Feds Fischer warns weak recovery could cause lower long-term growth
Shares rally on news of Russia withdrawing troops from Ukrainian border
But tensions in Ukraine continue to run highBalfour Beatty rejects Carillion offer
2.58pm BST
Markets continue to charge ahead, despite the ongoing geopolitical turbulence.
2.53pm BST
It seems the UKs first online pound shop is struggling, with key partner Poundworld pulling out of the venture just six months after launch.
Warning, this is about to get very confusing. Poundshop.com was launched by Poundland founder Steve Smith and Poundworld back in February. But the pair failed to reach a shared vision according to Poundworlds spinners, and the latter is now going to launch a rival online venture. Poundworld.com perhaps?
Poundland co-founder Steve Smith, who runs the online business with Poundworld, said he is looking to extend its online offer through other parties that can sell products for a pound .
Smith said: Wed like to see a lot more products on the site. We would like to double the size of the range. We have about 1,000 lines online at the moment and we could easily have 2,000 to 3,000.
Although Poundworld declined to give any sales figures for the website, Smith said Poundshop.com customers on average spend £30 per transaction, above the anticipated £23 at this stage. Its largest order has been £700.
Smith revealed that small businesses have been placing orders, such as hairdressers purchasing shampoo in bulk.
2.29pm BST
Back to Iraq, where Haider al-Abadi has been asked to be the countrys new prime minister, according to his Facebook account.
It said he has been asked to form a government by Iraqs Kurdish president Fuad Masum.
2.23pm BST
A wry take from the Moscow Times about the joys of buckwheat, in light of Russias ban on food from the west. The journalist writes:
In fact, buckwheat (grechka) in Russian is not only a delicious staple of the Eastern European diet, it is highly versatile. It can be eaten for breakfast, for lunch and for dinner without ever getting monotonous.
2.08pm BST
The supposed easing of tensions in Ukraine is already looking premature. *Reuters quotes a NATO chief saying there is a high probability of Russian intervention in East Ukraine.* Adrian Croft writes:
NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday he saw a high probability that Russia could intervene militarily in eastern Ukraine and that NATO saw no sign that Moscow was pulling back its forces from close to the Ukrainian border.
We see the Russians developing the narrative and the pretext for such an operation under the guise of a humanitarian operation and we see a military build-up that could be used to condcut such illegal military operations in Ukraine, he said.
Leader of East Ukraine rebels Zakharchenko says mulls counter-attack on government forces in 2-3 days.
1.54pm BST
The FT has a nice take on the BuzzFeed fundraising, which valued the news site famed for its lists at $850m. Under the headline Youll never guess how much BuzzFeed raised from Horowitz, Henry Mance writes up the fundraising, in a list, of course:
*OK, maybe you will*
If you guess $50m. BuzzFeeds new investor is one of Silicon Valleys best-known venture capital firms, Andreessen Horowitz. This is literally what happens when you create an INSANELY DISRUPTIVE news service.
1.34pm BST
While traders seem less concerned about the crises around the world, the situation in Iraq continues to unfold, with Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki battling to keep his job today. Follow the developments on Matthew Weavers live blog.
12.37pm BST
Markets continue to rise, as fickle traders decide not to worry about geopolitical risks.
12.22pm BST
Theres more evidence of Angela Merkels extraordinary staying power. The only leader, among the major eurozone countries, to survive the financial crisis, her popularity continues to rise. That contrasts sharply with the woefully unpopular French president François Hollande.
12.08pm BST
Oil prices have eased again, after a spike on Friday as Islamic State fighters came within striking distance of Iraqs oilfields.
*Brent crude slipped below $105 on Monday, as traders grew less concerned about the crisis in Iraq. *Carsten Fritsch, senior oil and commodities analyst at Commerzbank in Frankfurt said:
The oil market is not as worried now about what is happening in Iraq. the market has become more complacent about supply again. But complacency is dangerous. Given the geopolitical tensions, a spike in oil prices cannot and should not be ruled out.
11.22am BST
RBS has told Reuters that it is exploring options, including a possible sale or joint venture, for the international arm of Coutts, the Queens bank (see below). The announcement reiterates a report in the FT in July. Martin Arnold in London and Jennifer Hughes wrote:
Royal Bank of Scotland is considering selling the overseas operations of Coutts, its private banking arm, which includes the Queen among its clients, as it conducts a strategic review of its wealth management business.
