Westfield cuts service charge June 1, 2009 Shopping centre giant Westfield is offering to cut service charges at its west London mall by seven per cent in a bid to end a long-running disagreement with retailers over its decision to hike the fees just a few days after the £1.6bn centre opened its doors. The developer is now offering to cut service [...]
Walsh: BA fighting for survival June 1, 2009 British Airways boss Willie Walsh has issued a stark warning to the airline’s 41,000 staff, warning them that the company is in a “fight for survival”. The UK’s flag carrier is hoping to win big concessions from staff as it cuts costs.
SEATWAVE’S NEW FANS June 1, 2009 SEATWAVE, Europe’s largest fan-to-fan ticket exchange, has raised $17m (£10m) in fourth-round funding led by Accel Partners, which is joined by existing investors Fidelity Ventures, Atlas Venture, Mangrove Capital Partners and Adinvest. Co-founder Sonali De Rycker will return to the Seatwave board as part of Accel’s investment. The company plans to invest in its core [...]
Citigroup and GM booted off DJ June 1, 2009 Citigroup and General Motors (GM) have been evicted from the Dow Jones industrial average, in the index’s quarterly reshuffle. Cisco Systems and Travelers, the insurer that was once a division of Citicorp, will take the companies’ places.
Chloride profits rise as orders power upwards June 1, 2009 CHLORIDE, which provides protection against power supply disruption, posted a 33 per cent increase in 2008 profit yesterday and said it had made a good start to the current year. Finance director Neil Warner said the group’s order book at the end of March, at a record £138m, already covered 40 per cent of the [...]
The common sense angel of the Den with a loathing for business jargon June 1, 2009 WHEN Deborah Meaden talks about the “great entrepreneurial spirit in the UK”, people should take note. As a panellist on the BBC’s popular business show Dragon’s Den, she’s part of a team who have become the public faces of anyone-can-do-it enterprise. Meaden turned her family holiday park business into a multi-million pound operation, making her [...]
Lords call for stronger BoE June 1, 2009 AN influential House of Lords committee yesterday issued a thinly-veiled criticism of Gordon Brown’s stewardship of the economy, saying that “‘boom and bust’” was mistakenly consigned to history”. In its report on banking regulation, the Lords Economic Affairs Committee also said that Brown’s tripartite reform of the regulatory system had been “found wanting” amid the [...]
Poundland profits up on slump June 1, 2009 EUROPE’S largest single price discounter, Poundland, will today prove that it is continuing to buck the retail gloom and report a 47 per cent jump in annual operating profit. The group said for the year to 29 March operating profit rose to £11.8m from £8m the year before. And earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and [...]
Nomura bankers learning to live with Western-style culture of bonus awards June 1, 2009 STAFF at Japanese brokerage Nomura are warming to a Western-style pay structure that places more weight on bonuses, its chief executive Kenichi Watanabe said yesterday. Watanabe said more than half of the firm’s 1,600 investment bankers had signed up to contracts similar to those that existed at the Lehman Brothers operations Nomura bought last autumn. [...]
Iberdrola to sell 352m stake in wind turbine firm June 1, 2009 SPANISH utility Iberdrola said yesterday it was selling 10 per cent of wind turbine maker Gamesa, a stake worth about €408.3m (£352m), based on yesterday’s closing price. Iberdrola said it had hired investment bank Morgan Stanley to find institutions and qualified investors to buy 24.3m shares. It currently owns 23.95 per cent of Gamesa, which [...]