Written By Unknown on Senin, 23 Februari 2015 | 23.33
Heathrow has announced a 10% fall in annual operating profits and argued it should be granted expansion because it is "full".
The west London hub airport said a strong operational performance in 2014 resulted in its busiest year ever, with 73.4 million passengers served, up 1.4%, but no real growth in flights.
It put the lack of flight growth down to being at full capacity.
The statement said: "With Heathrow full, Britain is falling behind in direct flights to growth markets – that's why calls for Heathrow expansion are growing from all parts of the UK."
The Airports Commission is due to release its recommendations on expansion following the General Election, with Heathrow squaring up to rival Gatwick in the race for investment.
Heathrow insists it is best placed to deliver the needs of a modern hub airport.
Its operating profits fell 10% to £839m though revenues climbed to £2.69bn.
Accounts showed that depreciation costs associated with the new Terminal Two were a factor in the decline in operating profits.
John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow's chief executive, said: "Heathrow performed very well in 2014, with record levels of passenger service and numbers of passengers served.
"The successful opening of Terminal 2 means the nation now has a world class front door and passengers rate us the best hub airport in Europe.
"But with Heathrow full, Britain is falling behind European rivals in the race for growth.
"An expanded hub airport is best for Britain and backed by Britain.
"We have made Heathrow better - now it is time to make it bigger, and connect all of Britain to global growth."
:: Ian King Live will be broadcast from Heathrow tonight, with the bosses of Heathrow and Gatwick debating the merits of their plans for controversial expansion. That is live on Sky News at 6:30 pm.
Organisations that fail to prevent tax evasion would be hit with stiff fines under a new crackdown, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has proposed.
Lib Dem Danny Alexander wants to create a new offence of "corporate failure to prevent an economic crime".
He said the plan would see organisations that encourage tax evasion or make such a practice easier to carry out face the same level of fine as the evaders themselves.
Mr Alexander said he would try to make progress on the idea before May's General Election, but if he can't, then it will become a key part of the Lib Dem manifesto.
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "Organisations, be they accountants, banks or whatever, who help people evade tax will be liable for this new offence and crucially liable for financial penalties.
"So, for example, if their customers have to pay back hundreds of millions of pounds in tax then those organisations should have to match that with hundreds of millions of pounds of their own money and I think that's a very tough disincentive to them to get involved in this in the first place.
"This is taboo.
"This is something that absolutely mustn't happen in our society and we still have a problem with some people thinking they can get away without paying their fair share of tax."
The party said their plan also includes a commitment for the Government to see the "tax gap" - the difference between the tax owed to the Exchequer and the amount collected - fall every year.
Codes of practice for tax advising professions would also be strengthened, the party said.
Mr Alexander later added in a statement: "These new measures will build on the successful strategy that is making tax evasion as socially unacceptable as benefit fiddling or drinking and driving."
Labour's Chris Leslie said nobody would believe Mr Alexander's "warm words" as his party has "broken their promises on tax".
Mr Leslie, who is shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said: "Along with the Tories, they have totally failed to tackle tax avoidance and cut taxes for millionaires while raising VAT on families and pensioners.
"The amount of uncollected tax has gone up by £3bn under Danny Alexander and George Osborne.
"This Government has refused to close loopholes which Labour has highlighted.
"And ministers still need to explain why there has been just one prosecution out of 1,100 names in the HSBC case and why the head of the bank was made a Tory minister."
Labour would carry out an immediate "root and branch" review of HM Revenue and Customs to make sure it is "up to the job", Mr Leslie added.
Greece is set to submit a list of economic reforms demanded by its creditors to extend the country's bailout programme.
The proposals had to be handed in by late Monday night as a condition of the support from the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The four-month loan extension is subject to the list of reforms gaining approval.
The deal was announced on Friday evening following often hostile negotiations in Brussels.
It was painted by the country's prime minister Alexis Tsipras as a victory for the Greek people though it does little to reduce its financial obligations.
Video:Greek Rescue Package Explained
The list is understood to contain pledges to raise more in tax from the country's top earners and from a crackdown on smuggling.
The German tabloid Bild reported that the Greek government hoped to take €2.5bn (£1.8bn) more from powerful Greek tycoons, citing sources close to the hard-left government.
A similar amount would be drawn from back taxes owed to the state by individuals and businesses, Bild said.
However, the document is also said to include commitments on raising the minimum wage and protecting pensions.
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Gallery: Art War On The Streets Of Athens
Athens has become a Mecca for street artists as anger grows over the impact of Greece's bailout deal with Europe
Wall paintings have sprung up all over the city reflecting the general frustration at rising unemployment and falling living standards
The clue came right at the start of Yanis Varoufakis' press conference.
Up until last night's bailout extension deal, the Greek finance minister spent most of his international media appearances addressing an international audience - speaking fluent, verbose English, taking questions from outlets from around the world.
