MEET THE ADVISERS: January 8, 2012 GUY PETERS SEYMOUR PIERCE Belvoir’s nominated advisory team is being led by Guy Peters, managing director of corporate finance at the investment bank Seymour Pierce. A qualified solicitor, Peters moved into investment banking in 1989, working at Arbuthnot Securities for a decade before joining Shore Capital in 2004. There he acted for the team running [...]
Novartis takes $120m hit with product recall January 8, 2012 NOVARTIS’S consumer health unit will take a $120m (£78m) hit in the fourth quarter after the Swiss drugmaker decided to voluntarily recall some products in the United States and move to improve quality standards at manufacturing sites. Novartis said in a statement yesterday that operations and shipments had been temporarily stopped at the Novartis Consumer [...]
Low-budget horror tops US movies January 8, 2012 Low-budget horror movie The Devil Inside topped the weekend box office with a surprising $34.5m in US and Canadian ticket sales, according to studio estimates released yesterday. The strong performance for Devil knocked Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol to second place. The fourth movie in the action franchise brought in an estimated $20.5m [...]
Israel vows to fight hacking January 8, 2012 Israel has promised to hit back after the online publication of thousands of its citizens’ credit card details by a hacker who says he is based in Saudi Arabia. It compared the attack to terrorism. The data theft, which appeared to focus on commercial websites, was one of the worst Israel has said it has [...]
SIR PAUL RUDDOCK DEFENDS HIS HONOUR January 8, 2012 Sir Paul Ruddock, the hedge fund manager caught up in controversy after he was awarded a knighthood, has defended his honour and said his award was for helping revive the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum. The Lansdowne Partners co-founder was criticised for also being a Tory donor.
Venezuela ignores World Bank rule on Exxon case January 8, 2012 VENEZUALAN president Hugo Chavez said yesterday that his country would not recognise a ruling by a World Bank tribunal in a multibillion-dollar arbitration case with Exxon Mobil. Exxon took Venezuela to the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, or ICSID, seeking as much as $12bn (£7.8bn) in compensation after Chavez ordered the [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS January 8, 2012 Innis & Gunn Innis & Gunn, the independent brewer, has recruited David Cockburn as chief financial officer and a member of the board. Before moving to Innis & Gunn, David spent 19 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers and, latterly, Grant Thornton, where he was made a partner in 2006. Cockburn specialised in corporate finance and was involved [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS January 8, 2012 GROUPE EUROTUNNEL Morgan Stanley downgrades the channel tunnel operator to “equal-weight” from over-weight, with a target price of €4.70 (£3.88) after a circa 30 per cent drop in its share price from its peak. The broker cites a weaker macro outlook and change in the market’s approach on valuation for the fall, and says that [...]
US jobless rate falls January 6, 2012 US employment grew solidly last month and the jobless rate dropped to a near three-year low of 8.5 percent, offering the strongest evidence yet of an acceleration in economic activity. Nonfarm payrolls increased 200,000 last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, the most in three months and way above economists’ expectations for a 150,000 [...]
FTSE steady as investors eye US jobs data January 6, 2012 The FTSE 100 was steady in early trading with media and telecoms gains offsetting weak financial services and retail sectors. Investors were focusing on US jobs data out later while the Eurozone debt crisis continued to dampen sentiment. Analysts’ fears that Eurozone countries and banks could struggle to tap markets for capital this year continue [...]