Madonna has highest grossing tour, says Billboard - BBC News
Madonna is in the UK playing dates in London, Birmingham and Edinburgh
Madonna has had the highest grossing tour since the beginning of June, according to Billboard magazine.
The pop star, 53, has made nearly $50 million (£32m) on her MDNA world tour since it started in Israel on 31 May.
The singer still has concerts to play across Europe and North America before finishing in Argentina just before Christmas.
Lady Gaga is in second place on the list with Cirque du Soleil's Michael Jackson tour in third.
Other artists in the top 10 include Jennifer Lopez, Iron Maiden and Foster The People.
The rest of the rundown is made up of country acts Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley, Canadian reality show Star Academie and American singer/songwriter James Taylor.
Madonna has performed to more people then her closest competitors this year with 417,448 watching her shows so far.
In comparison, Lady Gaga has been seen by 180,498 and Jennifer Lopez by just over 20,000.
Former Pink Floyd star Roger Waters' tour tops total worldwide concert ticket sales for the first half of 2012, according to Pollstar magazine.
The top 10 highest grossing tours since the beginning of June are:
1. Madonna - $49.5 million (£32m)
2. Lady Gaga - $23.6m (£15m)
3. Cirque du Soleil's Michael Jackson tour - $5.8m (£3.7m)
4. Rascal Flatts - $2.3m (£1.4m)
5. Jennifer Lopez - $1.7m (£1.08m)
6. Iron Maiden - $1.5m (£959,000)
7. Brad Paisley - $1.2m (767,000)
8. Star Academie - $834,000 (£533,000)
9. James Taylor - $688,000 (£439,000)
10. Foster The People $573,000 (£366,000)
Coachella cruise festival headlined by Pulp to set sail - BBC News
Pulp won an NME outstanding contribution to music award this year
Californian music festival Coachella has announced details of a new event taking place on a cruise ship.
Pulp and Hot Chip are among the acts to perform on board the S.S. Coachella.
The cruise liner, which has capacity for 2,800 fans, will set sail for two journeys around Bahamas and Jamaica in December.
Other acts confirmed to play gigs on board include Yeasayer, Sleigh Bells, Grimes, Warpaint with James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem playing a DJ set.
The festival will make two trips with the first one departing from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on 16 December.
It follows a number of other music events being staged on cruise ships.
In January US indie-rockers Weezer performed at sea as part of their own festival.
R. Kelly's Love Letter Cruise will also take place in October.
Meanwhile, Coachella's annual land-based music festival, held near Indio, California returns across two weekends in April 2013.
Harrington hoping wet weather decimates Open field - ESPN.co.uk
Padraig Harrington is hopeful that the atrocious weather scenes witnessed ahead the start of The Open can help to shred away some of the competition.
The Irishman and the remainder of the field taking part at the 141st Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St Annes have been observing the poor conditions in the lead-up to teeing off on Thursday, and while many will not have much of an appetite for playing in the wet Harrington sees the benefit.
"There's going to be ebb and flow during the week, you're going to get some good breaks and some bad breaks," said the two-times Open winner. "You'll be walking up to some holes and you're going to see that rain coming in and you'll be hoping it holds off to get through that tee shot.
"But that's the nature of links golf, you tend to be able to see the bad weather when it's coming at you."
Asked whether he would prefer to play through some testing conditions, Harrington confirmed that he views it as a potential aid.
"I think yes, I would like some of the golf to be tough this week, some of the conditions, but I know myself when you have 72 holes of a rainy tournament it's nearly last man standing at that stage and that's really difficult for everybody," he explained.
"I would like to see certainly 18 holes, if not 36 holes of difficult conditions because that will cut enough of the field out and hopefully I won't be one of those."
Harrington took two of his three career major titles at The Open in 2007 and 2008.
© ESPN EMEA Ltd
M&S Bank to charge up to £20 per month for current accounts - Marketing
M&S will offer two versions of its Premium Current Account, the first of which charges consumers a fee of £20 per month, boasting the added benefit of travel insurance, while the second account charges £15 with no insurance offer.
