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.

LONDON, Jan 13 (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.

LONDON (Reuters) – Prime Minister David Cameron’s plan to curb executive pay by giving shareholders a power of veto will not work, according to eight out of 10 British-based fund managers polled by Reuters.

Some respondents agreed that bosses’ salaries and bonuses were excessive in certain cases, but there were questions over the effectiveness of legislation. The view that pay is not a matter for shareholders was also expressed, while some feared such measures could even be counterproductive.

LONDON, Jan 6 (Reuters) – Plugging a 115 billion euro
($147 billion) capital hole in Europe’s banks may require more
state bail-outs if the grim reaction to UniCredit’s fundraising
plan — and banks’ deteriorating earnings prospects — are
anything to go by.

Regulators have given thirty-one of Europe’s banks two weeks
to say how they will raise capital to shore up their balance
sheets by the end of June. The aim is to avoid a repeat of the
2008 crisis that led to massive injections of public money.

LONDON, Jan 4 (Reuters) – Hedge funds hunting profits
from falling share prices are circling many of Britain’s biggest
retailers after deep pre-Christmas discounting failed to tempt
shoppers to splash the cash in the festive season.

Lacklustre festive spending is expected to blight a wave of
New Year trading figures from Marks & Spencer, WHSmith
, Carpetright, Home Retail Group and
Mothercare, who have all suffered a spike in the volumes
of stock out on loan, a key indicator of short-selling interest.

LONDON, Dec 19 (Reuters) – Fund managers are finding
the eye-catching returns on euro zone peripheral bonds too good
to resist, and have begun to buy back into the crisis-hit
countries’ bond markets despite worries the region is still far
from resolving its debt crisis.

As governments across Europe’s Southern belt wrestle with
record costs of borrowing and faltering economies, some asset
managers are dipping a toe back into peripheral debt markets to
grab once-in-a-lifetime yields that dwarf those offered by UK
gilts or German bunds.

TOKYO/LONDON (Reuters) – A big foreign investor in Japan’s disgraced Olympus Corp (7733.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) voiced its concern on Monday that the firm would bring in a major new investor, in a move that could effectively sink former CEO Michael Woodford’s campaign to be reinstated.

U.S. fund manager Southeastern Asset Management, which holds 5 percent of the maker of cameras and medical equipment, said in a statement it was worried the current board may be gearing up to dilute existing shareholders in a bid to stay in power.

TOKYO/LONDON, Dec 19 (Reuters) – A big foreign
investor in Japan’s disgraced Olympus Corp voiced its
concern on Monday that the firm would bring in a major new
investor, in a move that could effectively sink former CEO
Michael Woodford’s campaign to be reinstated.

U.S. fund manager Southeastern Asset Management, which holds
5 percent of the maker of cameras and medical equipment, said in
a statement it was worried the current board may be gearing up
to dilute existing shareholders in a bid to stay in power.

LONDON (Reuters) – Deep cracks are starting to show in the love affair between hedge funds and their investors, after another year of paltry returns on expensive investments leaves many feeling cheated and close to bailing out.

An asset class once feted for its ability to make money in all markets is back under the spotlight after the average fund lost 4.4 percent in the first 11 months of the year, data from Hedge Fund Research shows.