UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown received a polite warning yesterday from international leaders who attended a conference in central London that Britain’s tax regime and infrastructure must be improved if the country is to continue attracting investment. Brown and business secretary, Lord Mandelson stressed that the UK still remained a competitive place to do business despite the turmoil caused by the recession.

Following in the footsteps of his opposite numbers at Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland is Eric Daniels, chief executive of the taxpayer-supported Lloyds Banking Group. Daniels has joined them in waiving his right to a bonus for 2009 of around £2.25 million. Lloyds Banking Group have announced that they would pay 2009 bonuses to those who were entitled to them, whilst emphasising that these awards would be paid in shares and subject to clawback.

Criticism has been rained on the government’s planned 50 pence monthly tax on telephone lines designed to subsidise the cost of superfast broadband has come from all places, by a Labour-dominated group of MPs.

The Commons Business Committee said the new tax, which is expected to raise £175 million per year, would hit poorer families who were less likely to pay for faster broadband. The committee went on to add that the “regressive” tax would “place a disproportionate cost on a majority who will not, or are unable to, reap the benefits of that charge”.

The UK’s largest airports operator of airports BAA, announced on Monday that their pre-tax losses for 2009 had widened, partly because of losses of £277.3 million from the sale of Gatwick Airport, London’s second-largest. The £1.5 billion sale of the airport to Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) took place just before the end of the financial year. GIP is an infrastructure fund backed by Credit Suisse and General Electric. Competition authorities had ordered a sale to meet concerns about BAA’s market dominance.

The loss on the sale helped inflate losses at BAA owned by a consortium led by Spanish group by Spanish group Ferrovial, from £324.2 million to £821.9 million. Total revenue for the year to December at the group’s London airports, including Gatwick, rose from £2.3 billion to £2.4 billion. Figures for the group excluded BAA’s other airports around the country at Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Southampton

The prospect of a strike is again raising its head for British Airway’s cabin crew. Their proposed strike action looks likely to cause travel chaos for hundreds of thousands of air passengers across the UK. The vote in favour of industrial action by the 12,000 member BA cabin crew comes as a reaction to ongoing disputes over pay and working conditions.

The cabin crew’s union Unite had already decided on a walkout in December, but that BA strike threat was defused by an eleventh-hour High Court ruling.

Meanwhile a strike by around four thousand German airline Lufthansa pilots has been suspended, with union officials agreeing to resume negotiations on disputes covering job security and pay issues.

The action, scheduled to run for four days, was suspended after less than 24 hours, and caused delays and cancellations for passengers. According to the pilot’s union, there will be no further action until at least March 9, the union said.

According to a company spokesman, electronics giant Samsung will introduce its 3D-enabled TVs to the UK within the coming month. No less than twenty different 3D-capable products, with Blu-ray players and the required 3D glasses are expected to be included in the range. To keep pace with demand, TV shows with 3D content will be making their debut in or around the same time, to a partnership with DreamWorks. The rapidly approaching 2010 soccer World Cup will also be broadcast in 3D.

Sterling fell on Tuesday after Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, said he could not rule out the possibility of further quantitative easing. Speaking before the Treasury select committee King confessed his concern over scant evidence of a pick-up in UK trade in spite of the weakness of the pound. The pound, which had risen to a high of $1.5575 ahead of the Bank’s statement, fell more than a cent to $1.5441, whilst rising to 1.1415 against the Euro.

The FTSE 100 turned negative on Tuesday following King’s gloomy assessment of the UK economy. The index closing 0.7 per cent lower at 5,315.09.

The US Senate on Monday voted to move forward on a $15 billion jobs bill.

The 62-30 vote in favour of ended months of gridlock in Congress, and is expected to pave the way for a jobs bill to clear the Senate, just as other critical employment benefits are set to expire.

The scaled-back measure is expected to create 250,000 jobs through an array of tax credits and payroll tax exemptions to stimulate hiring. The bill frees businesses from payroll taxes on workers who are hired after more than 60 days of unemployment and gives them a tax credit of $1,000 for new hires that they keep for more than a year.