Last night, in the small Greek briefing room in the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels, he was talking to someone else entirely.
His eyes fixed down the barrel of the cameras, for a quarter of an hour he spoke only in Greek.
"We are now co-authors of our own destiny," he said.
Video:Greek Rescue Package Explained
"Negotiation means compromise. But this deal is a small step in the right direction.
"We are no longer following a script given to us by external agencies," he added.
Unusually for him, though, he was reading his speech rather than talking off the cuff.
It did not take a political genius to work out what was going on.
Syriza came to power in Greece last month promising not to do a deal with the shady characters in Brussels.
It promised not to sign up to a continuation of the unpopular bailout programme.
It promised not to have its domestic policies monitored and influenced by the so-called Troika of lenders (the International Monetary Fund, European Commission and European Central Bank).
Video:Greeks Win Loan Extension
But the deal it signed up to on Friday night involved, essentially, all of the above.
There were changes in some of the terminology.
The "programme" is now renamed the "contract"; the hated "memorandum of understanding" which entailed the reforms the country needed to make, is called the "Master Financial Assistance Facility Agreement"; the "Troika" is now referred to as "the institutions".
But, for the most part, the bailout extension Greece signed up to looks like precisely the thing Syriza and Varoufakis said they would not agree to.
True, there are some important changes: Greece will be given more leeway on its public finances this year; it will have the opportunity to curtail some of the tougher reforms, such as firesales of assets and changes in pension provisions - though these, too, will have to be approved by the Troika, sorry, institutions, in conversations starting on Monday.
Crucially, Syriza can rightly claim that its government has eased the conditions on the bailout a lot more than its predecessors.
However, this was hardly the revolution in economic policy that many Greeks will have hoped for.
Video:Greece: Everything You Need To Know
It does not represent a new deal - so much as an old deal in new clothing.
Then again, perhaps that is the best that could have been expected.
This is only a short-term extension to bide the country over.
Without it, there was a distinct chance it would have defaulted and left the euro - the latter of which the vast majority of Greeks are set against.
The country's financial system was looking perilously exposed.
Throughout the Eurogroup meeting, the ECB president Mario Draghi warned repeatedly that unless Greece and its euro counterparts came up with a deal soon, money could start escaping from Greek bank accounts rapidly that there might be a full-blown financial crisis as soon as Monday.
This was a difficult meeting for Mr Varoufakis.
Video:Anti-Austerity Party Wins In Greece
The former academic has taken the political world by storm in recent weeks, carrying out a whistlestop tour of European capitals to explain the Greek position.
However, so visible has he been in this period, so adamant that Greece will not water down its demands, that the events of the past 24 hours may prove tough to contextualise.
What made the job harder still is the fact that he and the finance ministry were marginalised towards the end of the negotiations.
Alexis Tsipras, the Prime Minister, stepped in and carried out some of the talks behind the scenes with his fellow leaders when things looked as if they were breaking down.
After the previous Eurogroup meeting on Monday descended into farce, amid a flood of leaks, the PM insisted that all press communications should be done through his office, rather than Mr Varoufakis'.
It was said that behind-the-scenes, the Germans were refusing to talk to Mr Varoufakis - that some Greek finance officials had been urged to get rid of their boss.
That would be a terrific mistake: their new finance minister is one of the biggest assets Greece has, particularly when it comes to explaining to an international audience why austerity has not worked, and why future deals might have to be different.
Video:Family Living Off Food Donations
And there will almost certainly need to be another deal once these four months have elapsed.
In the meantime, Mr Varoufakis and his colleagues have a tough job on their hands explaining why what was agreed in Brussels was a triumph rather than a defeat.
Their previous feat - overturning decades of two-party domination in Greece - may end up looking easy in comparison.
Alexis Tsipras has said Greece "won a battle, not the war" by cutting a financial deal with Europe after days of tense negotiations.
The Greek prime minister said his country was now leaving its period of austerity and had dispensed with the "troika" of European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank inspectors who are hated by many Greeks.
In a televised statement, he told Greeks: "Yesterday we took a decisive step, leaving austerity, the bailouts and the troika behind.
"We won a battle, not the war.
"The difficulties, the real difficulties...are ahead of us."
Without a deal in Brussels, Greece faced panic when banks opened on Tuesday after the long weekend but the country has now secured a four-month extension to its EU funding.
This means it avoids bankruptcy and an exit from the euro but it has to come up with promises of economic reforms by Monday and some, such as the Irish finance minister Michael Noonan, say the deal is only a temporary reprieve.
Mr Noonan, himself from a country which endured years of austerity under its own bailout programme, says the eurozone had given nothing to the Greeks, despite the tough talk from Mr Tsipras.
He said: "Their political problem is that this a reversal of their election position.
