Bond issue buys Glazer time January 21, 2010 MANCHESTER United has managed to successfully price its dual tranche £500m bond at below 10 per cent, despite scepticism from some traditional high yield investors amid growing concerns about the level of the Premier football club’s debts. According to sources yesterday, United’s bank advisers were leaning towards pricing one tranche of the bond at 8.75 [...]
France votes to increase female board members January 21, 2010 FRANCE’S lower house of parliament adopted a bill yesterday that would force large firms to reserve at least 40 per cent of their boardroom positions for women within six years. The Senate is expected to vote on the measure, which was presented in the lower house by the ruling centre-right UMP party, in the next [...]
Tullow Oil hits early indications of yet another crude strike this time in Ghana January 21, 2010 OIL heavyweight Tullow Oil was today cheering a “significant” oil and gas discovery at its Ghanaian Tweneboa field. The FTSE 100 oil explorer said its Tweneboa-2 exploratory well, being drilled some six kilometres southeast of the company’s earlier Tweneboa-1 discovery, has encountered up to 32 metres of net hydrocarbon pay. The positive findings sent Tullow’s [...]
Spyker Cars nears outcome in pursuit of GM’s Saab unit as talks progress January 21, 2010 Dutch luxury car maker Spyker Cars yesterday said it is nearing an outcome in its talks to buy Saab from General Motors, although it gave no indication as to how the talks were going. Spyker chief executive Victor Muller told Reuters via a text message that it was “likely” that it was now in exclusive [...]
NEWS | IN BRIEF January 21, 2010 Hypo launches “bad bank” Nationalised German property lender Hypo Real Estate plans to shift about €210bn in assets to a “bad bank” in the second half of 2010, its operating unit said yesterday. “The HRE Group intends to transfer operations no longer strategically required for the group’s realignment, as well as additional balance sheet items, [...]
Public purse in record deficit January 21, 2010 Pressure is building on Alistair Darling to bring the fiscal deficit under control after the government finances recorded a record £15.7bn shortfall in December. December tends to be a poor month for the public finances. The figure compares with £13.8bn a year earlier and was better than the £18.7bn gap expected in the City, but [...]
Manufacturing output grows for the first time in two years January 21, 2010 MANUFACTURERS expanded their production for the first time in two years in the three months to January as demand for UK exports increased, the Confederation for Business Industry (CBI) said yesterday in its quarterly Industrial Trends survey. A net 11 per cent of manufacturers said output had risen over the past quarter, raising hopes that [...]
Mortgages: Lending to home buyers and businesses picks up January 21, 2010 GROSS mortgage lending in December showed annual growth for the first time since October 2007, the Council for Mortgage Lenders (CML) said yesterday. Total lending reached £13.7bn last month, a three per cent rise on December 2008 and a 14 per cent gain on November. Paul Samter, economist at the CML, said: “Evidence suggests that [...]
Pawnbroker’s profits soar in new “gold rush” January 21, 2010 THE UK’s largest pawnbroking chain H&T has said demand among recession-hit consumers to trade their unwanted gold for cash had more than tripled scrap profits last year. H&T now expects full-year profits at the top end of forecasts as the price of gold surges. The company offers a postal service, but mainly trades its cash [...]
Powerhouse China slams on the brakes January 21, 2010 BLISTERING growth in the fourth quarter saw China easily beat its 2009 growth target, putting it on course to overtake Japan to become the world’s second largest economy. GDP surged an annualised 10.7 per cent between October and December, compared with a year earlier. This fell slightly short of market forecasts of 10.9 per cent, [...]