BEST OF THE BROKERS January 6, 2010 MENZIES Numis believes the shares are significantly undervalued and raised its target price from 411p to 423p on the back of a positive trading update. Management said Menzies Aviation had seen a slight improvement in fourth quarter trading, while Menzies Distribution saw the rate of decline for magazine sales slow. UK COAL Charles Kernot has [...]
Barclay brothers buy DHL parcels unit January 6, 2010 SIR David and Sir Frederick Barclay started the year with a major acquisition for their home delivery business. They snapped up DHL’s parcels business for an undisclosed sum to merge with their Home Delivery Network (HDN). The deal will vastly increase the scale of HDN, doubling its turnover from £300m to £600m. Briant Gaunt, chief [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS January 6, 2010 Evolution Securities Garry Levin is to leave his role as managing director in corporate finance at KBC Peel Hunt to join rival Evolution Securities as head of its equity corporate finance division. Levin, 46, will take up his role formally in April 2010. Prior to his position at KBC Peel Hunt, he was joint chief [...]
How the Queen of support services wants to turn UK companies green January 6, 2010 GOING GREEN may not be the most original of strategies but that doesn’t make it any less lucrative. So Mitie Ruby McGregor-Smith’s decision to bet the future of her support services giant on cashing in on the trend for all things environmental has gone down well with investors. The FTSE 250 company is still busy [...]
DP World eyes London listing January 6, 2010 PORT operator DP World is looking to list on the London Stock Exchange after failing to drum up sufficient investor interest on the Nasdaq Dubai bourse. The Dubai-based group, which is more than three-quarters owned by the crisis-hit conglomerate Dubai World, said it was disappointed with the market valuation of the company and will now [...]
M&S reports sales boost but warns of tough 2010 January 6, 2010 MARKS & SPENCER has reported a rise in sales for the three months to Christmas but warned of a tough year ahead. The retailer saw like for like sales rise by 0.8 per cent with record takings on food on 23 December. Food sales overall were 0.4 per cent up on the previous year with [...]
Buffett won’t back Kraft’s Cadbury bid January 5, 2010 BILLIONAIRE investor Warren Buffett yesterday put a spanner in the works of Kraft’s hostile bid for confectioner Cadbury, voting against plans to issue new shares to fund the acquisition and claiming the current bid structure fundamentally undervalues the US firm’s stock. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway firm, which owns a 9.4 per cent stake in Kraft, said [...]
Bonus supertax to raise up to £3bn as firms pay in full January 5, 2010 SENIOR bankers have told City A.M. that the government’s supertax on bank bonuses will not reduce City payouts, predicting the levy will raise up to £3bn as firms cough up to protect their London employees. That is six times the £550m tax take predicted by chancellor Alistair Darling when introducing the 50 per cent levy [...]
Worst snow in years to cause commuter chaos January 5, 2010 LONDON transport will be put to the test today as it strains to cope with some of the worst weather to hit the capital in years. The Met Office issued an emergency weather warning for the whole of the UK saying London and the Home Counties would be the worst affected. Forecasters predicted that more [...]
Iceland sees the first anti-bailout revolt January 5, 2010 SOMEONE should give Gordon Brown a copy of John Maynard Keynes’ The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Published in 1919, it addressed post-war Germany – but the book is uncannily relevant to the situation in today’s Iceland, explaining how crippling reparations enforced by powerful foreign nations on an unwilling population are counter-productive. Iceland – unlike [...]