M&S said consumers that open an account will receive over £500 worth of annual benefits, ranging from M&S vouchers to hot drinks vouchers in the café, a birthday gift and "seasonal treats" four times a year.
Benefits for the account that costs £15 are worth £300.
Customers can pre-register for the accounts today and they will be available from October.
Account holders get an overdraft limit of £500, with the first £100 interest-free.
The brand claims to have designed its new accounts around the M&S customer, stating that it offers a "transparent account structure".
The brand intends to launch 20 in-store bank branches across the country over the course of the year, with 40 more opening in 2013. The accounts will be available from October.
Colin Kersley, chief executive of M&S Bank, said: "With over 25 years in personal finance, our loyal customers trust us to deliver the products and services that are right for them.
"A current account is the natural next step and we have designed this product with our customers in mind - combining the exclusive M&S benefits they love, with a transparent account structure that has no hidden fees."
Intel downgrades full-year business outlook - CIO UK
Intel warned it expects to see lower-than-anticipated growth for 2012. The news came as the company posted mixed results for the second quarter of the year.
The world's biggest chip maker said net profit for the three months to the end of June was $2.8 billion, down 4% from the same period a year earlier. Revenues were $13.5 billion, up 3% from the second quarter of 2011.
"As we enter the third quarter, our growth will be slower than we anticipated due to a more challenging macroeconomic environment," said Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel.
As a result, the company expects to record annual revenue growth of between 3% and 5% this year, down from the "high single digit" growth it had previously predicted.
Intel's results come against a general lack of consumer enthusiasm for desktop and laptop computers in preference to tablets and smartphones. Global PC sales reached 87.5 million units in the quarter, virtually unchanged from the same period a year ago, according to figures from IDC. The drop was steeper in established markets like the U.S., where PC shipments dropped 5.7 percent.
While Intel sells chips that go into both tablet PCs and smartphones, the chips are not as powerful and don't carry the same price tags and profit margins as Intel's faster PC processors. Intel is trying to rekindle interest in laptop PCs with the Ultrabook platform, a sleek, thin design intended to bring Macbook Air style to the Windows PC sector, but the machines are still at an early stage.
UPDATE 4-BofA plans $3 bln of new cost cuts;posts 2nd-qtr profit - Reuters UK
* Q2 EPS 19 cents vs loss 90 cents a year ago
* Rev $21.97 bln, down slightly from Q1
* Q2 expenses fall 25 pct to $17 billion
* Part two of cost-cut program aims to save $3 bln annually (Adds detail on mortgage business, comment from conference call)
July 18 (Reuters) - Bank of America Corp said it plans to slash costs by $3 billion annually in commercial lending, investment banking and wealth management, becoming the latest big bank to take aim at expenses in a sluggish economy.
The second-largest U.S. bank announced the cost cuts as it posted second-quarter results that illustrate the pressure it is under. Bank of America said its loan book shrank from the same quarter last year, its interest income fell 15 percent, and each of its divisions except for mortgage lending posted lower revenue.
Mortgage lending improved mainly because in last year's second quarter the group took more than $20 billion of charges.
With revenue under pressure, the bank cut costs 25 percent, helping it post a profit for the quarter of $2.5 billion. Its work force shrank by more than 12,000 from a year earlier to 275,460.
Bank of America began the first phase of its cost-cutting plan in 2011, with the goal of saving $5 billion a year and eliminating 30,000 jobs by the end of 2014. That phase of the plan focused on consumer banking and information technology.
The second phase of the plan, known as Project New BAC, aims to cut costs by $3 billion a year by mid-2015. It does not target a particular number of job cuts, but does focus on capital markets businesses, investment banking, commercial lending and wealth management. Executives have said they will likely need fewer job cuts in this round because people in the businesses involved tend to be better paid.
The Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank has lagged its peers in recovering from the financial crisis, largely due to losses tied to its 2008 purchase of subprime lender Countrywide Financial.
