In the erratic financial atmosphere that we are living through, nothing should surprise us anymore. However the news that the UK’s oil and gas production from the North Sea is in jeopardy should be enough to wipe the file from the face of even the most diehard optimist. And why is this about to happen? Because the government has spent all of its money bailing out banks, insurance companies and building societies and had little money left to finance continued exploration. If a major scources of finance does not become available and soon, the unbelievable facts are one of the western worlds most important deposits will not be capable of realizing its total potential. .

Oil discovery experts now claim that the number of exploration wells being drilled in the North Sea has fallen by a staggering 78 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 in comparison to the same period in 2008.

The news that British Telecom is to consider cutting several thousand jobs as part of their cost reduction program for the financial year 2009/2010 continues to hang in the air. The cuts will come in addition to the 10,000 jobs cuts that BT arrived at in their last financial year, and comes in the light of further profit warnings issued by the company.

Another tarnished communications giant, International Business Machines or IBM as we all know and love them have announced that they will also be lying off thousands of staff in locations across the globe, including the UK. The company intends to transfer jobs to Eastern Europe, China, India and South America. Indian employees at IBM reputedly earn about 10 percent of the amount paid to U.S. employees performing similar tasks.

After the long holiday weekend, the FTSE index is expected to open with a rise, on the optimistic news that Goldman Sachs posted a much higher first-quarter profit than expected.

Before the Easter holiday the FTSE100 closed up 1.5 percent (58.19 points at 3,983.71) on Thursday, with the FTSE 250 closing at 6,978.65

At close of trade on Thursday, sterling had risen slightly against the dollar and the Euro and held its price against the Japanese Yen and the Swiss Franc:

Pound/US dollar 1.4867

Pound/Euro 1.1181

Pound/Japanese Yen 148.05

Pound/Swiss Franc 1.6941

Wall Street was open for trade yesterday and enjoyed a mediocre day.

The Dow Jones Average dropped 25.5 to close at 8057.81. Nasdaq did better, even rising 0.77 of a point to 1653.31

It was obvious on trading that the market was looking for some kind of a pick-me-up, with none forthcoming. Investors were unsettled by the news that filing from General Motors were considering filing bankruptcy. All in all Wall Street is facing a crucial week for corporate earnings and economic data, with some of its biggest names scheduled to unveil quarterly results, among them JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup from the banking sector; Intel, Google and Nokia from the hi-tech sector and industrial giants Johnson & Johnson, General Electric and Mattel. The hope is that the tone has been set by Goldman Sachs’ who beat all first-quarter forecasts, in a sign a further sign that the worst may be over for financial firms.

In the meantime AIG confirmed that its financial products unit, whose soured bets on credit default swaps forced the company into government hands last year, has failed to sign up for the overhaul of the global derivatives market which was given added impetus by the troubles at the US insurance group.

Growing optimism in Asia is evidenced by the news that Chinese stocks have climbed to their highest levels for nearly eight months as data showing a record surge in bank lending and money supply last month fuelled hopes of an early economic recovery in the country.

On Monday, the Shanghai Composite index rose 2.8 per cent to 2,513.48

On early trading Tuesday some Asian stocks fell backwards as disappointing profit reports at Qantas and Sumitomo Realty were announced.

The Nikkei was down -1.61% (143.45 points to 8,780.98) whiles the Hang Seng rose by 1.75% (260.37 points to 15,161.78)

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Tags: Bank, Banking, British Economy, Credit Crunch, Finance, Financial News, Fuel, Fuel Costs, Recession, UK Banks, UK Recession, UK’s oil and gas

What does Christianity, 911 and The Federal Reserve all have in common?
“Zeitgeist, the Movie is a 2007 documentary film released online free and on DVD, presenting Christianity, the September 11 attacks, and the US Federal Reserve Bank as being instrumental for social control. According to the website’s “statement”:

Zeitgeist, The Movie and Zeitgeist: Addendum were created as Not-for-Profit expressions to communicate what the author felt were highly important social understandings which most humans are generally not aware of. The first film focuses on suppressed historical & modern information about currently dominant social institutions, while also exploring what could be in store for humanity if the power structures at large continue their patterns of self-interest, corruption, and consolidation.” Source Wikipedia

Veiw Zeitgeist:

The second film, Zeitgeist: Addendum, attempts to locate the root causes of this pervasive social corruption, while offering a solution. This solution is not based on politics, morality, laws, or any other “establishment” notions of human affairs, but rather on a modern, non-superstitious based understanding of what we are and how we align with nature, to which we are a part. The work advocates a new social system which is updated to present day knowledge, highly influenced by the life long work of Jacque Fresco and The Venus Project.”

