The bike and car parts retailer who wants to own Britain on the move June 20, 2010 Halfords and its chief executive David Wild are having a good recession. Earlier this month, the bikes and car maintenance retail chain posted a strong set of full-year figures: pre-tax profits rose 42 per cent to £110m, while sales rose three per cent to £832m. The FTSE 250 business said the trend for healthy living [...]
Start-ups secure funding as recovery kicks in April 26, 2010 For those of us on the ground building businesses, a new reality is emerging as the recovery sets in. Ariadne has won funding for five companies in 2010 including Everyclick, which has secured a hefty sum from new and existing investors. Why are so many start-ups getting funded – in our portfolio and elsewhere – [...]
WEE WILLIE BRUSHES UP ON BA’S PR STRATEGY April 19, 2010 THAT pesky cloud of Icelandic volcanic ash may have caused havoc among passengers and crippling losses to airlines, but at least there has been a silver lining for one man. “Wee” Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways, has suffered something of a PR nightmare over the past year amid strikes and crisis-hit revenues, [...]
Tackling the budget deficit will be a hard pill to swallow post-election April 22, 2010 RESEARCH DIRECTOR, FOREX.COM JANE FOLEY ACCORDING to the minutes of the last Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting at the start of April, the Bank of England concluded that for many committee members, concerns about the outlook for the UK economy had eased. The market appears to agree – the consensus expectation is that first quarter [...]
Labour and Liberals move to the left April 14, 2010 NEW Labour isn’t dead: about that Alistair Darling could not have been any more emphatic in his interview with City A.M. today. We asked him whether Labour’s manifesto – with its 50p tax, restrictions on hostile takeover bids, increases in regulation and no clear plan to reduce the size of the state – should be [...]
My corporate jet is easyJet: meet the platform boss taking on the LSE May 17, 2010 HE TALKS LOUDLY and moves fast. Alasdair Haynes, the chief executive of the pan-European trading platform Chi-X Europe, cuts a larger than life figure. The boss of the trading platform, which has grabbed a 30 per cent share of FTSE 100 trading from long-established rival the London Stock Exchange (LSE) since it was set up [...]
Denton Wilde Sapte joins the rush for transatlantic law firm mergers June 6, 2010 MERGERS and acquisitions are rattling along at quite a pace among transatlantic law firms – unlike at the corporate clients they service, many of which are still finding the M&A game a little hard going at the moment, not least of course Prudential. The latest legal mega-deal repays a closer look. The City’s Denton Wilde [...]
The man who could be chancellor plans radical changes for the City May 3, 2010 Allister Heath and David Crow pay a visit to Vince Cable ahead of the last week of the election campaign FEW politicians have emerged from the financial crisis with their reputation intact. Vince Cable must be the only one who has actually enhanced his, with his brand of left-wing policies playing perfectly to the shifting [...]
Bailing out Greece is not the answer February 9, 2010 IT is now clear that Germany, the European Central Bank and others are seriously talking about bailing out Greece. The negotiations could still collapse; but there has been a significant shift over the past 24 hours, with a panicked European establishment increasingly desperate to salvage its beloved single currency. One option would be for Germany [...]
The fund manager who swallowed New Star and is looking for more March 28, 2010 We are at the beginning of the end of the financial crisis, according to the chief executive of Henderson Global Investors. “It will be a very slow recovery throughout 2010,” says Andrew Formica, the 38-year-old boss of the UK’s third-largest listed fund manager, which boasts assets under management of £58.1bn. The confident Australian is sat [...]