I have this morning met with the Chief Executive and Risk Director at the insurance company to understand the reasons for such a quick and drastic reduction. Due to HMV’s listing on the stock exchange, they are unable to divulge the reasons for their decision. They met with Simon Fox last week and whilst they have said that HMV has provided everything asked for, they are clearly worried following the public announcement that bank covenants may not be met. A further review will take place in 4 weeks time.

I can confirm that all orders dispatched up to and including Friday 14th January 2011 are covered by credit insurance. The exceptions being any item in query and a 10% “excess”. I would encourage a prompt resolution of all queries and my team will have been in contact with you about these. Where there is a long outstanding dispute, such as an rejected price query, I would urge consideration to looking at agreeing deals to get them cleared so at least some recovery can be made on the next payment run.

In terms of orders moving forward, there are 2 options:

(1) Agree to the “blanket” release of all held orders by my team so that these are released immediately. I will need an email from you confirming that you are aware that no credit insurance for these orders is in place and will be shipped at your financial risk.
(2) Manage the release of held orders on a daily basis through the held order report mechanism.

We can provide you with updated balances of your account with HMV and please make any such request to xxx

Please feel free to contact me if any of this is unclear or you have any questions.

By Gregory Meyer and Helen Thomas in New York and Javier Blas in London

Published: January 19 2011 01:15 | Last updated: January 19 2011 02:00

Cargill, the largest privately held US company, has agreed to spin off its 64 per cent stake in fertiliser producer Mosaic in a $24.3bn deal that could satisfy a restive shareholder.

The grain-trading-to-hedge funds Minnesota company has owned a majority of Mosaic since its 2004 creation.

We have been long term sellers of SOCO which has underperformed our universe
of E&Ps by 62% over the past 12 months. However, with the assumption that
SOCO will not be around to see in 2012, we turn positive, raising our
recommendation to Buy and TP to 400p.

Apple’s shares have more than tripled in value in the past two years, and traders said the action could have reflected an attempt by investors to protect themselves ahead of the group’s earnings report on Tuesday.

However, the activity also raised questions among traders over whether news about Mr Jobs’ health had leaked and could stir the debate over Apple’s obligations to disclose information about its chief.

“That’s the kind of volume we would normally see with a put option closer to the under­lying price of the stock,” said Ryan Dietrich, a Schaeffer’s Research strategist.

Furthermore, employment on the ILO measure fell by 69,000 in the three months to November. This was the largest drop in employment since August 2009. Full-time employment fell by 37,000. Significantly, part-time workers now account for 27.3% of total employment, which is up from 26.7% at the end of 2009, 25.7% at the end of 2008 and 25.4% at mid-2008. This suggests that businesses are reluctant to take on full-time workers due to their concerns over the longer-term economic outlook. Meanwhile, it has already been reported that public sector employment fell by 33,000 in the third quarter, which is just a taster of what is to come

Labour market data may well be mixed in the near term, but we expect a modest deteriorating trend to emerge as 2011 progresses. We suspect that unemployment is headed up in 2011 as a consequence of slower, below-trend growth, rising business caution and public sector jobs being increasingly pared. Specifically, we forecast unemployment on the ILO measure to rise to 2.65 million by end-2011 and to peak around 2.75 million around mid-2012. This would see the unemployment rate rise to 8.4% by end-2011 and to a peak of 8.6% in mid-2012.

However, the main test is yet to come – and future pay developments will play a critical role in determining when and how quickly the Bank of England will raise interest rates. We expect wage growth will remain muted due to workers’ weak bargaining position given high and likely to rise unemployment. This is the key factor underpinning our belief that the Bank of England may yet hold off from raising interest rates until the fourth quarter and then increase them only gradually.