LONDON (Reuters) – Xstrata (XTA.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Chief Executive Mick Davis is facing growing pressure from shareholders to secure a better deal in the miner’s $41 billion takeover by Glencore (GLEN.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), as he begins a transatlantic trip that could secure or sink the tie-up.

The charm offensive — a scheduled roadshow after the miner’s annual results — coincides with mounting opposition from Xstrata investors insisting they could get a better premium from Glencore and worried that Davis, set to secure a hefty retention package and the chief executive role, may not be pushing hard enough.

LONDON (Reuters) – Investors are needlessly exposing themselves to huge potential losses by defying two golden rules for making money through bonds – lend more to those who will pay on time in full and less to those already saturated in debt.

Traditional fixed income benchmarks that allocate investment weight based on the volume of a country’s debts have nurtured what some see as a dangerous conviction that sovereign borrowers who owe the most are the safest to lend to.

LONDON (Reuters) – Investors are needlessly exposing themselves to huge potential losses by defying two golden rules for making money through bonds – lend more to those who will pay on time in full and less to those already saturated in debt.

Traditional fixed income benchmarks that allocate investment weight based on the volume of a country’s debts have nurtured what some see as a dangerous conviction that sovereign borrowers who owe the most are the safest to lend to.

LONDON, Jan 31 (Reuters) – The decision by Royal Bank
of Scotland’s bosses to waive their bonuses has heaped
pressure and scrutiny on Britain’s other top bankers and on pay
awards further down the ranks, fanning the flames of a row over
excessive pay.

Banks are in the process of finalising bonuses for top
executives and investment bankers, and many see pay levels for
staff lower down the chain as the bigger issue.

LONDON (Reuters) – Investors rattled by unpredictable global markets are losing faith in star managers to shield them from painful losses, with some of the industry’s best known names topping a list of funds which haemorrhaged cash in 2011, Lipper data shows.

Edouard Carmignac, the investment veteran who founded funds firm Carmignac Gestion, and Sanjeev Shah, the Fidelity Worldwide Investments trailblazer, are among those who struggled to maintain cult followings, after a flight to safety tempted fans to switch into cash and other passive products.

LONDON (Reuters) – Investors rattled by unpredictable global markets are losing faith in star managers to shield them from painful losses, with some of the industry’s best known names topping a list of funds which hemorrhaged cash in 2011, Lipper data shows.

Edouard Carmignac, the investment veteran who founded funds firm Carmignac Gestion, and Sanjeev Shah, the Fidelity Worldwide Investments trailblazer, are among those who struggled to maintain cult followings, after a flight to safety tempted fans to switch into cash and other passive products.

LONDON (Reuters) – Prolonged financial crisis and shifts in economic power herald an age of uncertainty which the financial industry and its clients are not equipped to understand, says one of Britain’s most powerful institutional investors.

The world is entering “an era of broken promises” in which much of what people take for granted, like governments honouring debts, will become less certain, said Saker Nusseibeh, head of investment at Hermes, the fund manager owned by Britain’s largest pension pot, the BT (British Telecom) Pension Scheme.

LONDON, Jan 18 (Reuters) – Asset manager Fidelity
Worldwide Investment is throwing its weight behind a campaign to
give investors greater powers to curb spiralling executive pay,
calling for all bonuses to be subject to the approval of a
minimum 75 percent of shareholders.

Backing proposals outlined last week by British Prime
Minister David Cameron, Fidelity said
shareholders should have the right to veto rewards before they
are paid and that if approval is refused twice, the chairman of
the remuneration committee should resign.

LONDON, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Shareholders want Britain’s
Tesco Plc to tighten rules on when its executives can
trade shares, after a senior manager sold stock eight days
before the company issued a profit warning which hammered its
share price.

Investors said the rules needed revising to put greater
distance between the timing of share deals by executives and
significant company announcements.

LONDON (Reuters) – Fund managers face redundancies as upheaval caused by the financial crisis reveals poor returns, low skills and overpriced products that are driving clients away.

Europe’s fund management industry had managed to avoid the cyclical redundancies that haunt banking sector workers because customers felt they had little choice but to pay for expensive products promising investment returns and retirement nest eggs.