The private bank, founded in 1692, is being integrated with RBSs UK commercial lending division as part of a strategic overhaul of the partly state-owned group announced in February.
11.16am BST
Germany and Japans economies are losing steam, according to Paris-based think tank the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
*The OECD said growth momentum in most major developed economies was stable, but Germany and Japan were flagging. *10.41am BST
10.40am BST
10.37am BST
One point worth noting about the UKs mortgage data (see below) is that it appears that the tough new rules on lending to house buyers have not put a hard brake on the market. Lenders are reporting a steady rise in first-time buyers despite the changes.
The new rules - known as the Mortgage Market Review (MMR) - came into effect at the end of April. Paul Smee, director general of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, said:
For the second month running since new FCA rules took effect, lending characteristics remain similar to the market beforehand. We now feel confident that, as we would hope, the MMR effect is more gentle dampener than hard brake.
10.33am BST
Wholesale gas prices are rising, on the back of an unplanned outage at a North Sea gas field, cooler weather on the way, and concerns about the transit of gas from Russia via Ukraine. Day-ahead UK gas prices rose by 1p to 38.5p a therm.
Forecasts suggest temperatures are about to fall below the seasonal average over the next two weeks, driving demand for gas.
9.52am BST
*Mortgage lending rose 6% in June to £17.9bn, according to Bank of England data*. Thats 20% higher than June last year.
Lending is driven by housebuyers, rather than people remortgaging their houses, says the Council of Mortgage Lenders. Lending to first-time buyers increased 19% on June last year. The number of remortgages dropped 8% over the year, although the value was up 6%.
9.29am BST
*Royal Bank of Scotland is looking to sell the international arm of its private bank, Coutts*, Reuters is reporting, citing unnamed sources.
It said RBS has attracted a variety of offers form a range of bidders for Coutts International, including undisclosed Asian and North American parties for a business which manages roughly 40 billion Swiss francs in client assets.
8.58am BST
The energy market regulator Ofgem is feeling the heat after *f**ive former electricity and gas industry regulators said its actions contributed to the profit and price increases made by the Big Six energy firms*.
The regulator rejected the charges this morning. It blames the former watchdogs for causing the current problems and says its actions had made the market simpler, fairer and clearer. Roland Gribben of the Telegraph writes:
The former regulators, responsible for controlling prices and supervising the operations of gas and electricity companies after privatisation, included Stephen Littlechild, electricity industry regulator from 1989-99, Sir Callum McCarthy (electricity) and Clare Spottiswoode, the second gas industry regulator.
In a joint submission to the Competition and Markets Authority, released today, they maintain that Ofgem may have weakened competition in the market through poorly designed regulatory procedures introduced since 2008.
In a statement Ofgem said many of the current problems with retail competition were showing before 2008 and pointed out that the regulatory and policy environment had changed significantly over the last six years.
8.39am BST
*The global economic recovery has been disappointing and could signal lower growth in the long-run*, the vice chair of the US Fed will say in Sweden today. Stanley Fischer will tell an economic conference:
The global recovery has been disappointing. With few exceptions, growth in the advanced economies has underperformed expectations of growth as economies exited from recession.
These disappointments in output performance have not only led to repeated downward revisions of forecasts for short-term growth, but also to a general reassessment of longer-run growth.
8.14am BST
But the economic climate in Europe remains uncertain. Italy fell back into recession last week and there are fears that sanctions between Russia and the west will hit the German economy.
In terms of economic data, markets will be focused on Chinese figures out on Wednesday after last weeks which shock trade data, which shoed exports to the euro area jump 14% in July.
8.05am BST
The markets have opened higher, as expected.
8.02am BST
In the UK, infrastructure company *Balfour Beatty has rejected an offer to merge with Carillion in order to protect the ongoing sale of its US subsidiary*. My colleague Jennifer Rankin reports:
Balfour Beatty announced it had lost confidence in merger talks, after Carillion badgered them not to sell its US division Parsons Brinckerhoff. Talks broke down in late July over the future of design and engineering business Parsons Brinckerhoff, after Carillion surprised Balfour with a plan to keep the company in a combined business.
Carillion had been pressing Balfour to resume talks, but Balfour rejected a merger for endangering the sale of Parsons Brinckerhoff, a company it acquired in 2009, but felt had failed to perform.
