Troubles not over: Yell plans its next debt restructuring March 25, 2012 YELL group is already concerned about meeting the terms of next year’s financial covenants and is looking to get a head start on speaking to lenders. The struggling Yellow Pages provider, whose stock has lost 99 per cent of its value in the last four years, is set to appoint Goldman Sachs and Greenhill to [...]
LLOYD’S OF LONDON TO POST LOSS March 25, 2012 LLOYD’S of London, the insurance market, is this week expected to post a significant annual loss following a string of natural disasters including the Japanese tsunami, the flooding in Thailand (pictured) and the earthquake in New Zealand. The loss is set to come in below £1bn despite the total value of claims going over £10bn.
The Mitie boss who says board quotas are not the answer March 25, 2012 HOW many FTSE 250 bosses are on Twitter? Before I met Ruby McGregor-Smith, the chief executive of outsourcer Mitie, I would have confidently said the number was zero. But then @RubyMS, as she is known to those who follow her tweets, is not your average chief executive. Asian, female and under 50 years old, she [...]
Political risk is a global threat to recovery March 25, 2012 IN a tentative recovery, everyone always looks for the next nasty shock that could spring up and derail growth. The answer this time is political risk – all over the world. We all know about the geo-political tensions in the Middle East that sent Brent over $126 earlier this month. But in a year heavy [...]
Odeon sees losses widen March 25, 2012 ODEON, Europe’s largest cinema chain, has seen its losses widen to £70m last year, up from £44m in 2010, according to the latest accounts published on Companies House. The group, which runs 2,153 screens in 231 cinemas in Europe, reported a 12 per cent rise in group turnover to £725m last year. The £70m loss [...]
Olympic Media Buzz LONDON 2012 PARTNERS March 25, 2012 IN ASSOCIATION with Repskan.com, City A.M. is measuring the relative Olympic media buzz around the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games partners, week by week. The leaderboard, right, reflects their ranking over the past week, in this case from Wednesday 14 March to Wednesday 21 March. Adidas has seen media attention on the conditions of [...]
Game Group’s lenders mull a rescue deal March 25, 2012 GAME GROUP’S lenders, led by The Royal Bank of Scotland, are working on plans that could result in them buying the crisis-hit video games retailer out of administration. The company, which runs 1,274 stores worldwide and employs 10,000 workers – 6,000 of them in the UK – is expected to fall into administration as early [...]
Brand Alley’s new friends help boost online retailer’s sales by 60 per cent March 25, 2012 BRAND ALLEY, the online designer goods retailer, said an increasing number of consumers shopping via Facebook and their mobile phones helped drive a 60 per cent surge in sales last year to £28.9m. The French company, which launched its UK arm in 2008, sells heavily discounted designer clothing, accessories and homeware in “flash sales” over [...]
Lack of corporate guidance in spite of demand from audience March 25, 2012 DESPITE increased pressure on companies to be more open about their business practice and performance, firms across Europe are failing to rise to the challenge, new research claimed yesterday. More than 60 per cent of the top 200 companies in Europe provide no detailed corporate guidance to their core investment audience, despite the vast majority [...]
DOCTORS AND POLITICIANS CHARGE THEIR OWN GLASSES March 25, 2012 AS the debate rumbles on over setting a minimum price for alcohol, the British Medical Association has shown itself to be a bastion of moral fortitude. Heartily backing the move, which has found favour with the Prime Minister, it spoke out against the “scourge of alcohol abuse” and has lobbied against supermarkets selling cheap booze [...]