Leading shares on the climb as growing confidence in the economy is being matched by the enthusiasm from brokers anxious to talk the stock market higher... more
Legal & General is being overlooked by investors. That’s according to Goldman Sachs, which today restated its buy case for L&G, pushing the life insurer to the top of the Footsie winners board ... more
There was no shortage of punters pulling their chequebooks out when veteran property entrepreneurs Raymond Mould, Patrick Vaughan and Humphrey Price came calling ... more
There is still no sign that the slump in the housing market has hit rock bottom. In fact, some property experts are predicting prices will continue falling throughout the remainder of this year, by as much as another 10% to 20% ... more
It has been an eventful week for Lloyds Banking Group - and it's only Tuesday. The shares today firmed 0.9p to 98.9p ahead of tomorrow’s share placing... more
Marks & Spencer slashed its dividend by a third after a slump in annual profits which left executive chairman Sir Stuart Rose short on optimism... more
BSkyB has boasted it is recession-proof, but not everyone in the City is convinced. That's why its shares took a pasting today, falling 19½p to 466½p to make it one of the worst-performing Footsie 100 stocks... more
Electricity supplier Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) has got round the credit crunch by asking shareholders to dig deep into their pockets for almost £450 million
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United Utilities lost 20p to 616p today after falling out of favour with City big-hitter Goldman Sachs, much to the dismay of some of our biggest pension funds which rely on its generous dividend policy... more
Remember wine? Not the anaesthetic of office parties, but Wine with a capital W like, say,
first-growth clarets with swaggering names (Lafite-Rothschild, Latour, Margaux, Haut-Brion, Mouton-Rothschild) and vertiginous prices? ... more
The big income funds, which look after our pensions and life assurance annuities, may have to face up to some lean stock-market pickings in 2009.... more
Let's hope Marks & Spencer boss Sir Stuart Rose has a very merry Christmas because it is unlikely to be a prosperous New Year for the best-known name on the High Street... more
Could electrical retailer DSG International go bust? Some in the City have begun to pose this question as analysts scramble to put a value on the company... more
Shares of Marks & Spencer were edging precariously closer to their lowest for eights years today after broker Pali International chose to dump the retailer just days before it unveils first-half results... more
Mika landed three years ago, a fully formed psychedelic pop sensation with a sound that crosses Freddie Mercury with Mozart. Hermione Eyre meets a charming misfit who refuses to be ordinary
Could we soon see a Baroness Widdecombe of Battleaxe? I hear moves are afoot to secure veteran Conservative MP and darling of the Tory grassroots, Ann Widdecombe, a peerage following the general election
Morning:
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