Whirlpool buys 51 per cent stake in China home appliance maker August 13, 2013 HOME appliance maker Whirlpool said yesterday it will acquire a controlling stake in Hefei Rongshida Sanyo Electric for $552m (£357m) to expand in China’s fast-growing market for washing machines and fridges. Hefei Sanyo was set up in 1994 as a joint venture between Japan’s Sanyo Electric, now a unit of Panasonic, and Heifei State-Owned Assets [...]
Ackman quits JC Penney board three years into turnaround push August 13, 2013 JC PENNEY said yesterday that activist investor Bill Ackman had resigned from the board, three years after embarking on a public and at times acrimonious campaign to turn around the struggling department store operator and less than a week after demanding the ousting of its chairman Thomas Engibous and interim chief executive Myron Ullman. JC [...]
Groupama shores up balance sheet with €518m SocGen sale August 13, 2013 FRENCH insurer Groupama has sold its remaining stake in bank Societe Generale for €517.8m (£445m) as it continues moves to shore up its balance sheet. Groupama, which had come under pressure from ratings agencies, said that the sale of its 1.86 per cent Societe Generale stake would allow it to boost financial flexibility and cut [...]
EnQuest tanks in tandem with oil August 13, 2013 North Sea oil producer EnQuest has posted a 13.2 per cent drop in first half profits due to a decline in the oil price from $112 to $109 per barrel as well as various one-off costs. The company reported pre-tax profits of $167.2m (£108.1m), significantly lower than in the previous year as well as delaying [...]
Ithaca profits soar on Valiant deal August 13, 2013 Ithaca Energy, a North Sea oil producer, saw its pre-tax profits in the second quarter jump to $69.1m compared with $21.7m in the same period in 2012, which it attributed to the $309m acquisition of Valiant Petroleum in April. Yet the firm’s Aim-listed shares closed down 3.36 per cent at 115p, with analysts pointing to [...]
Sefton output improves in July August 13, 2013 Aim-listed oil and gas explorer Sefton Resources yesterday said that it had seen a “significant improvement in production” in July, producing an average 171 barrels of oil per day (bopd), totalling 5,308 barrels of oil, compared to 110 bopd, totalling 3,310 barrels of oil, the previous month. The firm added that water disposal issues had [...]
City Moves for 14 August 2013 | Who’s switching jobs August 13, 2013 Aviva Investors The asset management business has announced the appointment of Sunita Kara as portfolio manager for European high yield. Kara has over 14 years’ experience in the investment industry. She was most recently at Baring Asset Management, where she was global high yield portfolio manager. Prior to that, she was a senior credit analyst [...]
Best of the Brokers for 14 August 2013 August 13, 2013 WHITBREAD Panmure Gordon has downgraded the leisure group from “hold” to “sell”, with a decrease in target price from 2688p to 2644p. Despite a strong performance from Costa, the broker thinks that the coffee chain and Premier Inn will reach saturation in the UK sooner than anticipated. HOCHSCHILD MINING UBS has started covering the miner [...]
London Report: Housing pickup sparks rise in blue chip stocks August 13, 2013 F RESH signs of a recovery in the UK housing sector helped nudge Britain’s benchmark share index higher yesterday, with several traders expecting more minor gains over the coming month. The blue-chip FTSE 100 index closed up 0.6 per cent, or 37.60 points, at 6,611.94 points. A survey by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors [...]
New York Report: Shares lifted by better macro data and Apple August 13, 2013 US STOCKS rose yesterday after strong economic data boosted confidence, while Apple bolstered the Nasdaq after billionaire investor Carl Icahn took to Twitter to reveal a long position in the stock. Rising US retail sales in July, combined with a higher Zew German sentiment index and Eurozone industrial production, painted a rosier picture of the [...]