Category: Articles

The European Central Bank (ECB) today assumed responsibility for the supervision of euro area banks, following a year-long preparatory phase which included an in-depth examination of the resilience and balance sheets of the biggest banks in the Euro area.

The Q4 2014 ICAEW/Grant Thornton UK Business Confidence Monitor, published today, shows that business confidence in the UK cooled further in the fourth quarter and currently stands at +28.6. Although lower than the +32.3 level of the past three months, the Confidence Index remains high compared with most of the past 10 years.

ALPS, a DST Company focused on asset management and asset servicing, today announced the launch of the ALPS STOXX Europe 600 ETF, the first exchange-traded fund in the U.S. built to track one of the industry’s favored benchmarks for developed Europe stocks.

Lenovo and Google have announced that Lenovo’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility from Google is complete.

British Gas has today confirmed that Chris Weston, Managing Director, will leave the company on 31 December 2014, following his resignation in May.

Today the UK, alongside 50 other countries and jurisdictions from across the globe, is taking the next step in stamping out tax evasion by signing a new agreement at the Global Forum in Berlin to automatically exchange information.

PwC and Google Inc. have announced the launch of a joint business relationship to bring new and innovative services to companies around the world.

The roll-out of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015 will boost economic activity across the ASEAN region and support already strong growth in markets such as Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines, according to Baring Asset Management.

The Rio Tinto board has extended the tenure of chief executive Sam Walsh and chief financial officer Chris Lynch.

KPMG in the UK has announced the appointment of Neill Thomas as head of Corporate Finance and Andrew Nicholson as head of M&A.

The gap between the best and worst performing hedge funds has narrowed during the first half of 2014, BlackRock’s latest analysis of the hedge fund industry has found.

Impact Forecasting, Aon Benfield's catastrophe model development team, launched a catastrophe model to estimate the financial impact of earthquakes in the Arabian Peninsula.

Authors of a new book, iDisrupted, claim that new technologies will continue to change the world, leaving some of the world’s biggest firms behind.

A new pulse survey from Aon Hewitt, the global talent, retirement and health solutions business of Aon plc (NYSE: AON), reveals that a significant number of U.S. employers are taking immediate steps to avoid triggering the excise tax on high cost health plans when it goes into effect in 2018.

Eurostat, the European statistical agency, reported today that Eurozone's annual consumer price inflation fell to 0.3% in September, down from 0.4% in August.

M&A markets have staged a strong recovery in 2014, with deal values in the first three quarters of the year already higher than for the same period in 2013 and average deal sizes at their highest levels for many years, according to Allen & Overy's latest M&A Index.

The heads of the Treasuries and leading financial regulatory bodies in the United States and United Kingdom today participated in an exercise designed to further the understanding, communication, and cooperation between US and UK authorities in the event of the failure and resolution of a global systemically important bank, or G-SIB.

The UK government has announced it has begun the process of issuing the world's first non-Chinese sovereign bond in the Chinese currency, the renminbi (RMB).

Proceeds from European IPOs in the traditionally quieter third quarter settled back to €6.6 billion, from €22.3 billion in Q2 2014. Nevertheless, Q3 proceeds were more than double those of Q3 2013 (€3.0 billion), primarily as a result of a number of large IPOs in July, including NN Group in the Netherlands (€1.5 billion), FinecoBank in Italy(€673 million) and Logista in Spain (€606 million).

KPMG has announced the appointment of David Burlison as Global Head of Restructuring and Mark Firmin as UK Head of Restructuring.

eurobrand , the European independent experts for brand, patent & IP valuation & strategy, has released its global brand value GLOBAL TOP 100 rankings, which examine more than 3,000 corporations in 16 industries, with comparisons of Europe, America and Asia.

The 45th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, which will take place 21-24 January in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, is to convene under the theme The New Global Context.

The volume of global goods trade is set to nearly double to around $18 trillion by the year 2030, according to analysis by PwC economists.

The European Central Bank (ECB) voted to leave rates unchanged today, as expected. The main borrowing rate remains at 0.05%, while the deposit rate stands at -0.2% and the marginal lending facility at 0.3%. ECB President Mario Draghi also gave details of the asset-backed securities purchase programme announced last month, saying that it could include Greek and Cypriot securities but refusing to give an estimate of its planned size.

Royal London Asset Management announces the appointments of Caroline Henty and Joanna Wells as Marketing Managers for its Asset Management business (RLAM).

The number of reported information security incidents around the world rose 48% to 42.8 million, the equivalent of 117,339 attacks per day, according to The Global State of Information Security® Survey 2015, released by PwC in conjunction with CIO and CSO magazines

Twenty-eight companies from Europe, Eurasia and the Middle East have been invited to join the World Economic Forum's Global Growth Companies community of over 370 companies from around the world

Nearly three quarters of CFOs surveyed by Deloitte say now is a good time to take risk onto their balance sheets – up from 65% in Q2 2014 and three times the level seen in Q3 2012

UK private sector growth continued to perform strongly in the three months to September, with expectations for a mild pick up in the next quarter, according to the Confederation of British Industry's Growth Indicator.

George Osborne, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, today announced that from April 2015 individuals will have the freedom to pass on their unused defined contribution pension to any nominated beneficiary when they die, rather than paying the 55% tax charge which currently applies to pensions passed on at death.

The fund management sector was responsible for a record £6.2tn of funds at the end of 2013, with over a third of that sum coming from overseas clients.

Deloitte has furthered strengthened its hedge fund practice with two key appointments for the UK and EMEA regions.

There are many good reasons for companies to believe that increasing gender diversity in their workforces will be a business boost, according to the Confederation of British Industry’s Northern Ireland chair

Royal Bank of Scotland had to lower the price of the initial public offering for its Citizens Financial bank despite a buoyant mood in the wider investment market.

Sir Richard Branson, the boss of the Virgin Group of companies, has offered his private staff as much holiday as they want to take.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation into Pimco’s exchange traded funds (ETF) pricing structure.