WESTFIELD CUTS CHARGES June 2, 2009 WESTFIELD shopping centre yesterday bowed to pressure from retailers by dropping its service charges at its White City mall from £13.94 a sq ft to £12.98. Retailers were angered in September after the group hiked its fees sharply from the £8.50 initially agreed. Westfield said the reductions were part of a six month trading review [...]
CITY MOVES WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS June 2, 2009 DeloitteThe business advisory firm has appointed Anne Hamilton to lead its insurance tax team. Hamilton was previously a tax partner at rival PricewaterhouseCoopers. “In light of Solvency II we anticipate that there will be considerable restructuring work to make sure that insurance companies’ balance sheets have capacity,” said Deloitte head of UK insurance Mark Fitzpatrick. [...]
LMS set to join main market June 2, 2009 LMS Capital, which has benefited as larger private equity firms have been unable to snap up stricken small companies due to capital constraints, is joining its bigger rivals on the London Stock Exchange’s (LSE) main market. The group is leaving AIM for the Official List after runaway growth since its June 2006 listing, and will [...]
Barker joins Fink at ISAM June 2, 2009 Rod Barker, a leading figure in the global hedge fund industry, has joined hedge fund “godfather” Stanley Fink at his International Standard Asset Management (ISAM) hedge fund. Barker will work alongside Fink as a director, and will focus on the group’s plans to launch several new funds in coming months. The group’s flagship Global Macro [...]
BAE plans $1.5bn bond issue June 2, 2009 Defence contractor BAE Systems is planning to issue a $1.5bn (£1bn) bond with maturities at five years and 10 years, an official at one of the banks managing the sale said yesterday. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Barclays have been named to manage the two-part issue, the official said.
Shell pushes down costs June 2, 2009 Royal Dutch Shell said it had seen costs come down in the last few months as it renegotiated with project contractors. “As far as projects are concerned and normal operating costs, we see a lot of our renegotiations… enter with lower costs at this moment,” chief executive Jeroen van der Veer said.
Barclays bet makes Abu Dhabi 1.5bn June 2, 2009 AN Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund sold more than 11 per cent of Barclays yesterday, pocketing a £1.5bn profit less than seven months after making its £3.5bn investment. In an incredibly fast turn-around, Credit Suisse placed around £3.5bn of instruments – which were due to convert to Barclays shares by the end of the month [...]
LUXURY FIRMS OUT TO IMPRESS AT WALPOLE GLAM LAUNCH PARTY June 2, 2009 WHEN it comes to impressing the great and the good of the City, Mayfair and Westminster, the firms which made the cut for this year’s Walpole Brands of Tomorrow pretty much have it licked. The luxury companies on the 2009 list gathered last night at Brown’s Hotel in the West End to drink champagne and [...]
GM close to Hummer sale June 2, 2009 GENERAL Motors, the mammoth US automaker undergoing bankruptcy proceedings, was last night on the verge of selling its Hummer brand to a Chinese machinery firm for between $150m (£90m) and $250m. Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery will buy the company and continue to make the outsized sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in the US for what [...]
Setanta’s non-payment has its rights-holders fretting June 2, 2009 THE Scottish football authorities were yesterday fearing the worst after Setanta, the struggling pay telelvision company, missed a £3m payment and gave no indication when it might be forthcoming. The missed payment has sent shockwaves through the Scottish football establishment which recently signed a lucrative four-year deal with Setanta worth £125m. Last night the chairmen [...]