A number of retail giants reporting positive earnings surprises were not enough to offset Tuesday’s poor macro data, as investors grow concerned that last week’s rally overshot.

Consumer confidence index dropped dramatically to 46.0 in February versus 56.5 in January, the lowest level since last April.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 126.41 points to 10,276.97 while the NASDAQ Composite also crept back by a significant 34 points to close on 2,209.6.

Chinese premier Wen Jiabao has announced his concern regarding the stability of his country’s investments in US bonds.

China disposed of $34 billion (£21.5 billion) of US government bonds in December 2009, raising fears that Beijing is losing confidence in American economic policy.

US treasury figures show that China is once again no longer the largest overseas holder of US treasury bonds. Beijing ended the year sitting on $755. Billion worth of US government debt, compared to Japan’s $768 billion.

Oil prices retreated below $80 a barrel Tuesday as r sluggish US crude demand justified a 14 percent rally over the last three weeks.

Benchmark crude for April delivery was down 34 cents to $79.97 a barrel, later rising 25 cents to settle at $80.31 on Monday.

Oil had jumped from $69.59 a barrel in early February due to optimism that the global economy will rebound strongly from recession last year. Yet growing inventories of crude, gasoline and diesel fuel suggest demand in the US remains weak.

Some analysts expect crude demand in the US and Japan will gradually follow overall economic growth and lift prices, with crude expected to trade at between $85 and $95 a barrel for most of 2010.

financial

• Suicide Six Resort, Woodstock, Vermont Suicide Six Resort is located in Woodstock, Vermont, United States...
• CNN's Rick Sanchez Lies to Cover Obama's Massive Spending JAMES SIMPSON: Rick Sanchez made a bald-faced lie on CNN...
• Banks Did Not Pay Their FDIC Insurance For 10 Years; Now Short On Funds. Um, uh oh... WASHINGTON - The federal agency that insures...

Tags: 3D TV, 3D-enabled TV, BAA, Bank, Bank of England, Banking, Barclays, British airways, British Economy, Commons Business Committee, Credit Suisse, Currency, Dow Jones, DreamWorks, Ferrovial, foreign investment, FTSE, Gatwick Airport, General Electric, Global Infrastructure Partners, Gordon Brown, Lloyds Banking Group, Lord Mandelson, Lufthansa, Mervyn King, Money, NASDAQ, Recession, Royal Bank of Scotland, Samsung, UK Banks, UK government, UK Recession, Wen Jiabao

The FTSE was at the centre of UK financial news with many of its major companies announcing or about to announce their half year results. Which till now have been mostly encouraging.

The UK companies owned by Spanish bank Santander saw their profits rise by a third in the first half of the year as bad debts showed a second consecutive quarterly decline.

Santander announced that their bad debt provisions in its UK business were £176 million pounds in the second quarter, up from £92 million pounds a year ago but still considerably less than the £189 million in the first quarter of this year. The first-half provision of £365 million pounds doubled from a year ago.

Most of the UK banks are expected to report a jump in bad debts when they report next week, while analysts and investors as one are looking for clues as to whether the levels of bad debt have been arrested

UK Profits for Santander, taking in includes Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley were £790 million in the six months to the end of June, helping the bank’s Spanish parent to a net profit of 4.5 billion Euros, down 5 percent on the year but ahead of forecasts.

British Airways has reported a pre-tax loss of £148 million in the three months to the end of June, compared with a profit of £37 million in the same period last year, with revenues falling l 12.2% to £1.983 billion for the quarter.

Also falling deep into the red were German airline Lufthansa, Europe’s largest measured by turnover, who reported to a net loss of €216 million from a net profit of €381 million a year ago.

Leading airline chief executives have told the European Commission the industry on the ground as well as in the air is facing “the worst economic conditions on record”.

Meanwhile British Airports Authority (BAA) continue to make every effort to offload Gatwick Airport, but not at any price.

This example of possibly false bravado came as the UK’s largest airports operator revealed interim pre-tax losses for the six months to June 30 widened to £545.7 million from £135. 3 million

On one of the busiest results days of the year eight FTSE 100 companies released their half year results on Thursday including the BT Group which announced first-quarter adjusted earnings of £1.37 billion, larger than the £1.27 billion originally forecasted.

