Honeywell to snap up France’s Sperian in $1.1bn cash offer May 19, 2010 US MANUFACTURER Honeywell has secured a deal to buy French personal protection equipment maker Sperian Protection $1.1bn (£763m) in cash, the firm said yesterday. Honeywell’s €117-per-share offer for the maker of face masks and other protective equipment topped a prior bid by French holding company Menelas, owned by Cinven Investment Fund, which in March offered [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS May 19, 2010 YELL JP Morgan Cazenove retains its “neutral” rating on Yell following its surprise announcement that both its CEO and CFO will leave the company in the next year. JP Morgan said the company is also guiding to a revenue decline but given £60m cost savings, JP Morgan believes that the revenue decline should be cushioned. [...]
Canvas gets the all clear from the OFT May 19, 2010 THE Office of Fair Trading (OFT) will not investigate Project Canvas, a tie-up between large media players, over fears it will stifle competition. The proposed joint venture by firms including BBC, BT, TalkTalk and ITV will offer video-on-demand content through a viewer’s Freeview box. The scheme has come under fire from rivals Sky and Virgin [...]
Air France sees biggest loss in over a decade May 19, 2010 AIR FRANCE-KLM posted its largest loss in 15 years after the airline yesterday reported a full-year net loss of €1.56bn (£1.33bn). Chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon dubbed the year “annus horribilis” after the airline suffered a number of set backs, including the Brazil crash last June which resulted in the death of 228 passengers, the disruptions [...]
Exxon, BP, ENI and BG seek Indian oil May 19, 2010 STATE-RUN Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) yesterday asked foreign firms including Exxon Mobil and BP to submit proposals to buy a stake in an east coast block shunned by Brazil’s Petrobras. UK gas major BG Group and Italy’s ENI have also shown interest in taking stakes in the deepwater block, D.K. Pande, head of [...]
Chip makers fined for price fixing in new EU procedure May 19, 2010 NINE memory chip makers, including world leader Samsung Electronics, were fined a total €331m (£284m) by EU regulators yesterday for illegally fixing prices. The EU antitrust watchdog levied its biggest penalty of €145.73m against Samsung, while Infineon was fined €56.70m and Hynix Semiconductor €51.47m for a cartel of Dram (Dynamic Random Access Memory) chip makers [...]
Accor’s spin-off hotels group details its growth plans as seeks to expand May 19, 2010 ACCOR Hospitality, the hotel unit of France’s Accor, said more than half of its 2010 plan to sell assets to cut debt had been secured by the end of April and that it was stepping up expansion in Europe and Asia. The company, aiming to grab the world number three spot by 2015 and become [...]
General Electric bullish on 2010, eyes buybacks May 19, 2010 GENERAL ELECTRIC (GE) sees “upside” to its 2010 financial framework, which calls for profit to be roughly flat with last year, and expects to resume share buybacks by the end of this year. The largest US conglomerate has seen growth in its rate of orders and expects earnings to rise beginning in the current second [...]
RALPH LAUREN DOUBLES PROFITS May 19, 2010 POLO Ralph Lauren reported a fourth quarter profit yesterday that more than doubled, as strong sales at its retail stores helped offset a decline in wholesale revenue. The fashion firm, home to brands like Polo and Club Monaco, said net income was $114.1m (£79.3m) for the quarter ended 3 April, up from $44.5m a year [...]
WORLD CUP FOOTBALL FANTASY WINS THE HEARTS OF THE LADIES May 19, 2010 PUT A bunch of ladies in a room for a corporate networking event, and what’s the last topic you’d choose to centre the discussion on? Football? So when The Capitalist rocked up yesterday at the swanky Mayfair hotel for a “Ladies’ Day” organised by law firm Crowell & Moring, it was surprising, to say the [...]