Fitness First in £1.2bn IPO June 27, 2010 BUYOUT house BC Partners is believed to be lining up Fitness First for a flotation in the Far East which could value the world’s largest gym group at between £1bn and £1.2bn. BC Partners, which has enjoyed success with the initial public offerings (IPOs) of travel IT firm Amadeus and French care home operator Medica [...]
TNT to sack full-timers by 2012 June 27, 2010 Dutch postal company TNT has said it aims to lay off all its full-time workers within two years after the firm was crunched by the liberalisation of the country’s mail market and the shift to digital forms of communication. TNT said it would fire all employees involved in sorting and delivering mail who work more [...]
Blood takes chair at Waverley June 27, 2010 Former Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) managing director Jeremy Blood is to become chairman at Waverley TBS after Manfield Partners backed a management buyout of the business from Heineken, Britain’s largest brewer. The takeover, at an undisclosed price, comes after Heineken significantly restructured Waverley following its £7.8bn joint acquisition of S&N with Carlsberg in 2008. Blood is [...]
Cineworld signs 25-year O2 deal June 27, 2010 Cineworld, the UK’s second largest cinema chain, has won a contract to run the O2’s multiplex cinema for the next 25 years. It began operating the 11-screen venue on Friday, having inked the deal with O2 owner AEG Europe. Analysts said the site, which produced turnover of £4.1m last year, would add £600,000 to Cineworld’s sales. [...]
Eredene wins £200m port build contract June 27, 2010 AIM-listed Eredene Capital yesterday announced it has won a £200m contract to build and operate a vast container terminal in southern India. It clinched the lucrative contract as part of a consortium including Spanish port operators Grup Marítim TCB, international construction firm Obrascón Huarte Lain, and India’s Lanco Infratech. Eredene has a 22 per cent [...]
Halliwells to face administration June 27, 2010 HALLIWELLS, the first legal outfit to fall victim to the recession and face administration, was close to securing a deal last night with a rival firm in a bid to transfer some of its business. Late last week, the Manchester based firm filed for court permission to appoint an administrator after taking a severe hit [...]
AstraZeneca to scale up South African operations June 27, 2010 THE UK’s second-largest drugmaker, AstraZeneca, has revealed it is scaling up its up its operations in South Africa. Chief executive officer David Brennan told Bloomberg news that sales are growing faster there than in more established markets. At the Fortune Global Forum in Cape Town, he said AstraZeneca had increased investment in marketing, selling and [...]
Government to close up to 75pc of its websites and slash budgets for rest June 27, 2010 THREE quarters of government websites will face the chop in a plan to slash the cost to the taxpayer. The remainder of the existing 820 government-funded sites will also see their budgets chopped by up to 50 per cent under tough new rules outlined by Tory Francis Maude. The government will explore which of the [...]
Private evictions rose 23 per cent during recession June 27, 2010 PRIVATE landlords filed 23 per cent more repossession claims against tenants during the credit crunch, say figures out today. Legal claims to evict tenants increased from around 17,000 in 2004 to over 21,000 in 2008, according to legal publisher Sweet & Maxwell. However, social landlords were less likely to repossess properties, with the number of [...]
iPad revolution hits boardroom June 27, 2010 City-based insurance firm Torus says it has become the first company in the UK to hold paperless board meetings following a trial of Apple’s iPad. Directors of this $1bn (£663m) insurance company used iPads to review documents during the board sessions instead of the usual print-outs. Bosses say prior to using iPads, the firm was [...]