Veiw Zeitgeist: Addendum

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

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Tags: 911, Banking, Christianity, conspiracy theory, Economy, Finance, Inflation, Money, Money Management, The Federal Reserve, Zeitgeist

British chancellor Alistair Darling was looking and sounding somewhat sheepish as he was forced to admit over the weekend that what was already obvious to everyone. The chances of their being resurgence in the UK economy IN 2009 is non-existent.

The not so eagerly awaited budget speech by Darling on the 22nd of April 22 will begin with his prediction that the UK economy will shrink by at least 3 per cent in 2009 and that budget deficits will amount for more than 10 per cent of national income.

No simple admission to make, as the prediction turnaround is regarded by financial analysts as the most radical modification of any debt forecasts in modern history. In real terms the three percent slide in growth deterioration is three hundred percent higher than the Chancellor predicted in his pre-Budget report in November, which also pointed to a turn around that would begin in late summer 2009.

Signs that all is far from well with the UK economy came with a recent report that British companies made the highest number of profit warnings in the first quarter since 2001. A total of 117 British companies issued forecasts of profit reductions, making it the third quarter in a row when profit warnings have been in three figures. Struggling particularly are companies in the support services followed by media and industry.

While there is a level of optimism around after the positive decisions arrived at during the G20 conference, the fact remains that the British economy Is still very much in the doldrums, Recent figures have shown that the economy contracted in the fourth quarter at the highest level since 1980 with indication that the first quarter of 2009 will show some improvement but will be far from encouraging.

Banks enjoyed some good and bad publicity over the weekend. Predictions made at the AGM of the Royal Bank of Scotland held on Friday that the bank will take a minimum of three years and probably five to recover from the myriad of mistakes made BT the former management, with the disastrous acquisition of ABN Amro assets being the most prominent. The message at the meeting was that there was optimism for the future, and that previous mistakes should erased from the stockholder’s memories. Easier said than done it seemed, according to the reportedly turgid reactions of the stockholders who attended the AGM in Edinburgh.

Much loved by their shareholders is Europe’s biggest bank, HSBC Holding as investors bought 97 percent of the U.K.’s largest-ever rights offer., with the banker succeeding in raising around $17.7 billion The shares went for sold 254 pence each, 41 percent less than their value at the close of the FTSE on April 3 in London. Early indications that they will recover to their pre-rights issue value came from Asia where HSBC shares have already risen by more than three percent on early trading.

Bank officials stated that the London-based bank is now “well-positioned for the uncertain economic environment and for growth opportunities

Meanwhile the BT Group, the World’s long established communications company in the world announced that they are considering including their remaining property assets, which include the London landmark BT Tower as well at their high value office headquarters situated adjacent to St Paul’s Cathedral into their pension fund to tackle a deficit running close to excess of 5 billion pounds. With the properties valued at about 300 million pounds it might make some difference, but not a lot.

All seems well at BG Group, at least if you consider what the group’s chief executive Frank Chapman, took home last year. Frank earned a total of £10.9million in 2008, putting him well into the bracket of being amongst Britain’s highest salary earners. To be fair, Mr. Chapman did lead the company through a year of profitability and rapid expansion.

BG’s 2008 earnings beat analysts’ expectations following astute negotiations supervised by Chapman, which saw BG achieve high profit margins in its liquefied natural gas (LNG) business.

In a recent announcement, Mr. Chapman announced that BG was slated to become the world’s third-largest producer of LNG by 2015, behind Exxon and Shell.

