De La Rue chief moves to UBM in shock departure February 25, 2014 THE CHIEF executive of bank note printer De La Rue is stepping down to take up the top role at media giant UBM, the two firms said yesterday. Tim Cobbold will leave the FTSE 250 firm on 29 March, to join UBM – a company in a different sector and twice the size by market [...]
Former IG boss Nat le Roux ups his stake in Scottish mining firm February 25, 2014 NAT LE Roux, the former chief executive of City spread betting firm IG, is ramping up his stake in Scotgold Resources alongside two other strategic investors, so the firm can raise A$1.83m (£1m). Scotgold Resources is looking to develop Scotland’s first commercial gold mine but has struggled to raise financing for the project and is [...]
McColl’s valued at £200m ahead of market debut February 25, 2014 SHARES in McColl’s fell on its first day of conditional trading yesterday as investors gave the convenience store group a subdued reception ahead its full market debut next week. The retailer, which owns 1,276 newsagents and convenience stores, set its share listing offer price at 191p per share yesterday, valuing the company at £200m. However, [...]
Investors from US help ignite Kennedy Wilson February 25, 2014 SHARES in Kennedy Wilson Europe, part of a Beverley Hills-based property group that has raised £1.1bn to invest in European properties, got off to a strong start in London yesterday. Earlier this month the group said it planned to raise between £500m and £750m from investors but decided to go for over £1bn in order [...]
Persimmon to bring forward £1.9bn payout February 25, 2014 PERSIMMON says it will bring forward a £1.9bn payout to shareholders after a strong rebound in the housing market and a surge in customer demand helped the housebuilder to more than double profits last year. The company plans to return 115p per share to shareholders by 2021, but announced plans yesterday to make additional dividend [...]
Analyst Views: Have you changed your outlook following Persimmon’s statement? February 25, 2014 CLYDE LEWIS | PEEL HUNT Finals showed a 16 per cent rise in volumes boosting revenues by 21 per cent … the key surprise was the acceleration of the capital return programme. When you are sitting there with a big cash promise, a big land bank and you have delivered good growth it tells you [...]
Capco property values up by a fifth to £2.3bn February 25, 2014 CAPITAL & Counties (Capco) said a strong performance from its sprawling Covent Garden estate helped push the total value of its property up by 20 per cent to £2.3bn last year. The developer, which has been bringing in new upmarket tenants including Dior, Laduree and the restaurant Balthazar, said the value of its west end [...]
MPs find themselves out of a job February 25, 2014 YOU’D be forgiven for thinking access to finance is the biggest issue facing SMEs at the moment – and up until yesterday you were in good company, as MPs very much thought so too. Just last week the Treasury Select Committee launched an investigation into business lending and yesterday held its first evidence session with [...]
GS-Imitator: Man behind tweets is not a Gold-man February 25, 2014 THE SIGH of relief from Goldman Sachs could almost be heard from Canary Wharf to Wall Street yesterday when it was revealed the author behind the insatiably popular @GSElevator Twitter account and soon to be author of a book titled “Straight to Hell: True Tales of Deviance and Excess in the World of Investment Banking”, [...]
Shares jump as BlackBerry says focus is on BBM February 25, 2014 BLACKBERRY chief exec John Chen announced at Mobile World Congress yesterday that the struggling smartphone maker would double down on its BBM messaging service by focusing on enterprise customers. BlackBerry’s share price has risen over 17 per cent since Facebook’s announcement that it would buy messaging app WhatsApp for $19bn (£11.4bn) last week as investors [...]