Word: backings
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...show, gleefully threw a grenade at the NBC executives for their handling of the Late Show fiasco. But the embattled NBC brass were generally spared from a night of continuing barbs about the pop scandal of the moment. By minute five, presenter Nicole Kidman turned the attention right back to Haiti and Clooney's telethon. And so it went...
Gervais is a master of giddy irreverence; on last year's show, as a presenter, he heard a wince from the audience as he remarked, apropos The Reader, that "The trouble is, with holocaust films there's never any gag reel on the DVDs." Since the HFPA invited him back to preside over the whole thing - indeed, Gervais was the first host since 1995 - he took that as a license to kill, with his trademark acid wit, the stars he was introducing - especially if they'd been known to take a tipple. Making a solemn declaration against "prejudice and stereotype...
...case at Abbey. "This is the kind of sophisticated information JPMorgan still didn't have, and I saw it at a Santander branch in Chile," says Davide Serra, head of the U.K.'s Algebris hedge fund. The system facilitates cross-selling to existing customers while allowing Santander to cut back-office staff drastically (Santander never cuts the flesh pressers out front). In Abbey's case, total employees dropped from 25,331 to 16,489, while costs have come down from 70% of income to around 40%, in line with Santander's overall cost-to-income ratio. The average cost...
...Optimal hedge funds. It moved fast to make good, offering to repay 100% of the sums invested. Santander says 94% of its Madoff victims have accepted, costing the bank $648 million at current exchange rates. It also returned $235 million to the Madoff estate in a settlement of claw-back claims with U.S. trustee Irving Picard...
...their annual party conference. Among gay activists, debate still rages over whether leaders who have not gone public with their sexuality should do so. Girard, the deputy mayor of Paris, knows several elected officials who keep their sexuality private. "By not accepting their homosexuality publicly, closeted politicians are holding back progress," he says. So long as they remain hidden, he argues, gay leaders will remain an oddity. "I don't mean that they have to wave a banner, but just be calm and confident about it." (Read: "Nasty No More? Britain's Tories Reach Out to Gays...