7.59am BST
It looks like Amazon has fallen into another contract dispute, this time with Disney. The WSJ reports that Amazon halted preorders for some DVDs and Blu-ray discs from Disney , including popular titles such as Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Greg Bensinger writes:
The online retailer is restricting customers ability to preorder physical copies of the films, promising to notify them when they become available. It is a tactic Amazon has used several times this year, including with Time Warners Warner Bros. studio, before reaching a resolution earlier this year, as well as a continuing spat with Hachette Book Group.
An Amazon spokesman declined to comment, but the company said early Saturday thatwithholding preorders of Hachette titles and slowing shipment of others was necessary to achieve its contract goals. Hachette spent three months stonewalling and only grudgingly began to even acknowledge our concerns when we took action to reduce sales of their titles in our store, Amazon said in a letter it posted to one of its websites.
7.44am BST
In corporate news, a bidding war looks likely to break out over the company behind Penfolds Wine. Reuters is reporting that private equity giant *TPG Capital Management made a $3.1bn approach for Treasury Wine Estates,* following KKR and Rhone Capitals offer for the group.
A week after KKR and Rhone Capital LLC proposed a A$5.20 a share offer for Treasury, the owner of the Penfolds, Lindemans and Wolf Blass brands said on Monday it received a second identical unsolicited approach from a global private equity firm which requested anonymity.
7.38am BST
But the crisis is far from over. Michael Hewson at CMC Markets notes:
It remains far too early to celebrate any de-escalation between Russia and Ukraine. Only at the weekend Ukraine claimed it had thwarted a covert attempt by Russian soldiers to enter the east of the country under the guise of a humanitarian mission with the Red Cross. While Russia dismissed the claims as a fairy tale, they nonetheless speak to the concerns that Kiev has with respect to Russias next move.
7.38am BST
Global stock markets have bounced on hopes that tensions in Ukraine are easing. *Russia announced on Friday that its military exercises near Ukraines border were over, overshadowing concerns about the US air strikes in Iraq. *The S&P and Dow Jones both finished the week on a high note, rising by more than 1%.
Japanese stocks followed them higher, posting their largest one-day gain in four months today. The Nikkei jumped 2.4% recouping most of its losses from Friday.Continue reading... Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 hour ago.
Shares rally on news of Russia withdrawing troops from Ukrainian border
But tensions in Ukraine continue to run highBalfour Beatty rejects Carillion offer
2.58pm BST
Markets continue to charge ahead, despite the ongoing geopolitical turbulence.
2.53pm BST
It seems the UKs first online pound shop is struggling, with key partner Poundworld pulling out of the venture just six months after launch.
Warning, this is about to get very confusing. Poundshop.com was launched by Poundland founder Steve Smith and Poundworld back in February. But the pair failed to reach a shared vision according to Poundworlds spinners, and the latter is now going to launch a rival online venture. Poundworld.com perhaps?
Poundland co-founder Steve Smith, who runs the online business with Poundworld, said he is looking to extend its online offer through other parties that can sell products for a pound .
Smith said: Wed like to see a lot more products on the site. We would like to double the size of the range. We have about 1,000 lines online at the moment and we could easily have 2,000 to 3,000.
Although Poundworld declined to give any sales figures for the website, Smith said Poundshop.com customers on average spend £30 per transaction, above the anticipated £23 at this stage. Its largest order has been £700.
Smith revealed that small businesses have been placing orders, such as hairdressers purchasing shampoo in bulk.
2.29pm BST
Back to Iraq, where Haider al-Abadi has been asked to be the countrys new prime minister, according to his Facebook account.
It said he has been asked to form a government by Iraqs Kurdish president Fuad Masum.
2.23pm BST
A wry take from the Moscow Times about the joys of buckwheat, in light of Russias ban on food from the west. The journalist writes:
In fact, buckwheat (grechka) in Russian is not only a delicious staple of the Eastern European diet, it is highly versatile. It can be eaten for breakfast, for lunch and for dinner without ever getting monotonous.
2.08pm BST
The supposed easing of tensions in Ukraine is already looking premature. *Reuters quotes a NATO chief saying there is a high probability of Russian intervention in East Ukraine.* Adrian Croft writes:
NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday he saw a high probability that Russia could intervene militarily in eastern Ukraine and that NATO saw no sign that Moscow was pulling back its forces from close to the Ukrainian border.
