Profitshop

Barclays Plc (BARC)’s Antony Jenkins is poised to take his first bonus as chief executive officer after eliminating thousands of jobs in the U.K. bank’s most aggressive cost cuts to date. Jenkins turned down his first two bonuses and could now receive as much as 1.9 million pounds ($2.9 million), according to the bank’s annual report. The bank’s remuneration committee, led by non-executive John Sunderland, meets early next month to make the decision, said two people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. “As U.S. and European firms are still paying bonuses, it would probably be a bit perverse for Jenkins not to when pretty much all other bank CEOs are,” Colin McLean, founder and CEO of SVM Asset Management Ltd. in Edinburgh, who oversees more than $800 million, including Barclays shares. “He’s got through the stress tests and the bank looks in good shape.” Jenkins, 53, announced plans to cut 14,000 jobs last year and sold the bank’

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney warned easy monetary policy could prompt excessive risk-taking in financial markets. Two days after the European Central Bank announced a 1.1 trillion-euro ($1.23 trillion) quantitative-easing program, Carney said six years of sustained monetary stimulus was justified on an economic basis, yet could carry a downside if it overheated markets. “In an environment of low interest rates, and low interest rates for a period of time, and also quantitative easing, there can be excessive risk taking,” Carney said during a Saturday panel at the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos, Switzerland. “What those monetary policies are looking to do is move from an environment of reticence to take risk to responsible risk-taking. We’re trying to avoid reckless risk-taking.” Rock-bottom interest rates and asset-purchases have been deployed by central banks to drive their economies from recession and then ensure a recovery. The MSCI World Index has climbed almost

Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), the largest U.S. wireless carrier, missed analysts’ fourth-quarter profit estimates as a surge in sales of deeply discounted phones squeezed margins. Earnings, excluding some items, of 71 cents a share fell short of analysts’ average projection of 72 cents. Wireless profit margins narrowed to 42 percent, the New York-based company said in a statement. That was worse than the 44.1 percent estimated on average by seven analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Below-cost prices on popular phones like Apple Inc.’s latest iPhones helped lure customers into two-year contracts. Those discounts, along with promotions for free tablets and holiday discounts, helped Verizon fend off competition from the likes of Sprint Corp., which offered to cut Verizon customers’ bills in half. Verizon warned last month that the moves would reduce fourth-quarter margins. “Expectations had been set pretty low,” Dave Heger, an analyst with Edward Jones & Co. who recommends buying

Ocwen Financial Corp. (OCN) is under siege by mortgage-bond investors who are accusing the home-loan servicer of “imprudent and improper” practices that constitute a default. Investors owning at least 25 percent of voting rights for 119 mortgage-backed securities deals with $82 billion of original balances sent a so-called notice of non-performance to trustees for the bonds, saying that the company has failed to meet its requirements as a loan servicer while shifting the costs of regulatory-probe settlements to them, according to a statement released by Kathy Patrick of Gibbs & Bruns LLP, which represents the bondholders. The move against Ocwen, which could lead to a lawsuit or loss of contracts managing the underlying loans, adds to the woes of a company that’s been under scrutiny by U.S. and state regulators for practices including mishandling foreclosures. Hedge-fund firm BlueMountain Capital Management said Friday that “misconduct” by the servicer created a default on other

Government bonds rallied around the world as monetary policy makers in Europe, the U.K. and Canada assume more-stimulative postures amid concern falling prices for oil and other goods pose a growing threat to economic growth. Longer-maturity debt gained, with yields in Germany, Spain and Switzerland reaching record lows after the European Central Bank announcement of a larger-than-forecast bond purchase plan, the Bank of Canada’s unexpected lowering of its benchmark rate and Bank of England policy makers dropping a call for a rate increase. U.S. yields also approached all-time lows with the Federal Reserve forecast to hold interest rates at virtually zero next week. “The central banks have been pushed to justify their existence,” said Richard Gilhooly, an interest-rate strategist in New York at Toronto-Dominion Bank’s TD Securities unit, one of 22 primary dealers that trade with the Fed. “They’ve gone into no-man’s land.” The U.S. 30-year yield fell eight basis points this week, or

A three-year winning streak for sales of previously owned homes in the U.S. ended in 2014 as some investors stepped out of the market and first-time buyers failed to fill the void. Purchases totaled 4.93 million last year, down 3.1 percent from the 5.09 million houses sold in 2013, figures from the National Association of Realtors showed Friday in Washington. The share of American homebuyers making their first purchase dropped in 2014 to its lowest level in almost three decades, according to the Realtors group. At the same time, employment gains, growing consumer confidence, mortgage rates at historically low levels and government efforts to lower purchasing costs probably will help bolster demand in 2015. “Demand has been pretty sideways,” said Jay Feldman, an economist at Credit Suisse in New York. “There are various positives and I don’t see any big negatives for housing. The improving labor market and low mortgage rates will support the housing recovery.” Stocks fell, trimming

European Central Bank policy makers Benoit Coeure and Ignazio Visco underlined that their new bond-buying program will be extended if it doesn’t show results. “If we haven’t achieved what we want to achieve,” said Coeure, the ECB’s head of market operations, “then we’ll have to do more, or we have to do it for longer.” Visco, the Italian central-bank governor, said earlier on Friday that “we are open-ended” about asset purchases. Both men spoke in Bloomberg Television interviews in Davos, where they were among a small coterie of Governing Council members who traveled to the Swiss resort after completing an historic monetary-policy decision in Frankfurt the day before. ECB President Mario Draghi pledged to buy 60 billion euros ($68 billion) a month of assets including government bonds through September 2016, while also committing to do so until officials see “a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation.” The ECB’s calculations show the program will add 0.4 percentage point to inf