AIC’s respected boss Godfrey quits as he searches for another big challenge July 29, 2009 DANIEL Godfrey, the popular director general of the Association of Investment Companies (AIC), is stepping down after 11 years in the job. Godfrey, 48, is best remembered for steering the industry through its darkest hour when the split capital investment trust scandal broke and thousands lost their savings. He said he was leaving to seek [...]
CITY MOVES WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS July 29, 2009 Kreab Gavin AndersonTom Grimmer has joined communications firm Kreab Gavin Anderson as managing partner, China. Grimmer will be based in Beijing and will advise multinational companies as well as Chinese corporations with international growth plans. He has worked and studied in Asia since 1985, previously working as senior communications advisor, Asia Pacific, to Credit Suisse [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS July 29, 2009 CadburyCharles Stanley upgraded Cadbury to “Accumulate” status. The launch of Fair Trade-certified Dairy Milk in the UK and Ireland could result in further share gains which would be a significant hurdle for competitors, it said. The broker also believes Cadbury can achieve its anticipated revenue growth and hit margin targets. LancashireExecution Research continues to support [...]
NOMURA WALL CANDY IMPRESSES ART-LOVING FORMER LEHMANITES July 29, 2009 AND SO it emerges that Lehman Brothers is preparing to sell 650 of its prized modern and contemporary artworks at auction in the States this winter, hoping to raise a total of $1m for its creditors. (Not that the piddling amount will contribute much to levelling its $250bn debt pile, but every little helps, as [...]
PWC BOARD GET THE X-FACTOR TREATMENT IN SURPRISE CONTEST July 28, 2009 RECENT surveys have shown that employees’ sense of job security has improved in recent months, but it seems it is now so high that poking fun at the board is back in vogue. The PwC board were half way through a three-week UK tour last week – in which they met 850 partners – when [...]
US housing market improves but consumer confidence hit July 28, 2009 US HOME sales rose for the first time in almost three years in May but ongoing weakness in the jobs market hit July consumer confidence hard, data showed yesterday. The S&P/Case-Shiller composite-20 index rose 0.5 per cent month-on-month in May, which saw the annual decline moderate to 17.1 per cent. But these figures are not [...]
RUNNING FOR COVER July 28, 2009 US media giant Viacom yesterday said second quarter profit tumbled 32 per cent as revenues slumped due to a weak advertising market, slower video game sales and lower box office results. The group, owner of Paramount Studios, which produced the Transformers films (above), earned $277m compared with $407m for the same period a year earlier. [...]
Bad debt fear hits Deutsche despite profit July 28, 2009 DEUTSCHE Bank posted a 67 per cent rise in second-quarter profits yesterday as it was boosted by a barnstorming performance from its investment banking operations, but saw its shares fall on fears of mounting bad loans. Net profit for the quarter reached €1.1bn (£948m) compared to €645m in the equivalent quarter of 2008, thanks largely [...]
How the seasons affect our beer drinking habits July 28, 2009 AS it gets warmer, beers get more popular. Our BrandIndex scores show a seasonal pattern climaxing around mid-August and lowest in February. But Guinness is an exception. The first graph shows Guinness relative to the basket of scores, and it moves in the exact opposite way to other brews. I wouldn’t want to be misleading: [...]
Jobless rise hits retailers July 28, 2009 RETAIL sales fell faster than expected in July as consumers tightened their belts in the face of rising unemployment, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said yesterday. The CBI’s monthly distributive trades survey sales balance was -15 per cent this month, an improvement on -17 per cent in June, but worse than the -12 per [...]