Unicredit to slash 14,000 jobs as part of mammoth restructuring of Italy’s largest bank December 13, 2016 Italy's largest lender is to cull 14,000 jobs by 2019 as part of a huge turnaround plan. Announcing the cuts alongside a €13bn (£10.9bn) equity raise and flogging €17.7bn on non-core assets, Unicredit said the job cuts would save the firm €1.1bn. Read more: Unicredit pushes the button on Italy's largest ever rights issue Chief exec [...]
UBM buys Allworld for almost $500m December 13, 2016 Event organiser UBM is to buy Asian exhibitions company Allworld for $485m (£382.55m) in cash, in an effort to strengthen its position in Asia and provide an entry into the Middle East. The deal will be debt-funded with a new bridge facility, and is expected to add to earnings in 2017, UBM said this morning. UBM [...]
Consumers are going to spend a record amount on supermarket premium ranges this Christmas December 13, 2016 Consumers have been preparing to taste the difference this Christmas as they stock up on supermarkets' premium own label brands. Data from Kantar Worldpanel showed that during the three months to the end of 4 December, shoppers spent 13 per cent more on brands such as Tesco Finest and Asda Extra Special than they did the year before. Read more: These [...]
Severe delays on Victoria Line, District Line and Piccadilly Line – and TfL has warned Brixton station is very congested December 13, 2016 There are severe delays across the Tube network this morning, with services disrupted on the Victoria Line, the District Line, and (of course) the Piccadilly Line. There is currently no Victoria Line service between Brixton and Victoria due to a signal failure at Brixton, with severe delays on the rest of the line. https://twitter.com/victorialine/status/808573905447321601 And [...]
Unicredit’s international lenders commit to €13bn rights issue, as bank also ditches €17.7bn of non-core loans December 13, 2016 Italy's largest ever rights issue was announced this morning by Unicredit, the country's biggest bank. The lender pushed the button on a €13bn (£10.9bn) rights issue, in a balance sheet restructuring Unicredit hopes will pave the way for dividend payouts to recommence by 2019. A raft of international banks, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, and [...]
Japan’s Asahi will buy AB InBev’s eastern European brands for €7.8bn December 13, 2016 Japan's Asahi has just announced it will buy five of Anheuser-Busch InBev's eastern European beer brands for €7.3bn (£6.1bn). The former SABMiller brands include the Czech Pilsner Urquell, Poland's Tyskie and Hungary's Dreier. AB InBev is working to close the deal as part of its efforts to pass competition regulations after its £79bn takeover of SABMiller. Asahi, on [...]
Lloyds Bank share sale raises further £0.5bn to repay taxpayer December 13, 2016 The government has sold off another slug of its shares in Lloyds Bank, meaning the state now has an interest of less than seven per cent. More than £17.5bn has been recovered of the £20.3bn forked out by the taxpayer, the Treasury said this morning. The sale follows the previous auction in November that took recoveries to [...]
How will Christmas dinner be different after Brexit? Here are 2016’s best alternative Christmas cracker jokes December 13, 2016 With Brexit, Donald Trump and mad political party leadership races dominating the nation’s attention, 2016 will be remembered as a year when people really got interested in politics. The final piece of proof? Brexit – surely no laughing matter – has won a joke competition, narrowly beating Sports Direct and BHS (proving that it has even [...]
Clamour for a quick-fire Brexit will grow if Trump abolishes Dodd-Frank December 13, 2016 Worryingly the spirit of the age is to characterise diplomatic relations as some sort of zero-sum game. As a consequence the UK urgently needs to avoid the temptation of pitching our national interest against global goals as we extricate ourselves from the EU. Ongoing harmony and goodwill between the UK and the remaining EU 27 will [...]
As Trump enters the White House, will the Federal Reserve hike interest rates more aggressively in 2017? December 13, 2016 It was Ronald Reagan who warned against inflation in 1984 by describing it creeping “like a thief in the night to rob our savings, rob our earnings, and take the bread off our tables.” It is ironic then that President-elect Donald Trump, who borrowed his forebear’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” to win the [...]