Ocado sales jump 19.2 per cent as company says it expects to keep growing ahead of the curve March 10, 2015 The figures Ocado’s group sales jumped 19.2 per cent in the 12 weeks to 22 February, rising to £271.1m, from £227.5m during the same period last year. Meanwhile, retail sales were up a similarly impressive 15.2 per cent to £252.0m, two months after the company reported its first profit. Ocado said that on 22 February it had [...]
G4S share price rises on back of higher profits March 10, 2015 The numbers Outsourcing firm G4S has reported a pre-tax profit of £148m for 2014 – up from a loss of £190m the previous year. Revenue climbed 3.9 per cent to £6.7bn while earnings per share increased to 13.6p from 12.9p. Profit before interest, tax and amortisation was in line with City estimates at £424m – 7.9 [...]
Prudential boss Tidjane Thiam jumps into Credit Suisse role March 9, 2015 Prudential boss Tidjane Thiam is set to leave the FTSE 100 giant later this year to head Swiss banking titan Credit Suisse, it emerged last night. The surprise exit, which would bring the curtain down on a six-year tenure at the helm of the Pru, is expected to be announced as soon as this morning, [...]
Institute of Directors presses for chair of Barclays’ pay board Sir John Sunderland to go March 9, 2015 Investors and business groups attacked Barclays’ long-serving director Sir John Sunderland yesterday, accusing the bank of failing to honour a pledge to replace him as chairman of the remuneration committee. Last April, Barclays said that Sunderland would leave the bank “at a date to be agreed”, and would be replaced by Crawford Gillies. But 11 [...]
Auto Trader IPO could value company at £2.5bn March 9, 2015 Used-car website Auto Trader could be valued at up to £2.5bn when the company floats on the London Stock Exchange this month. The company announced plans to float at the end of last month with a valuation expected to reach just £2bn. Auto Trader, which operates Britain’s leading website for buying and selling new and used [...]
CRH share price dives as doubts of Holcim-Lafarge merger hit Irish firm March 9, 2015 Shares in Irish building supplies company CRH plummeted yesterday amid reports that a merger between Swiss cement maker Holcim and its French counterpart Lafarge could fall apart. The fears arose after Holcim’s largest stakeholder, Thomas Schmidheiny, who owns about 20 per cent of the company, demanded a better deal, according to Swiss weekly SonntagsZeitung. [...]
Lord Adair Turner finds something useful to do March 9, 2015 The man who described some banking as socially useless gets a new job – with a bank. It is not unfair to say that Lord Adair Turner has not always been a friend to banks. Turner was a non-executive director at Standard Chartered in the boom years before the crash, and an executive at Merrill [...]
General Motors’ activist investor succeeds in share buyback battle March 9, 2015 GENERAL Motors (GM) announced a $5bn (£3.3bn) a share buyback yesterday, ending a two-month standoff with activist investor Harry J. Wilson. The Detroit car giant came close to collapse in 2009 as the financial crisis took hold, and was forced to file for bankruptcy, relying on a $51bn US government bailout. But the company has [...]
Pizza Express takes a slice out of home market March 9, 2015 Pizza Express yesterday reported strong half-year trading with like-for-like sales ahead by 6.8 per cent in the 28 week period to 11 January 2015. Chief executive Richard Hodgson said the restaurant chain’s strong performance is down to new openings, continuous innovation and a record Christmas trading period, which saw like-forlike growth of 11.2 per cent [...]
Steve Easterbrook sees problems stack up on his plate at McDonald’s March 9, 2015 Fast-food giant McDonald’s yesterday revealed that customers were “lovin’ it” a lot less after unveiling another slide in worldwide sales, for the ninth month in a row. Worldwide sales fell 1.7 per cent, where analysts polled by Consensus Metrix had been expecting a 0.3 per cent decline. In the US, sales at restaurants open at [...]