The FTSE 250 index rose by 1.49% or 93.35 points to 6351.92 while the FTSE 100 finished Friday’s session up 46.56 points, at 4,076

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

Pound/US dollar 1.493

Pound/Euro 1.1028

Pound/Japanese Yen 150.93

Pound/Swiss Franc 1.6849

Wall Street shares had a another solid day on Friday’s trading

The Dow Jones Average rose 39.51. To creep over the eight thousand mark at 8017.59. Nasdaq also rose 19.24points to close at 1621.87

The market was obviously dampened by news that US unemployment had reached its highest level since 1983, arriving at 8.5 per cent of the work force
In March, industry and commerce shed 663,000 jobs, bringing job losses since December 2007 to 5.1m, with around three and a half million jobs being lost since October 2008 alone.

In Asian markets moved higher for a fourth consecutive session on early trading on Monday. By the 11am break in Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 had risen 2.3 per cent

At close of business on Friday European stocks had also risen, reaching their highest level for eighteen months, a sure sign that coincidence was on the rise aft the G20 conference

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Tags: Alastair Darling, British Economy, Budget, Economics, Finance, Financial News, FTSE, Recession, UK Banks, UK Recession

A sign that all is not well in the pub trade comes with the News that the Punch Taverns Group have sold six of their prime managed freehold pubs in central London for nearly 20 per cent below their current market price. The buyers, Fuk

a signal highly leveraged pub groups may be struggling to offload their poor-performing assets and are having to let go of prime properties to pay down debt to Fuller Smith & Turner The six pubs, described by Michael Turner, Fuller’s chairman, as “exceptional quality assets” were sold for £21.1m in cash, their locations including Kensington, Parliament Street in Westminster, Hatton Garden and Hyde Park.

They had 2007-08 earnings before interest and tax of £2.5m and a book value of £25.6m as of August 23.

Giles Thorley, Punch chief executive, said the deal demonstrated its desire to increase free cash flow and to reduce the overall level of debt, “whilst seeking to maintain investment in our high-quality pub estate”.

Punch is not alone in putting pubs up for sale, as groups look for remedies to combat the consequences of declining trade and indebtedness. The group, which has a net debt of £4.5bn, put 500 low-performing leaseholds up for sale and last month gave tenants first refusal on its entire portfolio of 7,400 leased pubs.

The Bank of England announced that the U.K. Economy shrank by 1.5 percent in the fourth quarter 2008, the most since 1980, and predictions are that a similar rate of contraction can be expected for the first quarter of this year.

On a more optimistic note, the figures announced by the statistics office reported that investments in UK business fell by only1.5 percent in the last three months of 2008, sufficiently less than the previous estimate of 3.9 percent.

Songbird Estates, the controlling shareholder in the iconic property development in London’s Canary Wharf, that came to symbolise London’s revival as a global financial centre, issued a warning on Thursday that they were in danger of breaching a key debt agreement during the coming year on a $1.27bn loan taken out with Citigroup.

On the news of disappointing retail sales in February, the pound dropped by 0.4 percent against the dollar, closing at $1.4554

On the other side of the big pond, news that the US economy had also subsided during the last three months of 2008, came as no surprise. Average corporate profits had also reported their lowest rate since the mid nineteen fifties.

No amount of negative news seems capable of stopping the US stock markets from rising with the Dow Jones up 174.75 points to 7,924.56. The Nasdaq did even better rising 3.8% on the dat. (58.05 to 1587) .

Stocks in Asia were also still on the climb, making for the regions biggest weekly rally since 2002, as higher commodity prices and increased earnings from US companies boosted optimism among investors.

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Tags: Credit Crunch, Economy, Finance, Financial News, Fuller Smith & Turner, Pubs, Punch Taverns Group, UK Recession

Rules designed to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis are set to be revealed by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). Lord Turner, chairman of the Authority plans to unveil a whole new sate of proposals regarding lending as well as measures to restrict banks’ ability to take excessive risks in search or dubious profits and inflated bonuses for those who are liable to cause such a situation to exist in the future.

The basis of the FSA’s proposal will be to disallow banks for passing agreed lending limits during falsely titled ” boom years”, therefore pushing borrowing levels up and at the same time prices, especially in the property market. Instead banks may be required to build up cash reserves in the event of a dramatic downturn, such as the one that the UK and indeed the entire World is experiencing at present

In addition Lord Turner is also expected to stipulate that banks be much more transparent than they were, especially in the year or two before the current credit crunch began. They will require making public clearer information on status of their accounts as well as the percentage of low equity debts that they are carrying. In simpler terms, banks will no longer be allowed to have such a free reign on their lending, and that the management is allowed to pay themselves healthy bonuses on false profits.

