The Volkswagen scandal gets the Hollywood treatment as Leonardo DiCaprio and Paramount are to turn it into a film October 13, 2015 The Wolf of Wall Street is turning his attention to saving the planet, after Leonardo DiCaprio snapped up the film rights to a new book on the Volkswagen emissions scandal. DiCaprio's film company Appian Way will be in the driving seat, turning an as-yet unnamed and unpublished book on the scandal by New York Times journalist Jack Ewing on [...]
Here’s why investors should’ve bet on stock market floats last year: IPOs beat the FTSE 100 in 2014 October 13, 2015 Plucky investors looking to make a quick buck should've stomached the risk and brought companies that floated last year, as their shares outperformed the FTSE 100. New research by accounting firm Deloitte shows that the 30 IPOs which completed in 2014 generated an average return of 12.4 per cent, outperforming the FTSE 100 by 14.4 [...]
Asda poaches Sainsbury’s executive Roger Burnley to be chief operating officer October 13, 2015 Asda has poached one of rival Sainsbury’s top executives as competition among the supermarket chains heats up. Sainsbury’s retail and operations director Roger Burnley is jumping ship to take up the role of chief operating officer at Asda, the Walmart-owned group announced this morning. The appointment comes after Asda reported its worst ever quarterly result in the 16 [...]
UK house prices: Buy-to-let lending drove the mortgage boom in August, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders October 13, 2015 Mortgage lending ticked up in August compared with the same month last year, with buy-to-let lending posting a rapid increase. There was a whopping 37.9 per cent jump in buy-to-let lending on the year, with 22,200 mortgages approved. The amount of money lent out was up 47.8 per cent to £2.3bn, according to the figures released this morning [...]
Volkswagen cuts annual investment by €1bn to counter emissions scandal losses October 13, 2015 Volkswagen its slashing annual investment by €1bn in order to counter losses it will suffer as a result of its emissions scandal. In a statement this morning, the German car maker said it was changing its strategy for diesel cars, saying they “will be equipped with exhaust emissions systems that use the best environmental technology”. Read [...]
Royal Mail share sale: The government has missed an opportunity by excluding retail investors from this privatisation October 13, 2015 News the government has sold its remaining 14 per cent stake in Royal Mail to institutional and professional investors goes against the clear popularity and demand for retail offerings in privatisations. Registrations of interest for next year’s Lloyds Banking Group share offer are already in the hundreds of thousands. It would seem wild horses couldn’t drag [...]
SABMiller share price soars after reaching megabrew agreement in principle with AB InBev on takeover worth £44 a share October 13, 2015 The megabrew deal is finally on: SABMiller and AB InBev have reached an agreement on a buyout deal that could create the world’s biggest brewing company by far. Investors flocked to SABMiller, making it the FTSE's biggest riser after news broke this morning that the world’s two biggest beer-makers had agreed in principle a takeover worth £44 [...]
Bellway share price soars as housebuilder’s profit beats expectations on record house sales October 13, 2015 The figures Bellway shares rose 3.5 per cent in mid-morning trading as the UK housebuilder smashed expectations, reporting pre-tax profits soaring by 44 per cent year-on-year to hit £354.2m in the year to 31 July, comfortably ahead of analysts’ expectations of £343m. The housebuilder, one of the UK's largest, sold 7,752 homes, up 13.2 per cent, [...]
Worldpay’s London IPO will be biggest of 2015: Listing at 240p per share, valuing company at £4.8bn October 13, 2015 Payments processor Worldpay Group has priced its initial offer at 240p per ordinary share – almost exactly in the middle of expectations – meaning the company will have a market cap of £4.8bn when it goes public. This makes it the biggest float this year, easily besting Auto Trader, which went public in March with a valuation [...]
Asian markets rattled by mixed Chinese trade data as exports hold up but imports tumble further than expected October 13, 2015 Asian markets were shaken by mixed signals from fresh China trade data that rekindled worries about a slowdown in the world's second-biggest economy. The figures for September showed that, despite hitting a record-high trade surplus with exports holding up far better than expected, imports tumbled further than predicted. Economic data has been weak over the summer and [...]