Barclays is planning to offshore hundreds of roles at its troubled investment banking unit to India in a bid to cut costs, The Independent has learnt. The bank is understood to have dispatched a team to recruit and train new staff there to replace workers in both London and New York. Separately, the bank announced consultations with UK staff at the investment bank over what could be substantial job losses as a result of new chief executive Antony Jenkins’ ‘Transform’ programme. They are designed, said the bank, to ‘optimise the business’. [The Independent]
Aerospace firm Rolls-Royce is to cut almost 400 jobs at its Ansty site near Coventry, in a blow to the local workforce, a union has claimed. The company is consulting on staff reductions in its defence workforce at the Midlands plant, with Unite the union claiming 378 “highly skilled” jobs are at risk. Unite has further claimed Rolls-Royce is proposing to shut the plant in the next few years, but has put the blame for the company’s decision on the Government for what it called “short-sighted” cuts to the national defence budget. [The Telegraph]
A former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee has launched a ferocious attack on the Bank’s culture and the autocratic nature of the Governor. Adam Posen claimed yesterday that the Court — the directors — of the Bank of England was “excessively weak” and allowed Sir Mervyn King to get away with whatever he wants. In an explosive appearance in front of the Treasury Select Committee, Dr Posen accused the Bank’s supervisory panel of having effectively “abdicated responsibility” and said that there was a “very strong culture and precedent” that if the Governor and other executives made a decision, there “was no point in challenging them”. He also accused the Treasury of being “unwilling to take on the Governor in an internal or public fight”. [The Times]
A record 202 million people could be unemployed across the world in 2013, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said on Tuesday. Five years on from the onset of the financial crisis, unemployment is on the rise again as economies around the world lose jobs and the fragile recovery is threatened by “incoherent monetary policy” in the US and Europe, said the ILO. According to United Nation’s agency’s latest report, Global EmploymentTrends 2013, 6% of the world’s workforce were without a job in 2012. The number of jobless people around the world rose by 4m in 2012 to 197m. Young people were the worst affected: nearly 13% of those under 24 were unemployed. Some 35% of all young unemployed people have been out of work for six months or longer in advanced economies, up from 28.5% in 2007. [The Guardian]
David Cameron will on Wednesday vow to settle Britain’s future in the European Union with a straight in-out referendum by 2017, in a high-risk strategy which will test the willingness of Paris and Berlin to cut the UK a better membership deal. The prime minister will tell the rest of the EU that Britain could “drift towards the exit” unless he is able to win an improved deal, and will lay down a tight timetable for a renegotiation. In a long-awaited speech on Europe, Mr Cameron will say: “It is time for the British people to have their say. It is time to settle this European question in British politics.” [Financial Times]
Google cheered investors with news of better than expected earnings last night, with the Californian search giant reporting signs of stability in its advertising rates. The firm said the average that advertisers pay every time users click their ads had declined by 6 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year – a marked improvement from the 15 per cent decline recorded in the previous quarter. Rates have been easing for five consecutive quarters, as advertisers show an unwillingness to pay up to promote their business on mobile devices such as smartphones. But the improvement was welcomed by investors, who sent Google shares higher in extended trading hours last night. [The Independent]
Ikea’s chief executive hit out at European governments for holding back thousands of jobs and billions of euros in investment through cumbersome planning laws and red tape. Mikael Ohlsson, head of the world’s largest furniture retailer, told the Financial Times that the Swedish group was unlikely to double the pace of its store openings as quickly as it would have liked. [Financial Times]
