Mobile phone firms to kiss and tell

February 18th, 2009 by admin | Filed under Daily News, Recession, The Markets, UK Small Business.

Information has begun to seep out that UK mobile phone networks are to about to begin to sell information to other media companies on the web sites that their clients visit while surfing using the web.

Information that has been gathered over the past year will be passed on and used to generate more advertising income. Needless to say, this breach of privacy is causing a lot of waves amongst the independent bodies established to oversee this kind of activity.

The GSM Association (GSMA) representing the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry announced at their conference currently taking place in Barcelona that that by providing potential advertisers with better information about what people do online, they will help create the sort of advertising ecosystem seen on the fixed-line internet. In the current economic climate, where even online advertising growth is slowing dramatically, many in the industry fear companies will abandon mobile advertising altogether.

After much haggling and apparent indecision the Royal Bank of Scotland, 70% UK government-owned, eventually announced yesterday that it will be awarding their staff bonuses worth up to £950m for only making twenty billion pounds of losses during 2008. With the public up in arms on the news, UK chancellor Alistair Darling softened the blow by announcing that only the “absolute legal minimum” of £175m was too awarded in with the balance to be paid out in “deferred awards”.

On the FTSE, real estate stocks were down on fears that the sector’s liquidity will be increasingly under threat.

Special attention appeared to being paid to Workspace whose stock fell below its underwriting price of 10p on Tuesday, making for a total fall of 60 per cent since announcing its cash call last month.

The Brixton company also saw their shares tumble 28.4 per cent to 48p on reports that the company’s largest shareholder, Singapore’s GIC sovereign wealth fund, were about to announce losses of $50billion for last year.

One of the UK’s key property companies Land Securities also closed down by 8.5 per cent lower at 568p against long drawn out expectations that the company would be soon announcing a £750million rights issue.

The FTSE 250 index dropped a smidgeon0.11% or 7.15 points to 6258.56 while the FTSE 100 finished the session up a mere quarter percent 3.9 per cent, or 10.67points higher at 4,044.80.

Sterling fell slightly against the dollar and the Euro and rose slightly against the Japanese Yen and the Swiss Franc:

Pound/US dollar 1.4166

Pound/Euro 1.1232

Pound/Japanese Yen 130.88

Pound/Swiss Franc 1.6584

Wall Street shares had a bad day on trading with the Dow Jones Average dropping 297.81 to close at 7552.6. The Nasdaq also fell 63.7 points to 1470.66

As if there was a shortage of scandals on the US money markets, a new one emerged yesterday. And it looks like being a biggie! The announcement issued on Tuesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission have charged Sir Robert Allen Stanford, the billionaire Texan businessmen with fraud involving Stanford International, his Antigua-based offshore bank.

Stanford International Bank, located in St John’s on the Caribbean island of Antigua, has been the focal point of much controversy in recent weeks. The rot set in for Sir Robert when a report highly critical of the bank’s apparent ability to deliver returns on its $8.5bn portfolio of depositors’ assets was issued, sparking off further investigation.