Crystal: Grade still the wrong leader August 25, 2010 Rogue shareholder Crystal Amber has continued its campaign against Pinewood chairman Michael Grade despite the film-studio upgrading its expectations for the year. Crystal Amber has waged a campaign against Grade, whose stewardship of the firm and track record has been called into question. Yesterday a spokesman told City A.M.: “We are pleased to see there [...]
Indian oil firms step back from move to buy into Cairn August 25, 2010 State-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp, GAIL India and Oil India will not make a counterbid against Vedanta Resources’ $9.6bn (£6.2bn) stake purchase in Cairn India, a senior official in India’s oil ministry said yesterday. The decision makes it likely that Cairn Energy’s planned sale of up to a 51 per cent stake in its [...]
CITY VIEWS: IS FACEBOOK WORTH ITS $33BN VALUATION? August 25, 2010 PAUL STAPELY | CONNING ASSET MANAGEMENT “As a non-user, I struggle to imagine where a private company can possibly make anywhere near that much money with an asset like Facebook.” MARCANTOINE DE ROYS | GROUP M “It is difficult to measure the impact Facebook has had on 500m-plus lives as a monetary value, especially since [...]
Serco bullish on outlook August 25, 2010 OUTSOURCING giant company Serco posted a 21 per cent increase in half-year pre-tax profit and said government spending cuts would boost sales in areas where outsourcers would be hired to achieve savings. Serco, which runs Boris Johnson’s new cycle hire scheme, said yesterday pre-tax profit for the first half to 30 June was £101.4m, against [...]
Aggreko in boost from World Cup August 25, 2010 AGGREKO, the world’s biggest provider of temporary power, again upgraded its outlook for the year after posting a jump in first-half profit, helped by contracts for major sporting events. Aggreko said events such as the Vancouver Winter Olympics and the soccer World Cup, for which it provided generators and chillers, brought its local business unit [...]
SIG fears government cash cuts August 25, 2010 SIG, the insulation and roofing group, said UK government austerity measures were a drag on its outlook despite an encouraging start to the second half after a fall in first-half pretax profit. Sales across the group recovered in May and June — with sales per day in July up four per cent year-on-year — after [...]
AIRLINE WORKERS SNUB DEAL August 25, 2010 Members of American Airlines’ mechanics union rejected a contract proposal and authorised union leaders to call a strike, the Transport Workers Union (TWU) said yesterday. The union said on its website late on Tuesday that two American Airlines work groups represented by the TWU — the mechanics and the stock clerks — voted against a [...]
Germany agrees to take up banking levy August 25, 2010 Germany’s cabinet yesterday agreed to adopt a levy on bank assets which will raise around €1bn (£818m) a year for bailouts, a government source said, a move that small lenders slammed. Small banks complained the new bank restructuring bill fails to rule them out as potential contributors toward a common pot for rescuing big banks, [...]
The old guard offers Osborne advice August 25, 2010 Economies are pretty resilient things. Of course output can decline extremely sharply as a result of negative shocks – and the British economy shrunk 6.4 per cent in 2008-9 as a result of the world financial crisis and subsequent recession. But at some point they do usually bounce back to decent growth rates, particularly if [...]
US new home sales slump August 25, 2010 FEARS of a double-dip in the US housing market intensified yesterday after data showed that new home sales fell at the sharpest monthly pace in July since records began. Sales of new homes plummeted 12.4 per cent to an annual rate of 276,000 – the lowest since the data was first recorded in 1963 and [...]