Lloyds announces fall in pre-tax losses (From The Advertiser Series)

Lloyds Banking Group sees 2012 pre-tax losses fall to £570m

5:00am Saturday 2nd March 2013 in Business By Steven Hugill

LLOYDS RESULTS: Lloyds Banking Group has seen its pre-tax losses for 2012 fall to £570m, from £3.5bn the previous year.

The group, which is 40 per cent-owned by the Government, blamed the losses on making provisions of £3.6bn for the mis-selling of payment protection insurance.

It said chief executive, Antonio Horta-Osorio, was awarded a bonus of £1.5m in deferred shares, which will not be released until 2018 unless the Government sells at least a third of its stake above 61p.

The bank's total bonus pool fell three per cent to £365m.

NEW FLIGHTS: Virgin Atlantic has unveiled details of its new Little Red domestic flight service.

The service will be launched on March 31 at Manchester Airport, April 5 in Edinburgh and April 9 in Aberdeen, providing 26 daily flights to Heathrow Airport.

Virgin founder, Sir Richard Branson, who this week confirmed he will bid to take control of the East Coast train line, said he hoped Little Red would help feed traffic into Heathrow'a international services.

HMV SALE: Administrators at failed music chain HMV has sold its Asian business to private equity firm, Aid Partners.

Aid, a Hong Kong-based firm specialising in Chinese investment, has bought six HMV outlets in Hong Kong, two shops in Singapore and branding rights for China, Macau and Taiwan.

HMV fell into administration on 15 January and has already announced 103 of its 219 UK shops will close, including outlets in Middlesbrough, Scarborough, Stockton and Silverlink shopping park, near Newcastle.

SKY DEAL: British Sky Broadcasting (Sky) has announced it will buy the UK broadband and fixed line business of Spain's Telefonica.

The deal will give Sky about 500,000 customers who currently use the O2 and BE brands, and it will pay an initial £180m to Telefonica, with a firther £20, paid once customers have been switched to Sky.

Sky said it hopes the move will make it the second largest UK broadband provider in the UK behind BT.

MARKET GROWTH: A North-East marketing company has created two new jobs after opening a new office.

Design 365, which was founded in Newton Aycliffe, in County Durham, in 2004, has expanded to Gateshead after seeing growth in demand for its online services.

The company, established by former Navy paramedic, Alan Foster, works with hotel groups and spas, and now employs seven people.

He said: “We’ve experienced a real surge in demand for our services and Gateshead was an obvious location as it provides instant access to the whole of Tyne and Wear.”