Lord Turner has already said his plans will amount to “a revolution”.

A shake-up in the relationship between the FSA, the Bank of England and the Treasury is also set to be proposed.

In February, Lord Turner admitted to committee appointed by the Treasury that the FSA’s failure to anticipate the banking crisis and it severity due in part to the style of regulation that tended to favour a “leave well alone” approach that rapidly unraveled.

A sign that the bonus boom is over for UK bankers, is the announcement from investment bankers, Collins Stewart that they intend to overhauling their bonus payout policy to ensure that a greater link to the overall performance of the company rather than to individual workers. Last year the Bank admitted that they had paid out substantial bonuses to employees in departments that had made profits, despite the company making a pre-tax loss of close to £23million. The broker said it would pay a proportion of bonuses in stock, and defer 20 percent of the cash award until the fourth quarter.

Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland now know by many as the worst banker in UK history who led the bank to a UK record loss of £20 billion is steadfastly refusing to return his bonus and pension package for the meantime.

On the other side of the Atlantic, however public and political pressure is being applied on wobbly insurance giant AIG to demand that their workers return the bonuses they were awarded even though the company had made massive losses and had to be bailed out by public money. The signs are that this pressure is beginning to bear fruit, as at least some of the bonus hungry executives are at least offering to return half of their bonuses.

In the midst of this financial circus, is it any wonder that the man in the street is scratching his head while asking “How much would they have earned if they had made a profit?

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Tags: Bank, Finance, Financial News, FSA, Money, UK Banks

The recession might have been his fault. (If only partly)

GORDON Brown, speaking after talks held with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, was heard to admit that the UK’s regulatory system was now “outdated” and had failed to keep up with changes in the fast-moving banking sector. The two men agreed that the need for ambitious and necessary reform of the international financial regulatory system was long overdue and needed to be the focus of discussion at the G20 conference to be held in early April. The G20 conference will be the first gathering of the world’s largest economies to discuss the current financial situation.

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In the meantime, Prime Minister Brown has set the minds at ease of a group of African politicians by confirming that the financial problems of their continent will also receive some priority in the global struggle to revive the world’s economy. Representatives from such countries as Kenya, Tanzania, Liberia, , Botswana and Ethiopia among others, made the trip to Downing Street to receive assurances that their continent’s voice would also be heard before the G20 meeting to be held in London.

While the global financial leaders wait for the G20 summit to express their woes, the man in the street has taken a moment or two to point out an important fact that they still seem to be paying far too much for their fuel, despite that prices for crude oil have fallen by between a half to two thirds in the past year.

With crude oil now trading at less than fifty dollars a barrel, economic indicators show that the retail price should be around 85 pence a litre. However, the average price at the pumps today hovers around the one pound mark. The question that might be on the lips of the average UK motorist as well as the associations that represent them should be; where is my 15 pence going?

A spokesman for the Petrol Retailers’ Association suggested that the discrepancy could be due to the weaker pound.

On the FTSE, Europe’s largest oil company Royal Dutch Shell dropped 2.2 percent to 1,604 pence, after announcing that they had failed to match all of last year’s oil and gas production with new discoveries, in contrast to smaller rival BP Plc.

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Shares in the process engineering and software group, KBC Advanced Technologies Plc rose by ten percent after announcing that they had made an underlying pretax profit well ahead of market estimates. They also projected that the company’s shift towards operating services will insulate them against the effects of delayed or constrained capital spending.

Healthcare Locums, the health and social care staffing agency, saw their share value take a tumble by around nine percent yesterday .The fall was due to increased concerns that the UK government is set to withdraw a VAT concession for temporary staff, hitting Healthcare Locums. Analysts predict that this could affect the company’s profitability by close to eight million pounds in 2009.

