The battle to keep General Motors production in the UK to the highest level seems to be gaining ground. Business Secretary Lord Mandelson announced that he had been given a “positive response” from the US government on a recent visit to Washington during which he held talks with US Treasury’s car industry bail-out team.
Lord Mandelson is confident that there is no deal yet on the overall future of GM’s European operations and for Vauxhall who employ 5,500 people in the UK.

As Vauxhall ponder their uncertain future, it appears that most of the spoils to be gained under the British government’s vehicle scrappage scheme are going to South Korea. Reports have it that the bulk of new car sales are going to the Hyundai Motor Company whose range of small family saloons are doing very well out of Lord Mandelson’ s 300 million-pound scheme that invites motorists to trade in cars more than 10 years old in return for a 2,000 pound subsidy. Government figures released early this week said that the scheme had generated orders for 60,000 new orders in the period within the last six weeks alone, with Hyundai selling 8,246 new cars. A company spokeswoman announced that the Hyundai i10 was proving to be a big seller.

Understandable when you consider that with the scrappage discount you can have an i10 on the road for less than 5,000 pounds.

Former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the much maligned Sir Fred Goodwin has shown a side we never knew existed by agreeing to hand back more than a third of the lump sum pension he snuck out of the back door of the bank with last year.

The banker, as well as his family, has felt a major downturn in their personal popularity since then. They have been reported to have actually been in hiding since their Edinburgh home came under attack in March of this year by angry shareholders.

Troubled sports broadcaster Setanta finally gave up their last hope of retaining their rights to broadcasting the 46 live matches allocated to the company for the 2009/2010 season through failing to meet another payment of the £30 million it owes the English Premier League. Without any further ado, the Premier League will begin an auction to find a broadcaster for the 46 UK live matches for the 2009/10 season.

The mining sector who until Friday had performed badly, were the main climbers on the FTSE on Friday. Shares in Anglo American driven by renewed speculation that they might be a target for takeover by the Brazilian mining group, Vale. Market analysts predicted that Vale’s move for Anglo would allow it to diversify beyond iron ore and increase coal and copper assets. Anglo closed up 2.7 per cent.

The house building sector also gained after Taylor Wimpey announced an increase in stability. On the announcement shares in the company rose 9.7 per cent to 34 pence; Barratt Developments also saw their shares rise by 7 per cent on Friday to close on 153½ pence. The Berkeley Group climbed but less spectacularly. Their shares rose by 2.5 percent firmer to 773 pence.

The World’s largest cruise line operator Carnival Corp. rallied 6.2 percent, to 1,668 pence, extending yesterday’s 7.2 percent advance after reported second-quarter profit that beat analysts’ estimates…”

Carphone Warehouse Group Plc Europe’s largest mobile-phone and laptop retailer had their shares increase in value by 6 percent, to 162.5 pence after RBS upgraded them from “hold” to “buy” and raised its share price estimation to 230 pence.

Overall, the FTSE 100 rose as the weekend loomed, climbing 65.07 points to finish on 4,345.93. On Friday the FTSE 250 made a bit of a recovery after a few days of losses up 92.67 points to close on 7,334.34.

Sterling held its ground against the dollar, while slipping slightly against the other major currencies

Pound/US dollar 1.6494
Pound/Euro 1.1832
Pound/Japanese Yen 158.8075
Pound/Swiss Franc 1.7833

As Wall Street closed on Friday, the Dow Jones was down just 15.87 points on 8539.73, while the NASDAQ climbed 19.75 points to close on 1827.42

Steve Jobs iconic CEO of Apple boss announced that he had been the recipient of a liver transplant about two months ago and is expected to return to work later this month.
Jobs would be returning to his job on schedule, but may initially work part-time, after winding down his normal management role more than five months ago.

Oil prices continued above the $70-a-barrel mark all this week, helped by suggestions the Chinese economy was rebounding faster than expected.

Spot gold prices continued to drop, on Friday by 0.3 per cent to $935.20 a troy ounce as data showed US inflation being contained lessening the metal’s appeal as a hedge against inflation.

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Tags: Carphone Warehouse Group Plc, Economy, Financial News, General Motors, Hyundai Motor Company, Lord Mandelson, Retail, Royal Bank of Scotland, scrappage scheme, Setanta, Sir Fred Goodwin, Taylor Wimpey, The Berkeley Group

Lord Myners, the City Minister was lambasted by a fourteen member committee of MPs for failed to block Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension payoff, in the third part of its report into the causes and consequences of Britain’s banking crisis. The committee criticised Lord Myners claiming that he was too much of a City insider to properly police bonus payments and pension payments to bank executives It wouldn’t take too much of a poisoned mind to imagine a scenario of Lord Myners allowing Sir Fred Goodwin’s to leave the bank that he almost succeeded in ruining with a £703,000 a year life pension in his back pocket, through being totally unaware of what was going on in the last days of RBS under Sir Fred’s questionable management.

There may be many explanations why this was allowed to happen but the one that must spring to mind for many, especially the irate taxpayers who had to eventually dig the bank out of the very deep hole that Sir Fred and his hapless colleagues dug for them might well be “gross negligence.”Lord Myners, comes under heavy criticism for his “naiveté” in allowing Sir Fred Goodwin to engineer a scheme where the CEO apparently opted for early retirement ostensibly at the bank’s request without taking that fact into account when calculating the pension amount. Apparently Lord Myners was unaware of the precarious state that Sir Fred had led the RBS into, and if he had done so could have ordered his dismissal.

If this had been the case, Sir Fred would have been entitled to a mere £416,000 a year pension, and only from the age of 60. The report went on to add that the RBS board had shown itself to be incompetent in the management of the bank, steering it towards catastrophe, with most major policies, including bonuses and pensions at management level, probably handle under the “domination of Sir Fred Goodwin”. The chairman of the committee, which is expected to sit on several more occasions, went on to some up this particular and unfortunate chapter by saying “the design of bonus schemes was not aligned with the interests of shareholders and the long-term sustainability of the banks and has proved to be fundamentally flawed”.

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Tags: Financial News, Lord Myners, Sir Fred Goodwin, Taxpayers