We see the Russians developing the narrative and the pretext for such an operation under the guise of a humanitarian operation and we see a military build-up that could be used to condcut such illegal military operations in Ukraine, he said.
Leader of East Ukraine rebels Zakharchenko says mulls counter-attack on government forces in 2-3 days.
1.54pm BST
The FT has a nice take on the BuzzFeed fundraising, which valued the news site famed for its lists at $850m. Under the headline Youll never guess how much BuzzFeed raised from Horowitz, Henry Mance writes up the fundraising, in a list, of course:
*OK, maybe you will*
If you guess $50m. BuzzFeeds new investor is one of Silicon Valleys best-known venture capital firms, Andreessen Horowitz. This is literally what happens when you create an INSANELY DISRUPTIVE news service.
1.34pm BST
While traders seem less concerned about the crises around the world, the situation in Iraq continues to unfold, with Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki battling to keep his job today. Follow the developments on Matthew Weavers live blog.
12.37pm BST
Markets continue to rise, as fickle traders decide not to worry about geopolitical risks.
12.22pm BST
Theres more evidence of Angela Merkels extraordinary staying power. The only leader, among the major eurozone countries, to survive the financial crisis, her popularity continues to rise. That contrasts sharply with the woefully unpopular French president François Hollande.
12.08pm BST
Oil prices have eased again, after a spike on Friday as Islamic State fighters came within striking distance of Iraqs oilfields.
*Brent crude slipped below $105 on Monday, as traders grew less concerned about the crisis in Iraq. *Carsten Fritsch, senior oil and commodities analyst at Commerzbank in Frankfurt said:
The oil market is not as worried now about what is happening in Iraq. the market has become more complacent about supply again. But complacency is dangerous. Given the geopolitical tensions, a spike in oil prices cannot and should not be ruled out.
11.22am BST
RBS has told Reuters that it is exploring options, including a possible sale or joint venture, for the international arm of Coutts, the Queens bank (see below). The announcement reiterates a report in the FT in July. Martin Arnold in London and Jennifer Hughes wrote:
Royal Bank of Scotland is considering selling the overseas operations of Coutts, its private banking arm, which includes the Queen among its clients, as it conducts a strategic review of its wealth management business.
The private bank, founded in 1692, is being integrated with RBSs UK commercial lending division as part of a strategic overhaul of the partly state-owned group announced in February.
11.16am BST
Germany and Japans economies are losing steam, according to Paris-based think tank the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
*The OECD said growth momentum in most major developed economies was stable, but Germany and Japan were flagging. *10.41am BST
10.40am BST
10.37am BST
One point worth noting about the UKs mortgage data (see below) is that it appears that the tough new rules on lending to house buyers have not put a hard brake on the market. Lenders are reporting a steady rise in first-time buyers despite the changes.
The new rules - known as the Mortgage Market Review (MMR) - came into effect at the end of April. Paul Smee, director general of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, said:
For the second month running since new FCA rules took effect, lending characteristics remain similar to the market beforehand. We now feel confident that, as we would hope, the MMR effect is more gentle dampener than hard brake.
10.33am BST
Wholesale gas prices are rising, on the back of an unplanned outage at a North Sea gas field, cooler weather on the way, and concerns about the transit of gas from Russia via Ukraine. Day-ahead UK gas prices rose by 1p to 38.5p a therm.
Forecasts suggest temperatures are about to fall below the seasonal average over the next two weeks, driving demand for gas.
9.52am BST
*Mortgage lending rose 6% in June to £17.9bn, according to Bank of England data*. Thats 20% higher than June last year.
Lending is driven by housebuyers, rather than people remortgaging their houses, says the Council of Mortgage Lenders. Lending to first-time buyers increased 19% on June last year. The number of remortgages dropped 8% over the year, although the value was up 6%.
9.29am BST
*Royal Bank of Scotland is looking to sell the international arm of its private bank, Coutts*, Reuters is reporting, citing unnamed sources.
It said RBS has attracted a variety of offers form a range of bidders for Coutts International, including undisclosed Asian and North American parties for a business which manages roughly 40 billion Swiss francs in client assets.
8.58am BST
The energy market regulator Ofgem is feeling the heat after *f**ive former electricity and gas industry regulators said its actions contributed to the profit and price increases made by the Big Six energy firms*.
