Merrill eyes Bloomberg sale July 7, 2008 American investment bank Merrill Lynch is in negotiations to sell its 20 per cent stake in financial data and news firm Bloomberg, as it seeks to raise more cash to firm up its balance sheet. Talks with the firm’s founder and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg are still at an early stage, according to those [...]
New Orange supremo in drive back to basics July 4, 2008 For a man who has spent his entire career in the telecoms industry, it seems strange that Tom Alexander, Orange UK’s newly installed chief executive, should list his first passion as racing cars. As we travel across London in the back of his chauffer driven BMW 7-series, he tells me he never expected to make [...]
Trinity warns on crumbling UK ad market July 1, 2008 Trinity Mirror Group shares plunged as much as 30 per cent after it issued a stark profits warning due to double-digit declines in advertising revenues. “We have seen a marked year on year decline in advertising revenues across our businesses during May and June and this is expected to continue for the remainder of the [...]
Setanta’s £125m bet July 1, 2008 Setanta Sports has upped its multimillion-pound gamble to take on the dominant Sky Sports by paying a record £125m for the rights to the Scottish Premier League. The new four-year deal is the largest in Scottish football history and will go through to 2014. It is more than double the £54m Setanta paid for its [...]
US spending aids Pearson November 2, 2005 Pearson, the publishing group, enjoyed a strong third quarter as the American government ploughed funds into education. The group that publishes the Financial Times posted a 20 per cent increase in operating profit as sales moved ahead 10 per cent in the nine months to 30 September. Its key education division posted a 13 per [...]
Co-op will vote against BSkyB at AGM November 2, 2005 Pay TV broadcaster BSkyB suffered a fresh blow to its share buyback plans after shareholder Co-operative Insurance Society (CIS) announced it would vote against the proposal at what is expected to be a stormy AGM this Friday. The insurer, which joins a growing list of institutional investors who have threatened to scupper the plan, said [...]
AOL’s co-founder Case quits Time Warner November 1, 2005 The curtain came down yesterday on what some consider to be one of the biggest corporate mistakes of recent times as Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, quit the board of Time Warner. Case was instrumental in brokering a deal in 2000 that saw AOL merge with Time Warner creating the world’s largest media company in [...]
L&G blocks Sky’s plan for buyback October 31, 2005 BSkyB is set for a stormy Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Friday after major shareholder Legal & General (L&G) came out publicly over the weekend against the company’s share buyback plan. There is a history of acrimony between BSkyB and L&G — the fund manager voted against a buyback plan last year. Shareholder News Corp, [...]
Bad news as poor growth hits Reuters October 28, 2005 Shares in Reuters fell by more than 5 per cent yesterday as City followers were unimpressed with the media company’s failure to raise its second half growth forecasts. The company’s stock fell as much as 20p to 346p in early trading before recovering slightly. The data and news provider reported an underlying 1 per cent [...]
Eutelsat’s IPO abandoned October 28, 2005 Eutelsat, the world’s third largest satellite operator, dramatically abandoned its planned initial public offering (IPO) on the Paris Euronext late last night, citing volatile European stock markets. The news comes after Eutelsat was forced to slash its IPO valuation by 20 per cent to around €2.7bn (£1.83bn) on Tuesday, because investors thought its price was [...]