Leading fund managers have staked their reputations, and their clients' money, on a sustained UK economic recovery by adding to equities and cutting their bond holdings in the past month.
A survey of 11 British institutions showed the average exposure to equities jumped more than 3% points from a month earlier, while allocations to bonds fell from 25.5% to 24.2%, the Telegraph reports.
Investors buy shares when they are confident about a company's prospects, while bonds are a more defensive asset class.
The results for August were the first time in five months that fund managers increased their equity holdings, according to research by Reuters. They showed the average allocation to equities climbed to 49.8% in August, compared with 46.4% in July.
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Credit Suisse bypasses bonus tax with late payouts
Credit Suisse was accused yesterday of "sophisticated and aggressive tax avoidance" after the investment bank and wealth management group briefed staff that an unexpected one-off bonus would be awarded to hundreds of its London-based bankers, the Guardian reports.
Credit Suisse made the announcement less than five months after the Government's 50% levy on bank bonuses expired.
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Banks' shift pushes FX trading to $4,000bn a day
Currency trading has surged to record levels in 2010, even as the foreign exchange market becomes increasingly concentrated among a smaller number of banks and trading centres.
According to the Bank for International Settlements, an average $4,000bn is being traded daily, up from $3,300bn in 2007, when the BIS last surveyed the market.
Bank executives have become increasingly interested in foreign exchange, or FX, as part of their search for less risky sources of profits following the financial crisis.
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US bank profits return to pre-crisis levels
The healing of the US banking sector picked up pace in the second quarter with lenders' profits rebounding to pre-crisis levels amid falling loan losses, according to official data on Tuesday, the Financial Times reports.
However, the earnings performance masked the wide gap between resurgent large banks and their struggling smaller rivals. During the quarter, the number of banks considered at risk of failure by regulators surged to the highest level in 17 years as the sluggish economy continued to take its toll on local lenders.
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Chinese manufacturing snaps out of slowdown
China's manufacturing economy staged a moderate rebound in August after slowing for several months under the onslaught of government measures to rein in credit and deter property speculation, Reuters reports.
Despite encouraging signs of stabilisation in a pair of business surveys released on Wednesday, analysts cautioned that the robust domestic economy would have to battle the headwinds of soft external demand, especially from the United States.
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