Video:New Greek PM Sworn In
"They're now compromising and compromising quite significantly.
"The biggest threat to Greece was that their banking system would go belly up next Wednesday."
Mr Noonan said Greece now faces another bailout on top of the two totalling €240bn that it has had since 2010, adding: "Once you get them into the safe space for the next four months, there'll be another set of discussions which will effectively involve the negotiation of a third programme for Greece."
Mr Tsipras and his Syriza party won power in Greece on the back of promises to end the country's EU and IMF bailout programme and cooperation with the "troika" that monitored their compliance with the bailout deal's conditions.
Video:Greek People Ready To 'Turn A Page'
While winning support at home from Greeks who see his actions as getting tough instead of begging to Brussels and taking orders from Berlin, Mr Tsipras is still under pressure to move fast.
About a billion euros flooded out of Greek bank accounts on Friday, due to savers' fears that the talks would fail and Athens might put measures in place to stop withdrawals in preparation to bring in its own currency.
This came after about €20bn withdrawn by Greeks since December, when the prospect of a Syriza electoral victory became clear.
The UK's biggest banks slashed the number of employees earning at least £1m last year in a move they will argue demonstrates that they are heeding calls for greater pay restraint.
Sky News understands that Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) will disclose alongside their annual results during the next eight days that the number of millionaires they created during 2014 fell sharply from the 583 a year earlier.
Insiders familiar with the figures said that the combined number of £1m-plus pay deals across the three banks would fall to approximately 450.
That decline partly reflects the fact that the bonus pool at each bank will be lower for 2014 than in the previous year despite the fact that City analysts expect them all to report stronger financial performances for the last 12 months.
Sky News revealed last week that the three banks were close to finalising bonus pools worth an aggregate £2.8bn, down from nearly £3.4bn in 2013.
However, the fall in the bonus pools can be partly explained by the fact that under new European rules, banks have shifted sums of money from senior employees' variable pay to their fixed remuneration.
This has led some critics to accuse the banks of sleight of hand in seeking to claim credit for reducing bonus payouts just weeks before the General Election campaign gets underway.
The banks are therefore likely to argue that the reduced number of millionaire pay deals - the figures for which include both fixed and discretionary pay - is illustrative of their determination to exhibit more restraint.
Last year, Barclays said it had paid 481 staff more than £1m, while at Lloyds the figure was 27 and at RBS, 75.
Collectively, bonuses at the three banks will be roughly 15% lower than the equivalent numbers for 2013.
Barclays, which is independent of the taxpayer and has by far the largest investment bank of the three institutions, will say that bonuses fell from almost £2.4bn in 2013 to below £2bn last year.
The fall will come amid a retrenchment at Barclays' investment bank, with thousands of jobs being shed under a revamped strategy announced last year by Antony Jenkins, the chief executive.
Analysts are forecasting an uptick in annual profits at Barclays, which is due to report its results on March 2.
The news on pay will mark a contrast with last year's situation at the lender, which provoked a row with some leading shareholders by increasing bonuses despite a fall in profits.
Barclays has also set aside £500m to pay fines related to control failings in its foreign exchange operations, although it has yet to reach a formal settlement with any regulators.
Lloyds and RBS will collectively pay out approximately £875m in bonuses for 2014, sources said on Thursday, compared to an equivalent figure of roughly £975m a year earlier.
The two banks, which report results towards the end of the week, are continuing negotiations over their bonus plans with UK Financial Investments (UKFI), which manages the taxpayer's stakes in them.
Sky News revealed on Friday that the chief executives of Barclays, Lloyds and HSBC would receive annual bonus awards for 2014 totalling more than £3m, although the payouts have been reduced because of fines imposed on them for mis-selling and market manipulation.
HSBC will kick off the reporting season on Monday, when it is expected to disclose that its bonus pot for 2014 was more than 5% lower than the previous year.
None of the banks would comment on their pay proposals.
Energy regulator Ofgem is failing to help consumers get the best value for money, according to a scathing report by MPs.
The Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee said new price caps on the amount energy firms can charge were too generous while performance targets were too low.
Committee chairman Tim Yeo said a warning by Ofgem chief executive Dermot Nolan that it could be eight years before it was clear whether the new system was delivering value for money was too long for "hard-pressed consumers" to wait.
He said: "Ofgem must get its act together and scrutinise these near monopolies more effectively.
"Simpler charging methodologies are needed to strengthen the market's ability to scrutinise costs and increase the pressure for greater cost-saving efficiencies.
Video:Ofgem Pledges Energy Bill Saving
"Barriers preventing smaller players from entering the market must be removed to drive down costs for consumers."
The so-called "network costs" currently account for around 23% of a dual fuel (gas and electricity) bill.
They are passed on to consumers by the energy suppliers who are charged by the network companies for using their transmission and distribution infrastructure.
