Retail investors drive Saga float towards £3bn April 23, 2014 INSURER Saga is set to put retail investors at the heart of the largest UK stock market float since Royal Mail, as it gears up to publish plans to list the firm in London as early as next week. Saga’s owner Acromas, which also owns the AA, is preparing to offload as much as £1.5bn [...]
Barclays braced for battle as investors protest pay report April 23, 2014 A LARGE minority of shareholders are set to vote against Barclays’ remuneration report at today’s AGM – but a resounding majority are expected to back its future pay plans. Just 65 per cent of investors are set to back the report in the non-binding vote. However, more than 90 per cent are expected to back its future [...]
S&P fears Scots banks are too like Iceland’s April 23, 2014 AN INDEPENDENT Scotland would join Iceland as the only European governments which could not afford to support their banking systems, analysts at ratings agency Standard and Poor’s warned yesterday. If giant banks like Lloyds and RBS kept their legal registration in Edinburgh, the sector’s assets would amount to more than 1,000 per cent of Scotland’s [...]
Bottom Line: Fashionably late but with a sharp design April 23, 2014 THE clamour of discount shoppers remains as loud around the catwalk as in the supermarket aisles. Look at Primark, where the passion for hot fashion at low prices helped keep a recent dip in sugar prices from souring the results of Associated British Foods, its parent company. While its four per cent like-for-like growth is [...]
Primark set to launch its first stores in the US April 23, 2014 ASSOCIATED British Foods (ABF) is taking Primark to the US, the FTSE 100 conglomerate announced yesterday, as it reported a 26 per cent leap in the budget clothing chain’s profits. Primark is set to open a 70,000 square foot store in Boston in 2015 and it is also in talks to open a further eight [...]
Morale at UK’s factories soars April 23, 2014 OPTIMISM among manufacturers has jumped at its fastest rate since 1973, according to a widelyregarded survey released yesterday. Over four in 10 UK factory firms are more upbeat about the general business situation than three months ago, the CBI said. Only eight per cent are less optimistic. Growth expectations for both domestic orders and output [...]
Watchdog call for clawbacks April 23, 2014 BRITAIN’S reporting watchdog wants all listed companies to claw back bonuses from top staff who fail to perform. Clawback rules, which have been adopted by the banks, would be extended to all FTSE firms under the Financial Reporting Council’s plans. The FRC also said firms should explain more clearly what they will do when investors [...]
Inside Track: Behind the scenes of the Pfizer and Astrazeneca talks April 23, 2014 IT WAS ever thus: investment bankers kick off the year talking up a economic environment ripe for throwing up industry-defining mergers and acquisitions. By Easter, they’re conjuring up myriad reasons why said deluge of deals has failed to materialise. To date, 2014 has done little to disabuse that idea. There are exceptions, of course, one [...]
Euro’s business growth nears a three-year high April 23, 2014 THE EUROZONE’S recovery appears to be on a relatively strong footing after a leading survey revealed that growth in business activity is approaching a three-year peak. The success of countries in the bloc remains mixed, however, with the pace of growth speeding up in Germany, while neighbouring France sinks back towards stagnation. Markit’s latest purchasing managers’ [...]
Portugal issues a 10-year bond as bailout years come to an end April 23, 2014 THE PORTUGUESE government issued a 10-year bond yesterday, the first in nearly three years, since the country’s major bailout by international creditors in 2011. There was strong demand for the issue, with bonds yielding 3.57 per cent. Interest on the country’s debt has declined significantly, down from over 15 per cent at the start of [...]