Spirit Pub shares rise as Britain’s warmer winter buoys drink sales March 18, 2014 THE UK’s warm winter weather helped the Spirit Pub Company, operator of pubs such as John Barras, Fayre & Square and Flaming Grill, report a boost in food and drink sales yesterday. Like-for-like food sales across the group jumped 6.7 per cent in the eight weeks to 1 March, while total sales rose 6.1 per [...]
Wolf raises £99m to fund UK mine March 18, 2014 Wolf Minerals, the London and Australia-listed specialty metals company, yesterday said that it has raised $182.7m (£99.2m) to complete the construction of the Hemerdon Tungsten-Tin Project in Devon, which will be the first metals mine to open in the UK for over 40 years. Berwin Leighton Paisner acted on behalf of Numis Securities, Investec and [...]
Xaar boss departure sparks fears March 18, 2014 Xaar chief executive Ian Dinwoodie yesterday announced he would retire from the printing technology group in 2015. The news of Dinwoodie’s departure came alongside 2013 pre-tax profits of £40.1m, up 123 per cent from 2012. Dinwoodie’s departure announcement sparked a 9.3 per cent drop in Xaar’s share price to 905p. “My decision is entirely a [...]
SDL hurt by restructuring costs March 18, 2014 Translation software maker SDL reported a loss of £24.4m last year, from £27.4m profit in 2012, due to high restructuring costs as the business transitions to automated translations. “In 2013 we undertook some hard but essential changes that will provide the impetus for our future success,” said chief executive Mark Lancaster. Revenue last year fell [...]
City Moves for 19 March 2014 | Who’s switching jobs March 18, 2014 Lambert Smith Hampton The commercial property consultancy has made three appointments to its national valuation team. Matthew Lemin (right) joins as an associate director in its valuation division. He was most recently at GL Hearn, and has previously worked at Cushman & Wakefield. Riaan Fourie joins as an associate director from DTZ. Matthew Armstrong joins as a [...]
Best of the Brokers for 19 March 2014 March 18, 2014 To appear in Best of the Brokers, email your research to notes@cityam.com CARNIVAL UBS keeps its “buy” rating on the cruise operator and raises its target from £25 to £26. The broker expects Carnival to post a $0.09 loss per share in its quarterly results next week, but believes the firm’s Costa ships will ride [...]
London Report: Shares lifted by Putin’s speech despite tension March 18, 2014 THE UK’S top share index rose yesterday as stock markets rebounded after a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine, which some traders interpreted as being less aggressive in tone than had been expected. The blue-chip FTSE 100 index closed up 0.6 per cent, or 36.93 points, at 6,605.28 points – marking only the [...]
New York Report: Wall St pushes stocks close to a record high March 18, 2014 US STOCKS climbed for a second straight session yesterday, with the S&P 500 within striking distance of its record after comments from Russian President Vladimir Putin lessened anxiety that tensions over Ukraine could escalate even further. Gains were broad, with nine of the 10 primary S&P 500 sector indexes higher for the day. An S&P [...]
Bitcoins are more like “glass beads” than money says Danish central bank March 18, 2014 Denmark's central bank has released a publication stating that "unlike precious metals such as gold and silver, Bitcoins have no actual utility value". And on that basis, the organisation says that they aren't really money at all, and instead bear "closer resemblance to glass beads." Of course, the physical value of gold is far removed [...]
Six new versions of puzzle game 2048 that you have to try March 18, 2014 First 2048 took the internet by storm, then came the clones. Developer Gabriele Cirulli tells us that the addictive puzzler now boasts over 4m visitors And as the 19 year old Italian made the game's code open source, coders have been able to make their own spin-offs the game. Cirruli says that the internet has [...]