Video:Energy Market Competition Inquiry
In 2013, Ofgem introduced a new price control designed to ensure that costs were competitive and profits were not excessive.
However, the committee said there was "clear evidence" that the network companies were making higher profits than expected.
The committee also highlighted the complexity of the charging system, with a combination of codes and regional charges across the UK making it difficult to compare price and performance across the network companies.
Video:Energy Firms Asked To Return £400m
It called on the Government and Ofgem to conduct an in-depth study into the merits of replacing the current system with a standard national tariff.
HSBC, the global bank currently at the centre of a tax scandal, has blamed a 17% fall in annual profits on the cost of past mistakes.
The London-listed group said reported profit before tax fell to $18.68bn (£12.14bn) in 2014.
It said it was, in part, due to the "negative effect" of "significant items including fines, settlements, UK customer redress and associated provisions".
The explanation reflected the continued cost on the industry of a number of scandals, including the mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI).
HSBC's share price fell more than 5% in the wake of the results as profits fell short of expectations.
Dividend and return-on-equity targets were also unexpectedly cut.
The earnings report was announced just hours after HSBC's chief executive Stuart Gulliver, who has vowed to reform the bank in the wake of allegations of complicity in tax evasion at its Swiss arm, was dragged into a tax row himself.
Mr Gulliver, who denies any suggestion of wrong-doing in connection with his own Swiss-based account, said he was "disappointed" in the group's performance last year.
"2014 was a challenging year in which we continued to work hard to improve business performance while managing the impact of a higher operating cost base," he said.
"Profits disappointed, although a tough fourth quarter masked some of the progress made over the preceding three quarters.
"Many of the challenging aspects of the fourth-quarter results were common to the industry as a whole."
Banks have not only been negotiating the effects of record-low interest rates but also uncertainty over the global economy.
In relation to the Swiss tax scandal, HSBC chairman Douglas Flint said the bank needed to reinforce controls and demonstrate their effectiveness.
He added: "We deeply regret and apologise for the conduct and compliance failures highlighted, which were in contravention of our own policies as well as expectations of us."
The bank was also the subject of a £216m fine from the Financial Conduct Authority relating to HSBC's failure to prevent the rigging of foreign exchange operations.
Mr Gulliver's total pay package for 2014 was £7.6m, though his bonus of £1.3m was weaker and reflected the foreign exchange failures which ultimately cost him £500,000 of his reward.
Labour said the size of the payout would leave people "astounded" and called for wider reforms of the banking industry.
It was due to ask an urgent question in the Commons on HSBC and bonuses.
Stuart Gulliver, HSBC's chief executive, has denied any suggestion of wrongdoing amid revelations he had cash in the bank's private Swiss offshoot.
The Guardian claimed Mr Gulliver - who announced the bank's full-year results this morning - kept $7.6m (£4.93m) via an account held by a Panamanian company.
Leaked files reportedly showed that in 2007 he was the beneficial owner of an account held by Worcester Equities Inc though Mr Gulliver has insisted no tax was dodged in any jurisdiction.
He explained it was set up in the name of the Panama-based company to prevent HSBC staff in Hong Kong and Switzerland from knowing how much he was paid in the 1990s.
The account has since been closed as his pay is now disclosed to shareholders.
The disclosure was made amid the ongoing scandal over claims HSBC's Swiss private banking arm helped wealthy clients evade and avoid tax, and provided services to criminals including arms dealers.
Derby-born Mr Gulliver spoke to journalists today of the "shame" felt by staff, having apologised for the behaviour of the Swiss division in national newspaper advertisements last week.
He insisted the private bank had been "completely overhauled" since 2007, when whistleblower Herve Falciani opened the door to the scandal, stealing company data and passing it to French authorities.
Video:Timeline Of Whistleblower's Claims
Swiss prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into allegations of money laundering after raiding the bank's offices in Geneva.
The 55-year-old - who raked in a £7.3m reward package last year - is legally domiciled in Hong Kong after working there for many years, despite now working in the UK.
Representatives for the banking boss told the Guardian he had paid his bonus payments into HSBC Suisse until 2003.
Video:HSBC Whistleblower Speaks Out
They said Hong Kong tax had been paid and that Mr Gulliver had also told the UK taxman about the account a "number of years" ago.
HSBC added: "Full UK tax has been paid on the entirety of his worldwide earnings less a credit for tax paid additionally in Hong Kong.
"The Swiss account was set up in 1998 in the name of a Panamanian company for reasons of confidentiality and this had no other purpose and provided no tax or other advantage.
Video:Cameron And Miliband Clash On HSBC
MPs are set to grill HMRC tax officials on Wednesday over accusations they failed to act properly on the leaked files and potential evidence of tax evasion by more than 3,000 Britons.
