Finance Matters

Archive for June, 2010

Lloyds Banking Group, which is 41%-owned by the Government, is to wield the axe again on insurance and back office-based staff, as it announces the closure of its network of Halifax-branded agencies.
The majority of the 650 job losses will be at Chester and Nottingham – largely based in solicitors and estate agencies, as they are [...]

Sainsbury’s Finance has boosted the interest rate on its Easy Saver account for new customers.
Interest on accounts opened after 25th June 2010 will be paid at 2.7% Gross AER, an increase of 0.2 percentage points on the previous rate.
The 2.7% rate will be paid to new customers for 12 months provided they maintain a balance [...]

Nearly half of car insurance providers do not provide a courtesy car as standard, research by Defaqto found.
The study found 49% of car insurance policies would not provide a replacement car following an accident.
A further 28% only offer a replacement car if it was selected as an optional extra when the insurance policy was purchased.
Only [...]

The SEC insists that the agreement to settle with Gary Aguirre for $755,000 isn’t an admission that Aguirre’s claims had merit, but for Aguirre, it still must feel great.

While he worked at the SEC, Aguirre had pursued a testimony from John Mack, whom he suspected had leaked information to Pequot Capital.

Aguirre suspected that Pequot had illegally profited from trading on information from Mack, who used to work at Pequot.

Aguirre was fired, he suspected, for blowing the whistle on Mack, who would soon become CEO of Morgan Stanley.

His suspicions were dismissed until years later, they re-surfaced in a separate accusation of insider trading at Pequot having to do with Microsoft.

Aguirre was partially redeemed when just last month Pequot settled with the SEC for $28 million because of charges of insider trading related to Microsoft.

Samberg’s settlement was also not an admission of guilt, but it paved the way for Aguirre’s vindication.

So at least for now, Aguirre is having a good week.

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See Also:

• Shockingly Stupid Art Samberg And Pequot Capital Brought Down By Ex-Wife Of Violent Trader David Zilkha
• SEC To Bring Insider Trading Charges Against Pequot Capital
• Will Morgan Stanley Have A Pequot Problem?

Yet another huge disappointment for markets to digest — ADP’s June employment report showed just 13,000 new jobs were added from May to June on a seasonally-adjusted basis, vs. 61,000 expected.

ADP:

June’s rise in private employment was the fifth consecutive monthly gain. However, over these five months the increases have averaged a modest 34,000. Recent ADP Report data suggest that, following steady improvement through April, private employment may have decelerated heading into the summer. The slow pace of improvement from February through June is consistent with other publicly available data, including a pause in the decline of initial unemployment claims that occurred during the winter months.

Unlike the estimate of total establishment employment to be released on Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), today’s ADP Report does not include the effects of federal hiring for the 2010 Census. Hiring for the census may have peaked in May. For this reason, Friday’s figure for the change in nonfarm total employment reported by the BLS might be weaker than today’s estimate for nonfarm private employment in the ADP Report.

The release is here.

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