The FTSE 100 rose by a modest 1.0 percent (34.32 points to 3,891.4) continuing three days of modest advances. On the other hand, the FTSE 250 took a minor hike, up 0, 74% (46.04 points to 6,257.83)

On the money markets, Sterling rose slightly against the dollar and fell against the Euro whilst holding its own against the Japanese Yen and the Swiss Franc:

Pound/US dollar 1.3938

Pound/Euro 1.0716

Pound/Japanese Yen 137.58

Pound/Swiss Franc 1.6465

Wall Street shares had another positive day on trading

The Dow Jones Average rose 178.73 points to close at 7395.7. Nasdaq did proportionally better, rising 58.09 points to close at 1462.11

In New York, federal prosecutors in a drive to rescue as much as they can from the estate of disgraced broker, Bernard Madoff are showing scant consideration for his wife, Ruth, by seizing all of her possessions. Ruth who will have to face life without her husband, expected to be a “government guest” for the next hundred years or so, was expecting to gain some comfort from the couple’s four homes in the US and France worth a total $22m, personal possessions as well as $62m in cash and securities held in her name. While the estimated $100 million total will hardly make a dent in the $50 billion that Madoff fiddled, it might still make a lot of people happy.

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Tags: Economics, Economy, Finance, Financial News, Gordon Brown, Recession, UK Recession

Signs that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s mission to clear up the Global Tax Havens is gaining impetus was the visit of a UK inspection team to the mother of all tax havens, the Cayman Islands. The team led by Michael Foot, who as former managing director of the UK’s Financial Services Authority knows a little about the prevention of tax evasion, expected to focus on regulatory transparency, tax issues and international cooperation. The team is expected to report their findings to Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling as well Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

Some good news for UK airport operator BAA is that Britain’s competition watchdog is expected to reverse its decision to force BAA to sell their Edinburgh airport.
Reports have it that the Competition Commission may instead grant the BAA, the choice of selling Edinburgh or neighbouring Glasgow airport,

The regulator had suggested BAA, part of Spanish builder Grupo Ferrovial, would be given no choice but to sell Edinburgh along with the southeast England based, Stansted and Gatwick airports. The Competition Commission’s decision to insist that the BAA sell of three of their airports is to prevent what they see as their monopoly hold over all of the UKs major airports.
The commission is expected to make a formal announcement later in the week.

On the FTSE, National Grid shares rose by five per cent to 581½p after recent gossip about a possible rights issue proved to be without basis.

Because the major bulk of National Grid’s revenues are regulated, financial analysts have long ascertained that the group can easily cope with its £23billion of debt, alongside an annual borrowing requirement running at £2.5billion.

High street retailing giants, Marks and Spencer also showed improvement, ahead 5.4 per cent (up 13 pence to 259) on the back of speculation that M&S will beat its earnings forecast for 2008. M&S will announce their year-end trading results on March 31.

Insurance companies continued to perform limply with Brit Insurance sliding 5.3 per cent (10 pence to 185) on reports that the company had put plans for a £150million cash call on hold.

Another good day for shares in London. The FTSE 100 index rose an encouraging by 2.94% or 110.31 points to 3,863.99 while the FTSE 250 was more restrained finishing Monday’s session up 1.75 per cent, (107.77 points at 6,270.31).

Sterling rose slightly against the dollar and fell against the Euro whilst holding its own against the Japanese Yen and the Swiss Franc:

Pound/US dollar 1.4079

Pound/Euro 1.0839

Pound/Japanese Yen 138. 78

Pound/Swiss Franc 1.6698

Wall Street shares returned a mixed days trading on Monday.

The Dow Jones Average dropped a mere seven points to close on 7216.97 The NASDAQ fared slightly worse falling 27.48 points to 1404.02.

President Obama was especially outspoken when interviewed on Monday on the subject of the $165million of bonuses paid by AIG, to some of its key executives. Obama’s comments came after Larry Summers, Obama’s top economic adviser, announced that AIG’s behaviour was “outrageous, but despite their displeasure the administration’s ability to force a bonus-cut was limited. Their remarks were no doubt founded on a report published by AIG on Sunday naming a list of derivatives contracts showing that European banks benefited from the US government’s recent $160bn-plus rescue operation.

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Tags: Banking, British Economy, Economics, Finance, Financial News, Money Management, Money Markets

A preview of the upcoming G20 meeting held over the weekend further reiterated the key economic players assertion of how important the meeting, to be held next month in London will be to set the global economic climate back on track. A turnaround is required, and soon, to avoid continued economic turbulence seen in the 1930s, the UK government has warned.

