Russian oil explorer Exillon Energy to raise £62m in rare London flotation December 14, 2009 OIL explorer Exillon Energy is to raise about £62m in the first London stock market flotation by a Russian company since the financial crisis began. Exillon, which has operations in the Western Siberia and Komi regions of northern Russia, plans to place 40.5 million shares at 153p each. The IPO represents just under a third [...]
Hermes and Sourcecap join forces December 14, 2009 HERMES, the asset manager entirely owned by the BT Pension Scheme, has bought a controlling stake in European equity specialist Sourcecap for an undisclosed sum. The new business will be called Hermes Sourcecap and will give Hermes a core European equities team months after it poached a global equities operation from Fortis. Sourcecap bosses Andrew [...]
WAS MOUCHEL RIGHT TO SNUB VT GROUP’S APPROACH? December 14, 2009 ED WOOLFITT | GALVAN RESEARCH AND TRADING We expect Mouchel’s rebuttal to be the start of a somewhat protracted battle with VT. In the meantime, we suggest that clients who bought the shares at 160p last week should sit tight, as the final valuation, should a deal be agreed, could well be in excess of [...]
VT is spurned by Mouchel in takeover bid December 14, 2009 MOUCHEL, the highways and government services company, yesterday confirmed it had rejected two takeover approaches from its larger rival VT Group, but said the larger group was still interested in making a deal. Mouchel said the offers, which were understood to have been at around 250p per share, were “wholly inadequate”, undervalued the company, and [...]
Minerva seals deal for law firm’s London base December 14, 2009 DEVELOPER Minerva has secured a deal for a 20-year lease on one of its City projects with international law firm Clyde & Co. The move comes as Minerva fights a £84.5m takeover bid form South African shareholder Nathan Kirsh. Clyde & Co will base its new headquarters at the building in the 14-storey St Botolphs [...]
Austria’s Hypo Bank is saved December 14, 2009 AUSTRIA will nationalise its sixth biggest bank, it announced yesterday, the second time the country has taken over a bank since the beginning of the financial crisis. Hypo Alpe-Adria Bank International will be injected with as much as €450m (£404m) of state funds, while majority shareholder, German state owned bank Bayerische Landesbank, will sell its [...]
New book reveals the City by night December 14, 2009 WORKING in the City, our lives are often stressful and fast-moving. It is easy when you are rushing from meeting to meeting to forget that the Square Mile is also one of the most striking places in the world. From the Victorian banks to the modern sky-scrapers, the centuries have left their imprint on the [...]
CONFUSION MOUNTS OVER BANK BONUSES SUPER-TAX December 14, 2009 THE GOVERNMENT is today set to bow to City fury by issuing a clarification on its super-tax on bank bonuses, after being swamped by a deluge of queries from firms unsure if they will be hit by the damaging levy. Confusion in the UK’s financial hub has been rising daily since last Wednesday’s pre-Budget Report, [...]
Obama hits out at fat cat US bankers December 14, 2009 US PRESIDENT Barack Obama last night lashed out at Wall Street bankers, labeling them “fat cats” who “don’t get it”. Speaking on the eve of today’s meeting with top US bankers at the White House, Obama said he was frustrated with the banks that the government had bailed out. “I did not run for office [...]
Taking on the rat race, the Fiennes way December 14, 2009 IF YOU thought there wasn’t much of a parallel to be drawn between sitting in the comfort of your office and trekking through a polar blizzard in the world’s most unforgiving wilderness, think again. Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the explorer and adventurer who probably knows more about the latter than anyone else on Earth, believes that [...]