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Thursday newspaper round-up: RBS, Thomas Cook, Microsoft…

Your Money
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Your Money
Posted:
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07/03/2013

RBS customers left with no access to cash; Thomas Cook to shed 2,500 jobs; Microsoft hit with multi-million dollar fine.

Up to 17.5 million RBS customers were unable to access their accounts or withdraw money on Wednesday night after the bank’s systems crashed. The bank’s statement on Twitter read: ‘We are aware of the problems our customers are having and apologise, we will provide more information as soon as we have it.’ (The Telegraph)

Travel and leisure group Thomas Cook is to shed another 2,500 jobs as part of a three-year turnaround plan designed to save £140m, said The Times on Thursday morning. The paper said firm will close 195 travel agencies, accounting for 1,600 employees, and cut a further 900 jobs in administrative and managerial roles at head offices.

Tech giant Microsoft has been hit by a €561m fine by the European Union’s competition regulator after failing to give 15 million customers a choice of web browser, says the Financial Times. The paper said that the hefty sanction is a “serious financial and repetitional setback” for the firm, after having already paid around €1.6bn in fines in Europe through its decade-long feud with Brussels.

Sir Mervyn King has said that the controversial European Union cap on bankers’ bonuses is an unhelpful “distraction”, reports The Independent. The Bank of England Governor told the Banking Standards Commission on Wednesday that the move by Brussels “will neither be as beneficial as proponents hope, nor will it be as damaging as opponents fear”, according to the paper.

The head of the Bank of Japan (BoJ) has rejected calls for more aggressive easing in his final board meeting of his five-year term, writes the Financial Times. Despite proposals for further easing from two of his board members, Masaaki Shirakawa left the BoJ’s asset purchase programme unchanged at a total of Y101trn by the end of this year, while keeping the key interest rate at almost zero. The decision was expected by analysts, “given the relatively radical moves of recent months”, the paper said.


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