Lloyds announces 5,000 job cuts

  Lloyds Banking Group is to cut 5,000 more jobs by the end of next year as it continues to reduce overlap following its merger with HBOS last year. Some of these cuts are temporary staff, but Lloyds said 2,600 permanent jobs would be lost in the UK. Most of the cuts will come in [...]

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Cadbury rejects hostile Kraft bid

  UK confectioner Cadbury has rejected a £9.8bn ($16.4bn) hostile bid from US food giant Kraft. Cadbury said it had "emphatically rejected" what it saw as the "derisory" offer, which will now be put directly to its shareholders. Kraft offered a mixture of cash and shares for each Cadbury share – the same terms it [...]

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UBS fined £8m by the UK regulator

  The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has fined Swiss banking giant UBS £8m for failing to stop its employees making unauthorised transactions. The FSA said four UBS employees had carried out the transactions using customer money on at least 39 accounts. The unauthorised activities took place between January 2006 and December 2007. The FSA also [...]

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GM plans to cut 10,000 Opel jobs

  General Motors (GM) has confirmed that it plans to cut 10,000 jobs across its European car unit Opel, which includes the Vauxhall brand in the UK. The announcement comes a day after GM said it was cancelling its deal to sell Opel to Canadian car parts firm Magna. The 10,000 planned job cuts is [...]

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Darling hails Lloyds and RBS move

  Alistair Darling has welcomed the announcements that Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Lloyds Banking Group are to sell off hundreds of branches. The chancellor said the sales, which had been demanded by the European Commission, were in the "best interest" of the wider UK banking sector. The government also announced that it would [...]

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Cost-cutting boosts Ford profits

  Ford has announced profits of almost $1bn (£611m) between July and September thanks to increased market share and a successful cost-cutting programme. Pre-tax profit for the quarter came in at $997m, compared with a loss of $161m a year earlier. Revenue was $30.9bn, down $800m on a year ago. The US carmaker said it [...]

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Obama welcomes US economic growth

  President Barack Obama has welcomed the news that the US economy returned to growth between July and September. Official figures showed the economy grew by 3.5% during the quarter, its first expansion in more than a year. The growth was helped by a substantial government spending plan, including a scrappage scheme to boost car [...]

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EU approves Northern Rock split

The European Union (EU) has approved plans for nationalised bank Northern Rock to be split in two – paving the way for a partial sale. One business, described as the "good" bank, would hold savers’ money, carry out new lending and hold some existing mortgages. A second "bad" bank would be set up to hold [...]

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US consumer confidence takes hit

  US consumer confidence fell sharply and unexpectedly in October as fears about future job prospects increasingly preyed upon Americans. The closely-watched Consumer Confidence Index from the Conference Board business organisation slipped to 47.7 from a revised 53.4 in September. Analysts were expecting the index to be unchanged or even to rise slightly. Separately, a [...]

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