UK hospitals to go private

July 23rd, 2009 by tom | Filed under Central banks, Daily News, Debt, Exchage Rate, Global Credit Crisis, Money Management, Recession, Retail, Stocks and shares, The Markets, UK Banks, UK Small Business, World Banks.

financial news In an unprecedented move, the Department of Health and the Treasury have invited companies in the private sector to submit tenders to take over and run a large National Health Service (NHS) hospital. The contract will be all inclusive, taking in the accident and emergency as well as the maternity wards. The Hinchingbrooke Hospital, in Huntingdonshire comes under the auspices of the East of England strategic health authority who anticipate bids from the NHS as well as the private sector.

Investors are rushing to capitalise on the hedge funds industry’s resurgence resulting in a huge increase in investment in the second quarter. It is reported that more than $142.5 billion has been allocated to hedge funds over the past three months, making for one of the industry’s most significant inflows of client money to date, according to a recent report.

In transport and tourism, signs are afoot of long hard winter ahead, Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost people carrier, have announced that they will be cutting their services at their largest bases London Stansted and Dublin. Ryanair are making the cuts as it attempts to cut back on routes that are making losses as well as to benefit from reduced airport charges.

Michael O’Leary, the group’s chief executive, has blamed the cuts on planned increases in air passenger taxes in the UK and Ireland. “Sadly, UK traffic and tourism continue to collapse while Ryanair continues to grow traffic rapidly in those countries that welcome tourists instead of taxing them.” Announced O’Leary.

Despite he recent bout of warm weather and the thirst that it brings, the pace of pub closures in Britain continues to grow. Recent statistics show that closures have risen by a third during the first six months of 2009. In terms of figures, that means that more than 50 UK pubs are pulling their last pint every week.

Local family owned pubs appear to be the most vulnerable , closing their doors at a rate of 40 a week. There are now only 53,466 pubs left trading in the UK compared with 58,600 three years ago.

On the FTSE on Wednesday, tobacco stocks were leading the way, with Imperial Tobacco gaining 2.6 per cent to £16.74.

Europe’s largest drug maker GlaxoSmithKline announced their eagerly anticipated half-year results which turned out better than expected, pushing their share value marginally up by 0.3 per cent to 1163.

Commodities fell after a strong run of the last few days, largely due to profit taking.

In the banking sector, profit warnings from US banking groups Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley disappointed investors, contributing to losses on the major US exchanges.

Barclays shares fell by 3 per cent to 300p as investors began to shy from its aggressive push towards financial independence, while the other banks also weakened. Lloyds Banking Group lost 3.1 per cent to 71.2p, while Royal Bank of Scotland dipped 0.1 per cent to 39.8p.

Overall shares in London recovered from early losses on Wednesday. The late recovery was attributed to the surprise announcement that US house prices has risen during May.

The FTSE 100 rose 13.13 points to 4,494.30, while the FTSE 250 continued its steady increase, gaining 42.23 points to 7,784.81.

Early falls in sterling following a press report that two UK banks require additional funding were arrested with the announcement that the Bank of England had decided to maintain its asset purchase programme.

Pound/US dollar 1.6422
Pound/Euro 1.1578
Pound/Japanese Yen 154.0592
Pound/Swiss Franc 1.7528

On Wall Street, there was a flat atmosphere on the announcement that Morgan Stanley had made a loss of $159m (£97m) for the second quarter, a significant setback when compared to the $698m profit the Wall Street bank made in the same period of 2008. Not only was it the third consecutive loss for Morgan Stanley, but it was also much worse than analysts had feared.

Morgan Stanley attributed the loss to the heavy cost of repaying government funding and comes after a number of other major US banks reported significant rises in profits.

The poor results at Morgan Stanley caused a knock on effect , with shares in Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley on the decline.

On Wall Street , the Dow Jones dropped by 34.68 points to 8881.26 while the NASDAQ limped forward a mere 10.18 point to close on 1926.28..

Public sector workers in California were out in protest at the billions of dollars of spending cuts that form the basis of the state’s controversial budget deal.

The cuts, including $6billion in education spending, were reached as part of an agreement to reduce California’s record $26.3billion ,( £16bn) deficit.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state’s governor has been forced to write promissory notes to their creditors after running out of money. Public employees have had to take unpaid leave and the state’s credit rating has been slashed to near junk status, giving it the worst rating in the US.

Ahead of the latest US weekly inventories oil prices fell while d gold consolidated below the $950 an ounce level