Price website founder snubs takeover bid July 24, 2008 Moneysupermarket.com shares jump 45 per cent after offer by mystery buyer Top site Moneysupermarket.com saw its shares rocket 45 per cent yesterday after it dismissed a bid approach. The popular website, which lets users compare finance and travel prices, confirmed in a statement that CEO and cofounder Simon Nixon had received an initial approach regarding [...]
Rock forced to pay £2m for new boss July 24, 2008 Northern Rock has announced the appointment of Barclays director Gary Hoffman as its new chief executive, in a deal worth more than £2m. Hoffman, who will pull in an annual salary of £700,000, has been at Barclays since 1982, where he has held several senior positions, including chief executive and chairman of Barclaycard. He stands [...]
HBOS City advisers rights issue storm July 22, 2008 Investment bankers at Morgan Stanley and Dresdner Kleinwort will have breathed a collective sign of relief yesterday when they managed to find buyers for 29 per cent of the HBOS rights issue rump. The whole experience has been an unnerving one for the bank and its advisers, left holding billions of pounds worth of HBOS [...]
Bank of America adds cheer to bank stocks July 22, 2008 Shares in Bank of America, the largest retail bank in the US, surged after the mortgage lender revealed better-than expected second quarter results, despite a 41 per cent drop in profits and a rise in bad loans. The stock climbed 6 per cent higher after the bank topped earnings forecasts, boosting confidence amongst investors that [...]
HBOS shares slump after issue flops July 22, 2008 Morgan Stanley and Dresdner Kleinwort stuck with 62.1 per cent of new equity HBOS shares closed down 6.2 per cent at 264.50p yesterday after the markets digested the implications of one of the most disastrous rights issue in the history of the City of London. With just 8.29 per cent of shareholders taking up the [...]
HBOS suffers rights issue humiliation July 21, 2008 Morgan Stanley and Dresdner Kleinwort to lose tens of millions of pounds on the deal High street banking group HBOS is today expected to announce that as few as 10 per cent of investors took up its £4bn share offer, making it one of the biggest rights issue failures in corporate history. Shareholders, who were [...]
Banking stocks are rock bottom, which could mean it’s time to buy July 18, 2008 Financials are at bargain basement prices and it could be time to get involved, reports Esther Shaw Northern Rock has been one of the most spectacular victims of the credit crisis, but much of the banking sector has experienced some stormy weather over the last year. Even large institutions like Barclays and Royal Bank of [...]
HBOS backers face £300m losses on rights issue flop July 18, 2008 HBOS’s £4bn cash-call is today expected to be shunned by shareholders – making it one of the biggest ever failed rights issues. Shares in the bank staged a rally yesterday, rising 5 per cent to 268.25p – but despite clawing back some of the ground lost in recent days the stock still closed below the [...]
Wall Street giants hit by SEC probe into short-selling July 17, 2008 American regulators have subpoenaed top investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch as part of an investigation into the suspected manipulation of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers shares. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also approached more than 50 hedge funds to obtain trading and communications data. The inquiry aims [...]
Merrill Lynch sells stake in Bloomberg July 17, 2008 Investment bank sells its 20 per cent stake in the media giant but keeps BlackRock US giants Merrill Lynch, today expected to reveal its fourth consecutive quarterly loss, has reached a deal to sell its stake in financial terminal and data provider Bloomberg for an estimated £2.2bn ($4.5bn). Merrill Lynch, which has a 20 per [...]