Pay TV operator BSkyB announced year end profits of £456 million an increase of £60 million. Company revenue rose by 8.2 per cent to £5.4 billion. BSkyB announced that during the last quarter It added a further 124,000 subscription holders.

Also rising was the FTSE 100, up 84 points to 4,631.6 and only seven points from away from its year high. The index has gained 9 per cent so far this month and is looking good to overtake its best monthly gain, reached in September 1992.

The FTSE 250 leapt forward 172.04 points to close on 7,934.63

Sterling was among the best performing of the major currencies against a generally weaker dollar, as rallying equity markets and better-than-expected housing data drove appetite for risk

Pound/US dollar 1.6516

Pound/Euro 1.1695

Pound/Japanese Yen 157.3943

Pound/Swiss Franc 1.7916

According to a prominent US financial regulator, the Obama administration’s plan to give US states more power to protect consumers from unfair banking practices would make it more difficult and costly for large lenders to operate across the country.

The regulator, Mr. John Dugan, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, who job it is to oversee national banks as comptroller of the currency, announced recently that the proposals to create a federal consumer protection agency and give states more leeway to crack down on unfair practices would have negative “ramifications for companies operating across state lines”.

On Wall Street the Dow Jones made a strong recovery on Thursday’s trading, up 83.74 to 9154.46 The NASDAQ also rose by 16.54 points to 1984.3

Japanese industrial output rose in June for its fourth straight month and it appears that they will be no looking back as electronics manufacturers, steel makers and chemical producers begin to climb back to full production…

Preliminary data has shown that in June industrial production was up 2.4 per cent from May, less than half the revised 5.7 per cent growth recorded the previous month but broadly in line with economists’ expectations.

However despite encouraging growth over the last quarter, production in June was still down 23 per cent compared with the same month of 2008.

A spokesman for Arcelor Mittal, has predicted that world steel demand will pick up by at least 10% next year, as emerging economies were coming out of the downturn “reasonably quickly” and that stimulus spending in the US and Europe was having an impact. Arcelor Mittal reported a second quarter net loss of $792 million, against a $5.8 billion net profit a year ago, causing their shares to fall 4.4% to €24.20.

Two of the world’s largest oil companies, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell, have announced major profit setbacks in the wake of tumbling international oil prices and weaker demand.

Exxon, the largest US oil group, and Shell, the biggest in Europe, on Thursday unveiled post-tax profits for the second quarter that were roughly a third of those a year ago, with both companies attributing the blame to the continuing global economic crisis and softer demand for the collapse in their revenues..

Exxon’s profits dropped by two thirds $3.95 billion, the steepest fall in profits for more than a decade, and Shell’s 70 per cent decline in post-tax profit to $3.24 billion.

On the day US light crude was up $3.66, or almost 6%, to $67.01 a barrel, while London Brent was ahead by $3.68, at $70.21.

US light crude slumped $3.88 on Wednesday after figures showed a rise in US oil stockpiles, indicating too much supply in relation to demand

• CIT creditor advisers seek bankruptcy option-source | Industries | Financial Services | Reuters Note:This is post the $3 b sign up with JPM/GS...
• Abercrombie & Fitch and Beyonce in "Fierce" Fragrance War Beyonce Knowles and the clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch are...
• Macau Real Estate Transactions Continue to Rise In Macau there were 11,274 real estate sale and purchase...

Tags: Abbey, Alliance & Leicester, Arcelor Mittal, BAA, Bank, Banking, Bradford & Bingley, British Airports Authority, British airways, British Economy, British Pound, BskyB, BT, Credit Crunch, Currency, Dow Jones, Economics, European Commission, Exxon, Financial News, FTSE, Gatwick Airport, John Dugan, Lufthansa, Mobil, Money, Money Markets, NASDAQ, Obama, Oil, Recession, Santander, Shell, Stock Markets, Stocks and shares, UK Banks, Wall Street