Signs that the UK situation is going from bad to worse was that news recently announce by the Trade Unions Council (TUC) that for every job vacancy in the UK there is an average of ten applicants going after it. In the South of England, the unemployment situation appears to be reaching catastrophic proportions where only one in sixty is successful in finding work.

The latest official data due to be published on Wednesday by the Office for National Statistics is estimated to reveal that UK unemployment has now passed the two million mark.

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) continue to hold firm on their estimations that unemployment in the United Kingdom will reach over three million by the second half of next year. A figure that represents over 10% of the country’s workforce

Talking about playing fiddle with the UK burns, is the news that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s brainwave that the treasury should offer rebates to drivers who trade in old cars for new ones would be unfeasibly expensive a sure sign that the Brown’s and his Business Secretary Peter Mandelson might be destined for the scrap heap. What it appears that Brown and Mandelson failed to take into account was that the last thing that the average UK citizen might need at this time is a new car.

Brown and Mandelson are working hard in an effort to offset continuing demands for more support for industry in the face of recession, against increasing a budget deficit that looks like swelling to at least 8 percent of gross domestic product. However on the old cars for new scheme, it looks like “back to the drawing board” for Peter and Gordon.

Despite that bit of bad news for the UK motor industry, stocks on the FTSE rose for a second consecutive day, which meant that the FTSE 100 enjoyed its largest weekly gain since early January. The rise was on the back in the increase in commodities particularly oil and base metal.

The FTSE 100 climbed by 1.6 percent, (58.12 to 3,770.18) making for a weekly gain of 6.8 percent. The FTSE 250 also rose a 1.51 percent (92.83 to 6255.37)

Sterling also continued to rise on Friday against major currencies, finishing as follows.

Pound/US dollar 1.4225

Pound/Euro 1.0923

Pound/Japanese Yen 139.75

Pound/Swiss Franc 1.6833
Ben Bernanke, head of the US central bank and apparently America’s perennial optimist supreme, continues to announce that he expects the recession to begin to turn around by the end this year.

“This decline will begin to moderate and we’ll begin to see a leveling off,” announced the Federal Reserve chairman in a recent interview on national television. He also hastened to add during his interview that without US government intervention last year, the world would have come to financial meltdown

We’ll see recovery beginning next year,” Bernanke added “the

Government fund of $500bn was stabilising the mortgage market and business lending was picking up. ”

Among the signs that he may know what he is talking about is that the Dow Jones index rose by about 10% last week alone after it had plunged to a previous twelve year low. Dow Jones closed on Friday up 59.32 points to 7223.98 and NASDAQ up a modest 5.4 points to 1431.5

Metals were on the ascendancy in Asia with copper continuing the recovery in global equities after concerns about a deepening global recession and waning metals demand seemed to be waning.

Crude oil traded near $47 a barrel after futures jumped 11 percent yesterday. The contract for April delivery is set for a fourth week of gains, with OPEC due to meet this weekend to consider a cut in output.

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Tags: Bank, Bank of England, Banking, British Economy, Credit Crunch, Finance, Financial News, FTSE, G20, Money, Money Management, Recession, UK Banks, UK Recession

The average UK citizen has been ravaged by the current financial situation and spend a lot of the time trying just to make ends meet till things get back to normal. There must have been moments of despair when all of us have said to ourselves, if only I was as rich as Sir Richard Branson, Roman Abramovich or the ultimate multi billionaire, Bill Gates.

However, those out there who are eating themselves up for those mega-rich people take a moment and spare a thought for them too. For they too have seen their considerable fortunes shrink considerably in the last twelve months. And when their fortunes shrink, we are talking about billions.

A recent report on the failing fortunes of the top ten of the UK. Wealthy reports that their fortunes have dwindled on average by 25% in 2008.