The regulator rejected the charges this morning. It blames the former watchdogs for causing the current problems and says its actions had made the market simpler, fairer and clearer. Roland Gribben of the Telegraph writes:
The former regulators, responsible for controlling prices and supervising the operations of gas and electricity companies after privatisation, included Stephen Littlechild, electricity industry regulator from 1989-99, Sir Callum McCarthy (electricity) and Clare Spottiswoode, the second gas industry regulator.
In a joint submission to the Competition and Markets Authority, released today, they maintain that Ofgem may have weakened competition in the market through poorly designed regulatory procedures introduced since 2008.
In a statement Ofgem said many of the current problems with retail competition were showing before 2008 and pointed out that the regulatory and policy environment had changed significantly over the last six years.
8.39am BST
*The global economic recovery has been disappointing and could signal lower growth in the long-run*, the vice chair of the US Fed will say in Sweden today. Stanley Fischer will tell an economic conference:
The global recovery has been disappointing. With few exceptions, growth in the advanced economies has underperformed expectations of growth as economies exited from recession.
These disappointments in output performance have not only led to repeated downward revisions of forecasts for short-term growth, but also to a general reassessment of longer-run growth.
8.14am BST
But the economic climate in Europe remains uncertain. Italy fell back into recession last week and there are fears that sanctions between Russia and the west will hit the German economy.
In terms of economic data, markets will be focused on Chinese figures out on Wednesday after last weeks which shock trade data, which shoed exports to the euro area jump 14% in July.
8.05am BST
The markets have opened higher, as expected.
8.02am BST
In the UK, infrastructure company *Balfour Beatty has rejected an offer to merge with Carillion in order to protect the ongoing sale of its US subsidiary*. My colleague Jennifer Rankin reports:
Balfour Beatty announced it had lost confidence in merger talks, after Carillion badgered them not to sell its US division Parsons Brinckerhoff. Talks broke down in late July over the future of design and engineering business Parsons Brinckerhoff, after Carillion surprised Balfour with a plan to keep the company in a combined business.
Carillion had been pressing Balfour to resume talks, but Balfour rejected a merger for endangering the sale of Parsons Brinckerhoff, a company it acquired in 2009, but felt had failed to perform.
7.59am BST
It looks like Amazon has fallen into another contract dispute, this time with Disney. The WSJ reports that Amazon halted preorders for some DVDs and Blu-ray discs from Disney , including popular titles such as Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Greg Bensinger writes:
The online retailer is restricting customers ability to preorder physical copies of the films, promising to notify them when they become available. It is a tactic Amazon has used several times this year, including with Time Warners Warner Bros. studio, before reaching a resolution earlier this year, as well as a continuing spat with Hachette Book Group.
An Amazon spokesman declined to comment, but the company said early Saturday thatwithholding preorders of Hachette titles and slowing shipment of others was necessary to achieve its contract goals. Hachette spent three months stonewalling and only grudgingly began to even acknowledge our concerns when we took action to reduce sales of their titles in our store, Amazon said in a letter it posted to one of its websites.
7.44am BST
In corporate news, a bidding war looks likely to break out over the company behind Penfolds Wine. Reuters is reporting that private equity giant *TPG Capital Management made a $3.1bn approach for Treasury Wine Estates,* following KKR and Rhone Capitals offer for the group.
A week after KKR and Rhone Capital LLC proposed a A$5.20 a share offer for Treasury, the owner of the Penfolds, Lindemans and Wolf Blass brands said on Monday it received a second identical unsolicited approach from a global private equity firm which requested anonymity.
7.38am BST
But the crisis is far from over. Michael Hewson at CMC Markets notes:
It remains far too early to celebrate any de-escalation between Russia and Ukraine. Only at the weekend Ukraine claimed it had thwarted a covert attempt by Russian soldiers to enter the east of the country under the guise of a humanitarian mission with the Red Cross. While Russia dismissed the claims as a fairy tale, they nonetheless speak to the concerns that Kiev has with respect to Russias next move.
7.38am BST
Global stock markets have bounced on hopes that tensions in Ukraine are easing. *Russia announced on Friday that its military exercises near Ukraines border were over, overshadowing concerns about the US air strikes in Iraq. *The S&P and Dow Jones both finished the week on a high note, rising by more than 1%.
Japanese stocks followed them higher, posting their largest one-day gain in four months today. The Nikkei jumped 2.4% recouping most of its losses from Friday.Continue reading... Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 hour ago.