Diageo to axe 900 Scotch whisky jobs July 1, 2009 DRINKS giant Diageo said yesterday that a total of 900 jobs will be axed in Scotland as part of a restructuring drive designed to help the company through the downturn. Diageo will close its packaging plant at Kilmarnock, where around 700 people are employed, as well as shutting down its 200-year-old grain spirit distillery and [...]
Why a Vodafone and T-Mobile tie up makes sense July 1, 2009 FOR Sale. British mobile network operator. Number four in market. Unprofitable. One neglectful German owner. £3bn or nearest offer. If JP Morgan, which has been appointed to drum up interest in a potential sale of Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile UK, were to write a classified ad for the business, this is how it would read. One [...]
British private sector hit by declining profitability and worker productivity July 1, 2009 BRITISH companies saw their profitability deteriorate in the first three months of 2009 for a fourth successive quarter to hit the lowest level since the autumn of 2003, official data said yesterday. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that the net rate of return by private non-financial corporations in the first quarter of 2009 [...]
Hochschild Mining ups its stake in Gold Resource July 1, 2009 HOCHSCHILD Mining, the gold and silver producer, said yesterday it had exercised an option to up its stake in Gold Resource, spending $20m on a further 5m shares. It said the price was a discount of 20 per cent to the previous 30 day closing price average. The purchase will be funded from its existing [...]
WOOD GROUP IN LINE July 1, 2009 ENERGY services provider John Wood Group said yesterday its performance for the year to date remains in line with expectations, thanks to the strengthening of the oil price over recent weeks. The company was in the spotlight last month as the Venezuelan government seized its assets in the country. It reportedly stands to lose £100m [...]
Bombardier sells off 22 trains July 1, 2009 Bombardier said yesterday it will supply another 22 Bombardier Talent trains to Germany’s Deutsche Bahn (DB) valued at just under €100m (£85.8m). It brings the total number of Talent trains ordered by DB to 98. The news came a day after Bombardier sold 204 streetcars to the Toronto Transit Commission in the largest single order [...]
Japanese banks agree merger July 1, 2009 Loss-making Japanese banks Shinsei and Aozora have struck a merger deal that will create the country’s sixth-largest bank. The combination will create a lender, with assets of around 18 trillion yen (£110bn). Shinsei will take a 58 per cent stake in the new bank, although ownership will be split equally once Aozora’s preferred shares are [...]
Hypo to suffer heavy losses July 1, 2009 Hypo Real Estate (HRE), the German state-owned lender, is set to lose more than €2bn (£1.7bn) over the next 18 months, sources said yesterday. The specialist property lender said last week that it expected to fall to a loss of “at least hundreds of millions of euros” in the second quarter, adding that it was [...]
Rock cleared to write loans July 1, 2009 NORTHERN Rock has been cleared by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) to keep lending, despite breaching its minimum capital requirements. The FSA had already granted the nationalised mortgage lender a waiver to write new mortgages despite its low levels of capital, permitting the bank to include tier two capital – a riskier type of cash [...]
US June car sales slide again but slump starts to stabilise July 1, 2009 US car sales tumbled in June as the economy remained a deep concern for consumers, but Ford posted far better results than other large carmakers and shot ahead of Detroit rivals passing through federally sponsored bankruptcies. Carmakers said the results pointed to more stability for the economy, but fell short of marking a turnaround for [...]