Among the biggest losers on the list of the biggest losers are entrepreneurs Sir Richard Branson and Sir Philip Green whose net worth has taken a very major tumble. However this would appear to be small change when you consider the rise and fall of Roman Abramovich, the London based Russian born oligarch. Reliable information has it that twelve months ago Abramovich enjoyed a net worth of $23.5 billion, making him the second richest person residing in the UK at that time, and the fifteenth richest person in the world. Only a year later his fortune is estimated to have crashed to around $15billion dollars, a loss of more close to 40% of its value. It’s no wonder that one of Abramovich’s favourite playthings, Chelsea FC is looking a little frayed around the edges these days.

Yet the UK citizen might take some little comfort in the fact that these reversals in fortunes are not being confined to the UK. Figures now show that even the number of people who fell into the category of billionaires have fallen from over eleven hundred in 2008 to less than eight hundred in March 2009.

Among the mega billionaires, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet both succeeded in losing enough money to finance a small country. In any event they were planning to devote their time and most of their massive personal fortunes to charity, little suspecting that they might become one themselves. While the chances seem remote, if they continue to lose money at the rate they did last year, it could happen, although it might take a while.

On the global list of fallen billionaires, Anil Ambani from India took the hardest thump. This time last year he was estimated to be the sixth wealthiest man on the planet with a net worth of close to $32billion. Today his fortune has sunk to a paltry $10 billion and even worse he has to face the ignominy of being 34th on the list of the World’s wealthiest people.

So take a moment to consider our position and w take comfort in the fact that the downturn has affected us all.

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Tags: Bill Gates, Economy, Finance, Financial News, Money, Roman Abramovich, Savings, Sir Philip Green, Sir Richard Branson

The beautiful island of Jersey, for so long identified as the number one tax haven for Brits, is to mark an end to decades of sheltering those who are not so keen on paying their income taxes. The U.K. government will sign a tax- information sharing agreement with Jersey tomorrow, making the island the last of Britain’s offshore tax havens to agree to a new level of transparency.

Jersey will honour their agreement to sign a tax information exchange with the UK today The agreement to exchange of information in criminal tax matters with the UK Government follows the signing of the island’s first Tax Information Exchange Agreement in 2002 (TIEA), with the US Government. Agreements have also been reached with the Netherlands in 2007, as well as the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The last major European to sign a TIEA with Jersey was Germany, who put pen to paper last year.

The new agreement will be signed in London by Jersey’s chief minister, Senator Terry Le Sueur, and the UK’s financial secretary to the Treasury, Stephen Timms.

Le Sueur recently confirmed d Jersey’s intentions to fully cooperate with the major economies to stamp out illegal financial transactions by stating ‘Our continuing programme of signing agreements with jurisdictions across the globe confirms our commitment to the OECD standards of tax information exchange, and demonstrates our willingness to comply with international standards of financial regulation, anti-money laundering, and combating the financing of terrorism,’

‘We are particularly pleased to have Jersey recognised by the UK as a member of the community of jurisdictions committed to international co-operation and information exchange on tax matters, and to have their assurance that Jersey will be treated as such by the UK authorities.’ He continued.

As well as the US, Jersey has already signed tax information exchange agreements with the ‘Last year the OECD secretary-general referred to the fact that Jersey has signed a number of tax information exchange agreements, and called for clear political recognition for those offshore financial centres that have made this kind of progress,’ Le Sueur says.

‘We hope to see this reflected in the outcome of the G20 summit in London on April 2 and that there will greater pressure put on those countries, including some OECD members, who have not yet shared Jersey’s commitment to transparency and co-operation.’

A TIEA is scheduled to be signed with France later this week, and in the near future with Eire. Signs that the issue is being taken seriously is the fact the discussions are also taking place between Jersey and both the Spanish and Italian governments prior to signing agreements.

Jersey says it is ready to extend such agreements to all other jurisdictions, including OECD countries. Negotiations are well under way with Australia and New Zealand to also display mutual transparency.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has consistently stated the government view that new financial rules under negotiation by Group of 20 industrial nations need to be extended to tax havens. Countries that extend favorable tax policies for investors are estimated to be costing the U.K. Treasury at least 4 billion pounds a year in revenue.

Alistair Darling, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer recently commissioned an independent review into how the financial transparency of not only Jersey, but also the Isle of Man, Guernsey and the British Virgin Islands will be affected after signing the agreements.

The agreement will require ratification by both the UK and Jersey parliaments before it comes into force.

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