows. Shows that are obtainable include Spooks, Life on Mars and Robin Hood. Other shows will also be available as soon as they are sown on BBC iPlayer. Recently, the BBC has joined hands with MySpace, YouTube, ITV and Channel 4 for the Kangaroo on-demand service.
The BBC has its own free on-demand service in the name of iPlayer. This allows all viewers to catch up with all the programs that they might have missed in the past week. The initive was extremely popular. Roughly 3.5 million programs downloaded it within the first two weeks of its launch. The programmes will first be available on iPlayer and then on iTunes.
The European Commission in Brussels is seeing red over Microsoft’s defiance of the sanctions that were levied against them for their anti-competitive stance. This fine has been imposed in response to Microsoft’s failure to comply with a 2004 EU ruling, and Microsoft’s fine is a now a record figure of 899 million Euros.
This is not the first time Microsoft has been fined. It has been fined on two occasions in March 2004 and July 2006, mounting to 497 million Euros and 280 million Euros respectively.
EU’s main grouse is that Microsoft has used its dominant market position to weed out competitor software makers by linking its own software as default applications. This makes Microsoft the first company in the 50 years of the EU competition policy to be fined for failure to comply with an antitrust decision.
British American Tobacco (BAT) is eager to buy the cigarette businesses of Skandinavisk Tobakskompagni (ST) in a deal where they are willing to shell out 2 billion pounds.
BAT is the world’s second largest cigarette manufacturer, with well known brands Kent, Lucky Strike, Dunhill and Pall Mall cigarettes, part of their roster. They have made a remarkable increase in sales in 2007, up nearly 11% along with an increase in share prices by 108.53 pence.
BAT intends to buy over the entire business of ST, a company that accounts for nearly 60% of the tobacco sales in Scandinavia. This will result in an increase in sales for BAT by nearly 30 million cigarettes.
BAT just acquired Turkey’s state owned Tekel Cigarette maker in a deal worth $1.72 billion just last week.
Orange and Vodafone have joined hands to share network resources. Both of them have been in extensive talks about how they could share resources efficiently for a year now. Orange and Vodafone revealed that the deal to share 2G and 3G mobile masts in the UK would result in customers benefiting in terms of better mobile coverage quality. Now that they have joined hands, their united customer base will benefit from their joint resources. The deal is expected to decrease operational costs for both the companies as the number of mast sites can be lessened roughly by 15 per cent - say 3,000 sites - in the first couple of years itself. This will have positive impact on the environment too. Both the companies said that they intended to continue with their separate networks as of now. This agreement is a result of a recent network joint venture between competitors 3 and T-Mobile.
Orange and Vodafone together have around 27,000 masts all across the country that serve a collective 34 million mobile phone users. Both of them will not share physical infrastructure in that sense but will definitely reduce the number of mast sites by keeping transmitters on the same site. This will save both of them a lot of money on running costs.
Technology firm Capgemini has confirmed it is to cut 450 UK jobs which includes the closure of an office in Hampshire. The consulting and outsourcing company had been proposing to make up to 600 redundancies due to the loss of a contract with HM Revenue and Customs. It employs 2,200 people in Telford, Shropshire, where the bulk of the cuts are due, and has sites in Basingstoke, Hampshire, West Sussex and Newcastle. Staff affected by the cuts has been officially informed.
The Public and Commercial Service Union (PCU) said it is trying to further reduce the number of cuts. About 200 jobs are thought to be under threat in Telford, 95 jobs will go with the closure of the Basingstoke office, 44 staff are to leave the Newcastle site and between 20 and 30 posts are expected to be cut in Worthing, the union said. It is thought about 90 staff plan to leave voluntarily.
Last month, a Shropshire MP had urged Capgemini, one of the biggest employers in his constituency to avoid compulsory job cuts. Capgemini had proposed about 600 redundancies across the UK due to the loss of a contract with HM Revenue and Customs in January 2008. Wrekin MP Mark Pritchard said the company, which employs about 2,200 people in Telford, should examine a voluntary redundancy scheme. The Conservative had recently met with one of the company’s senior managers.
Sony and Sharp have forged an alliance to help them meet the growing demand for liquid crystal display televisions.
Sony is to take a one-third stake in Sharp’s $3.5bn (£1.8bn) LCD panel factory, which is due to be completed in March 2010. Sony does not currently make the LCD panels for its flat-screen televisions, relying instead on a joint venture with South Korea’s Samsung.
Sony and Samsung branded televisions are competing for the number one spot in LCD sales, with Sharp trailing behind them. Global sales of LCD televisions are expected to double to 155 million units by 2012, according to the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Association.
In the meanwhile, Sony has cut its profit forecast by about 9% - saying falling stock markets have dented its investments while the strong yen is hitting overseas sales. It also warned the US economic slowdown could hit its sales in that market. The Japanese firm said it expected to make about 410bn yen (£305m; $608bn) in the year to March, down from its earlier prediction of 450bn yen. But in more upbeat news, Sony added that Playstation 3 sales had helped its video games arm to reach profitability.
But Sony’s games division made its first profit in two years after it cut costs and boosted demand by lowering prices. Sony said there had also been strong demand for its digital cameras and Vaio personal computers during the Christmas period. “The game division turning into the black is a positive,” said Norinchukin Zenkyoren Asset Management senior fund manager, Takeshi Osawa.
Profits at international bank Standard Chartered rose 27% in 2007, thanks to growth in its main markets of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Pre-tax profits were $4.04bn (£2.05bn) in 2007, up from $3.2bn in 2006.
It increased its write-downs on investments due to global financial turmoil to $300m from $116m. The company said it expected growth in the Asian economies, where it focuses its business, to be higher this year than in the US and eurozone. “Although growth rates in Asia will slow… the region now enjoys a degree of insulation and resilience,” Chairman Mervyn Davies said.
“Standard Chartered has for some time now been the darling of the UK banking sector and these sparkling figures will do the cause no harm whatsoever,” Richard Hunter, from stockbrokers Hargreaves Lansdown said. “The bank has had the dual boost of a major exposure to the booming Asian regions, whilst having a relatively light presence in the more difficult European and US economies,” he said.
In January this year, Standard Chartered’s investment vehicle Whistlejacket went into receivership with the loss of $116m. The fall in the value of its assets was prompted by uncertainty in the world’s financial markets.