BANKING & INSURANCEAviva keeps its profits buoyant with cuts and a capital bufferANDREW Moss, chief executive of life and pensions group Aviva, has distanced the company from the insurance assets being sold by Ro
yal Bank of Scotland and Dutch firm ING (
Scotsman). Moss said he ruled out a bid when RBS tried to sell the division – including Direct Line and Churchill – last year. He said it made no sense then to add more brands into an existing portfolio of big brands and that position had not changed.
Read all today's banking news from scotsman.comECONOMYM&S chief raises spectre of VAT hike after next electionSIR Stuart Rose, executive chairman of high street bellwether Marks & Spencer, warned yesterday that VAT could be raised next year as the government battled with the country's shattered public finances (
Scotsman). VAT is due to be restored to 17.5 per cent in January, after the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, cut it to 15 per cent last year in an effort to revive high street spending. Rose said yesterday that whoever won next year's general election might be tempted to push VAT even higher, but warned that it would jeopardise returning but fragile consumer confidence.
Read all today's economics news from scotsman.comFOOD, DRINK & AGRICULTURE
Drink prices crackdown 'to hit whisky exports for £600 million'WHISKY chiefs have made the extraordinary claim that the SNP's policy of minimum pricing on alcohol will cost the flagship Scottish industry a massive £600 million a year in lost export sales (
Scotsman). As MSPs meet today to debate the controversial alcohol crackdown, the Scotch Whisky Association claimed that the plans would wipe out 20 per cent of the entire overseas market.They claim that foreign countries are desperate to slap higher import tariffs on Scotch and will use Scotland's own minimum price policy to enact their own "copycat" measures.
Read all today's food, drink and agriculture news from scotsman.comTECHNOLOGY
ScoLocate to house Scottish Government website technologyThe Royal Bank of Scotland-owned data centre that plunged into the red when the dot.com bubble burst has won a multi-million pound deal to house the technology that powers the Scottish Government website (
Herald). ScoLocate's Edinburgh facility has been selected to house the servers which run the official site telling people what Holyrood does. This features more than 500,000 pages, which collectively are viewed around 60 million times a year. ScoLocate has won a four-year framework agreement under which a range of central government agencies may use its centre.
Read all today's technology news from scotsman.comTRANSPORT500 Scottish airline staff fear for their jobs as Bmi slashes costsTHERE are fears for the future of more than 500 Scottish jobs at airline Bmi after it signalled cuts across the group (
Scotsman). It follows an announcement yesterday that 158 staff were being shed at its no-frills arm, Bmibaby. The carrier said a "restructuring exercise" was now planned next month at both Aberdeen-based Bmi Regional and Bmi's main operations. The news came as figures obtained by The Scotsman showed more than one in six flights by all airlines on non-London UK routes from Glasgow, and one in eight from Edinburgh, have been axed since last year.
Date named for rail line takeover National Express will hand the running of the East Coast rail franchise to the government on 14 November (
BBC). The government had announced in July this year that it would take over the route, which runs trains between London and Edinburgh. Ministers had refused National Express's requests for its contract with the government to be renegotiated. National Express said it did not expect passengers, services or employees to be affected by the handover
Read all today's transport news from scotsman.comScotsman Business ClubGet to the heart of the issues affecting Scottish business at
www.scotsman.com/businessclub. Features include blogs from The Scotsman's formidable team of business writers - including Bill Jamieson, Martin Flanagan, Peter MacMahon and Scott Reid, a diary of forthcoming company announcements and networking events and video interviews with leading business experts covering a wide range of useful topics."
