Nisa’s strong results mask 2014 challenges September 7, 2014 NISA Retail, the independent shop supplier, saw its turnover jump 10 per cent to £1.6bn during the year to March, with profits rising to £5.3m. The results, from the group’s companies house filing, disguise the challenging year that Nisa has seen since March. In July Costcutter changed its supplier from Nisa to Palmer and Harvey, [...]
Alibaba listing’s legal fees set to dwarf Facebook September 7, 2014 ALIBABA, the Chinese e-commerce giant that sells more than Amazon and Ebay combined and is seeking to raise over $21bn (£12.8bn) in its float this month, will pay some of the highest legal fees for a US listing, six times what Facebook paid two years ago. The legal fees for Alibaba’s public listing, $15.8m according [...]
CBeebies schools to open in China as part of BBC tie-up with Popular September 7, 2014 THE BBC’S commercial arm has signed a deal with Singapore-based Popular Holdings to roll out a chain of CBeebies-branded English-language schools across China. Starting with openings in Shanghai, followed by Beijing and across mainland China and Hong Kong over the coming years, the deal will see the BBC receive licensing fees from the use of [...]
Rakuten eyeing £580m deal for US voucher firm September 7, 2014 RAKUTEN, the Japanese e-commerce giant and owner of messaging app Viber and Play.com, is in the final stage of talks to buy US cashback shopping service Ebates in an estimated ¥100bn (£581.8m) transaction. The takeover is expected to give Rakuten further exposure to the US market as part of the aggressive overseas expansion it has [...]
City AM awards: Business of the Year nominees announced September 7, 2014 I have great pleasure in introducing the first of our shortlists for the annual City A.M. awards. As ever, the awards have attracted nominations from all sorts of diverse businesses and people who have done great things during the course of the past year, a year of recovery in the UK. We have taken on [...]
And the nominees are… September 7, 2014 TOMORROW: ACCOUNTANCY FIRM OF THE YEAR ALDI The German discounter has taken the British high street by storm. Aldi now has a 4.6 per cent share of the UK market, up more than one third in a year due to consumers choosing its quality and low prices over the more established retailers. It has even [...]
PHS cleans up its debts with new ownership September 7, 2014 A MAJOR deal looks to be on the cards for PHS Group, the large UK hygiene and office services company, as it seeks to cut its massive debts of nearly £1bn in return for handing over ownership to a set of its lenders. PHS, which was founded in 1963, is now one of the largest [...]
Currency exchange group named Britain’s fastest-growing tech firm September 7, 2014 LMAX Exchange, the provider of an exchange-based currency trading platform, has been named Britain’s fastest-growing private technology company by Fast Track, after its annual sales rose 307.8 per cent over the past three years to £18.37m last year. The firm ranked fifteenth last year when Fast Track’s list of the 100 fastest-growing companies was published [...]
Property tech start-up bags £1.2m of funds September 7, 2014 BETFAIR co-founder Ed Wray and private equity veteran Jon Moulton are among a handful of investors to back a £1.25m investment into a new property investment website. Property Partner, the trading name of London House Exchange, has secured a new round of funding led by the venture capital arm Octopus Investments, in a bid to [...]
Need for tweed as Scots bag a weaving victory September 7, 2014 SCOTS going to the polls on 18 September voting aye or nay for independence will have many factors to weigh, but not, perhaps, the authenticity of tweed. Yet a new legal settlement unveiled today may change all that. The Harris Tweed Authority (HTA), the statutory body tasked with protecting the authenticity of Harris Tweed, has [...]