Industry news

The Royal Bank of Scotland’s chairman hinted strongly today that the government would be able to sell on its stake in the bank by the middle of 2014.

Chairman Sir Philip Hampton said that the recovery, which saw the involvement of the government in bailing out the bank over bad loans, would be “substantially complete” by the middle of 2014.

The announcement comes as RBS posted a pre-tax profit in the first quarter of £826 million, while the UK government looks at a series of major cuts over the coming years and a general election in 2015.

Despite the comments made by the chairman, RBS may struggle to recover by 2014, with a fall in earnings in investment operations and the yet to be seen impact of PPI claims.

Regulators move to investigate RBS IT failings

RBS looks to sell US lender after FSA pressure

Vice president of the European Commission, Olli Rehn, has said today that the UK must continue down the road of its current fiscal policy.

He pointed to rising levels of debt and the damage that a fiscal stimulus package would cause, saying: “It is important that the UK follows through with consistent fiscal consoliation”.

He added that: “There is really no case for a discretionary fiscal loosening in the UK”.

The UK’s public debt is predicted to rise to near 100 percent during 2014 based on EU figures. The European Commission has placed a rise of 0.6 percent GDP for the UK economy in 2013, and 1.7 percent the following year.

Continued economic inertia sees U.S. continue with stimulus plan

Italy faces “serious economic situation” says prime minister

Rival communications firm TalkTalk, has made a complaint against BT, regarding the difference in margin between BT’s retail and wholesale prices.

Ofcom has now responded by opening an investigation into the claim, that BT has used its position of market dominance to reduce the margins between the wholesale and retail costs of its products.

The accusations of the artificial reduction of margins have been levelled against BT’s new superfast broadband offering, which the company is looking to roll out across the whole of the rural UK, with the support of BDUK.

BT has succeeded in maintaining contract dominance across much of the BDUK program, with competitor Fujitsu pulling out of the bidding process.

The investigation from Ofcom will look into whether BT’s prices break EU and/ or UK competition regulation.

A TalkTalk spokesperson, said: “there needs to be tighter regulation in superfast broadband to ensure a level playing field and therefore deliver real benefits for consumers and businesses. We are pleased that Ofcom is taking this matter seriously and have decided there are reasonable grounds to investigate BT's wholesale fibre pricing”.

BT reduces broadband rental charges

BT bags £14m Cornish Deal

The price of crude oil has fallen, with expectations of limited growth in industrial production, as markets are hit by the global economic slowdown.

The price of oil fell beneath $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after poor manufacturing data from both the U.S. and China led to low expectations of renewed economic activity.

The fall in oil price comes as crude stocks reached a new peak of 395.3 million barrels in the U.S., from an increase of 6.7 million, reaching the highest total on record according to the Energy Information Administration.

The reduction in oil value reflected an overall fall in valuation for a whole range of goods including shares and gold, with gold seeing a fall of $34 an ounce, as even secure products see the impact of continued economic stagnation.

Centrica and Qatar Buy Canadian Gas Field equiv. to 15 Billion Barrels of Oil

Continued economic inertia sees U.S. continue with stimulus plan

Signs of continued economic instability have led members of the U.S. Federal Reserve to continue with the current stimulus policy in a bid to promote recovery.

The culmination of a two day meeting has resulted in the decision that the Federal Reserve will continue to buy $85 billion worth of government and mortgage based bonds per month, as a bid to stimulate spending.

A statement released after the meeting, said: "The committee is prepared to increase or reduce the pace of its purchases to maintain appropriate policy accommodation as the outlook for the labour market or inflation changes".

The change in policy differs from past expectations that the Federal Reserve will seek to reduced bond buying, and move in line with the U.S. fiscal policy, which has now received blame for restraining growth.

New U.S. federal budget sees a decline in funding after inflation

US trade group send letter to congress criticising Chinese IT supplier ban

The High Court Judge ruling on the Barnet Council vs Maria Nash case regarding the outsourcing of services, confirmed that the council should have done more to consult with the public.

The ruling this week, which saw Barnet Council win on a technicality, would have been secured by the Barnet Alliance and Maria Nash, if they had succeeded in bringing the case earlier.

NOA Chief Executive Kerry Hallard said “Justice Underhill’s comments leave other councils’ outsourcing ambitions in a precarious state. While today will be seen as a victory within Barnet Council, it raises issues of transparency that will have big implications for any public sector agency who needs to save money without cutting services.

She added that: “Justice Underhill actually said Barnet Council ‘had not complied with its obligations’ towards its people and that it ‘‘never set out to consult about its outsourcing programme at all.”

The failure of the council to consult effectively with the public has led to calls for increased consultation from the outsourcing industry with the public regarding the delivery of services.

The NOA’s Kerry Hallard said: “Having an industry standard benchmark level of public consultation would allow negotiations and requests for proposals to be conducted safe in the knowledge that the rug will not be pulled out from under them in the High Court, and may go some way to more positively changing perceptions about outsourcing.”

Barnet resident challenges council’s plan to outsource services

The floatation of Royal Mail is set to begin today as Business minister Michael Fallon looks to complete a move to privatisation for the postal service within 12 months.

Michael Fallon has revealed that the investment banks that will run the floatation of the royal mail will be appointed by the end of May.

Examples of the successful privatsation of mail services have been citied in Germany and Austria to argue for the floatation of the state service, with delivery times being better than the state run competitors.

The move by the government to privatise the service is designed to achieve stability with Mr Fallon saying that new measures were required in order: “to put Royal Mail onto a long-term sustainable basis”.

Royal Mail to post strong profits before privatisation

Royal Mail: profit & privatisation

All 24 ministerial departments have now completed their migration to the new central website domain at GOV.UK, with the migration of services being initiated back in October 2012.

The migration undertake with the support of the Government Digital Service (GDS), now sees all of the departmental sites gathered under one domain.

The transitional program comes as an bid to make the online service easily accessible to the general public, alongside increasing cost savings by developing efficiencies.

With the ministerial departments now operating under the new domain, the GDS will now focus on transitioning public bodies and non-ministerial public sector departments to GOV.UK.

Government reveals plans for centralised procurement registration service

Sita UK are poised as leaders of a consortium, to take over the running of waste disposal for six west London councils, in a scheme valued at £900 million.

The consortium, including Lloyds Banking Group and the Itochu Corporation, along with Sita UK and its partners, has been selected as preferred bidders by the six councils (West London Waste Authority).

The new contract will see 300,000 tonnes of waste, from around 600,000 homes, transferred from a landfill disposal scheme to a new process in which waste would be transported to an electricity plant to be burnt.

The consortium must now be given final approval in order to secure the contract, which would see £900 million paid over the 25 year lifetime of the service delivery.

Chairman of West London Waste Authority, Bassam Mahfouz, said: “For too long we in west London have been sending the waste we didn’t recycle to pile up in landfills. This new contract means that virtually nothing will be sent to landfill.”

Supplier sourcing leader at Google for EMEA and LATAM, Gabháin Neary, has described how the internet giant relies on outsourcing core essential services that do not directly deliver value, in order to drive efficiencies.

The move to outsource essential services in the supplier sourcing process has allowed Google to deliver greater efficiencies, allowing buyers to focus on value creation.

Mr Neary said during the ProcureCon Indirect conference that Google looked to: “Eliminate, automate or outsource any of the non-value transactional work- it has really freed up ourselves, and it is a never-ending exercise to constantly refine that”.

He added that by employing external parties to “support us in supplier sourcing now- my team are now just focused on doing stakeholder engagement.”

Google on collision course with European data regulation

Google acquires new London site