JPMorgan Chase & Co, Wells Fargo & Co, and Citigroup Inc in recent days all beat analysts' earnings estimates, helped by cost-cutting, stronger mortgage business and better consumer delinquency rates.
Like JPMorgan, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc , Bank of America posted weaker equity trading revenue. Underwriting and merger advisory fees also dropped.
Revenue at Bank of America totaled $21.97 billion in the second quarter, down from $22.28 billion in the first quarter but up from $13.24 billion a year earlier when it took mortgage charges. Banks are struggling to boost revenue amid weak demand, low interest rates and new regulations crimping fees.
Squeezed by low rates, the bank reduced its long-term debt by $53 billion in the quarter, to $301 billion, by allowing bonds to mature and buying back securities. That move, along with further planned redemptions, should save the bank about $300 million in quarterly interest costs.
"We are fighting with all the arrows in our quiver that we have," Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said in a conference call with analysts.
The bank's provision for loan losses fell to $1.77 billion in the second quarter, its lowest level since the first quarter of 2007, compared with $3.26 billion a year ago.
Mortgage banking income increased only slightly from the first quarter to $1.66 billion but was a big improvement over a year ago, when the bank set aside reserves to cover investor requests to buy back soured loans.
Mortgage costs "are coming down," said Gary Townsend, president of Hill-Townsend Capital. "That is very important because that has been a huge drag over the past three years."
REGAINING MORTGAGE MARKET SHARE
Bank of America has been scaling back its home lending in the wake of massive Countrywide losses, but said it recaptured some market share in the second quarter compared with the first quarter.
The bank made $18 billion in mortgages in the latest quarter, up from $15.2 billion in the first quarter but down from $40.4 billion a year ago, before it stopped buying loans made by other lenders. By comparison, Wells Fargo, the largest U.S. home lender, originated $130 billion of loans in the quarter, including mortgages purchased from other lenders.
Bank of America still has mortgage issues to deal with. Mortgage bond investors are trying to get the bank to buy back some $22.71 billion of loans they say should never have been sold to investors, up from $16.09 billion in the first quarter and $9.92 billion in the second quarter of 2011. Claims could increase in the coming quarters, Bruce Thompson, the bank's chief financial officer, said on the conference call.
In February, Bank of America stopped selling some mortgages to government-backed mortgage entity Fannie Mae in a dispute over requests to buy back soured loans. Thompson said the disagreement continues and that the fight will likely end in legal action or a settlement.
The bank added $395 million to its reserves for loan repurchase requests in the second quarter, up from $282 million in the first quarter, giving it total reserves of $15.9 billion. Wells Fargo and PNC Financial Services Inc also padded their reserves in the second quarter, citing increased repurchase requests for loans sold off during the housing boom.
Analysts peppered Bank of America executives with questions about when quarterly costs to handle delinquent mortgage loans will start to tail off. The bank spent $2.6 billion on those operations in the second quarter, down slightly from the first quarter. Thompson signaled those expenses have peaked but won't start going down until next year, after the bank completes work required under settlements with federal and state regulators.
Bank of America's total loans fell to $892.3 billion from $902.3 billion in the first quarter as it continued to shed assets from the credit crisis. JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Citigroup showed slight increases in total loans from the first quarter.
However, Bank of America's loans to businesses were up from a year ago to $267.8 billion.
The bank said it made better-than-expected progress in building capital in the quarter. Its projected Tier 1 common capital ratio under so-called Basel 3 standards reached an estimated 8.1 percent of risk-weighted assets. The bank had previously said it would be above 7.5 percent by year-end.
Thompson said the bank is cooperating with regulatory inquiries over bank lending rates, such as the London interbank offered rate (LIBOR), but declined to provide details.
Bank of America shares were down 1.8 percent to $7.78 in early-afternoon trading. (Reporting by Rick Rothacker in Charlotte, N.C.; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Maureen Bavdek and John Wallace)
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