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 [...]
A STITCH IN TIME July 28, 2009 ADMINISTRATORS for prestigious Mayfair tailor Douglas Hayward – famous for making suits for 1960s stars including Michael Caine and Richard Burton – has secured Mount Street Tailors as a buyer for the long-established business. The sale has safeguarded the jobs of all Hayward employees and preserved the establishment which was set up more than 40-years [...]
SAB Miller to face protest July 28, 2009 Global brewer SAB Miller was yesterday hit with an alert by shareholder advisory group Pirc , urging investors to reject the company’s “excessive” levels of executive pay at this Friday’s annual meeting. Pirc yesterday said bonuses of 500 per cent of base salary were too high, while the minimum performance targets that are attached to [...]
Whitbread dumps more pubs July 28, 2009 Leisure operator Whitbread yesterday placed four more high-quality pubs on the market as part of plans to restructure its estate. The company, which owns the Premier Inn and Brewers Fayre brands, is disposing of the pubs as part of plans to focus on properties where a Premier Inn can be built on the same site. [...]
Google sells AOL stake at a loss July 28, 2009 Google has sold its five per cent stake in AOL back to Time Warner for $283m – a fraction of the $1bn it was worth at the time of purchase, less than four years ago. Time Warner bought back the stake on 8 July, according to a filing by AOL with the US Securities and [...]