Financial Times Summary

Mon 1 Sep 2008

ECB
The eurozone is nearer recession but the European Central Bank governing council is expected to hold its main interest rate at 4.25 % when it meets on Thursday.

Grant Thornton
Rapid overseas expansion will encourage more financial services businesses to move their tax bases abroad, adding to the list of companies that have recently defected to more business-friendly regimes, advisers have warned. Dana Ward, a financial services tax partner at advisers Grant Thornton, said market opportunities in Asia and the gulf were forcing asset managers to reassess whether they could remain within the UK's complex system of taxing foreign profits. Her comments followed a week in which three FTSE 250 companies-Henderson, an asset manager, Charter, an engineering company and Regus, the serviced office provider-announced their tax bases were moving to Ireland and Luxembourg. A fourth, Brit Insurance, said it was "actively considering the issue of tax domicile."

London Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange will today introduce deep fee cuts and incentives for traders in the latest sign Europe's exchanges are ratcheting up efforts to defend themselves against a wave of new entrants in equities trading. The move comes as Nasdaq OMX Europe, one of the new entrants, will today appoint Citigroup to provide electronic routing of orders from its new trading platform to others in Europe.

Dresdner Bank
The sale of Dresdner Bank, announced yesterday, seems sure to spell the end for one of the best-known names in German banking, whose green colours are instantly recognisable among the country's plethora of financial groups. Allianz's deal with Commerzbank to sell Dresdner-whose origin stretches back more than 130 years-is also an end to the insurer's intention to create and control an integrated "bancassurance" group. The attempt veered between disappointment and disaster for most of its seven year history.

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