Word: comeing
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...assembling in tuxedos and evening dresses, you know it must be an award show of dubious provenance but free television exposure. George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Sandra Bullock, king-of-the-movie-world James Cameron: if you offer them the chance to win a prize on TV, they will come. Thus on Friday the Broadcast Film Critics Association presented its star-clogged Critics Choice Awards, hosted by Broadway and prime-time cutie Kristin Chenoweth. And Sunday night found the Hollywood Foreign Press Association rounding up all the usual suspects, plus famous folks not up for anything - Mel Gibson, Robert De Niro...
...Association's President, Joey Berlin, has authored no criticism that I could find on line. His one published comment was a letter to the Los Angeles Times defending the sanctity of the press junket, in which the studios pay for reporters to come to Hollywood, pick up some swag and spend a few minutes chatting up stars and directors. Berlin extolled "the hard-working journalists who spend up to 40 or more weekends a year on the 'junket circuit,' gathering whatever juicy morsels they can to satisfy the insatiable appetite for news about Hollywood." And then they get to give...
...Europe, Santander has come out ahead with its 2007 purchase of a chunk of ABN Amro. Santander joined forces with the Royal Bank of Scotland and Belgium's Fortis to buy the ailing Dutch giant for $103.7 billion. But while both RBS and Fortis are now on the casualty list themselves, Santander's $17 billion stake in the Brazilian wing of ABN Amro is worth about $49 billion after merging with Santander's existing business in Brazil. In 2007, the firm spent just under $10 billion for Italy's Banca Antonveneta, which it promptly sold off for a $3.74 billion...
...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-to-income ratio in this sector of the U.K. banking business is 55%. Those cost savings translate into lower lending rates, which has allowed Abbey to regain its share...
...larger countries like Britain, with relatively deeper pockets of conservatism, progress has come more slowly. In 1988, Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government passed a Local Government Act, Section 28 of which barred the "promotion of homosexuality" in schools and defined gay partnerships as "pretended family relationships." Such homophobia emboldened both gay-rights advocates and future politicians. "People came out who otherwise wouldn't have, and it woke up our heterosexual friends and family," says Michael Cashman, now a Labour Member of the European Parliament. In 1989, Cashman and actor Ian McKellen co-founded campaign group Stonewall. Around the same time...