Punch scraps its dividend as declining beer sales hit September 4, 2008 Pubs group Punch Taverns is scrapping its dividend, the group said yesterday. The move comes in the wake of reports of declining sales, which led to a plunge in the company’s share price. Punch shares closed down 12 per cent at 278.25p. Punch Taverns said the move was prudent given the “challenging market conditions”. The [...]
Woes aid Whitbread September 5, 2008 Whitbread, Britain’s biggest hotel and restaurants operator, yesterday emerged as a rare winner in the consumer slowdown, revealing a boost in sales in the first half of this year. Whitbread’s Premier Inn budget hotel chain accounts for about 70 per cent of total profits. Premier Inn had total sales up 17.9 per cent and like-for-like [...]
ITV faces exit from FTSE 100 August 29, 2008 Mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse and broadcaster ITV are in danger of being ousted from the blue chip FTSE 100 at its next quarterly review. The two will join pub chain Enterprise Inns and Ukrainian iron ore producer Ferrexpo, which have both fallen below 111th position in the FTSE ranking, based on their market capitalisation, [...]
New name for merged InBev July 24, 2008 Anheuser-Busch InBev, the newly formed company from a deal struck between the two of the world’s largest brewers 10 days ago, could be renamed AB InBev. At the start of last week, American brewer Anheuser-Busch agreed to be taken over by Stella Artois maker InBev, a deal worth £26bn and one that will create the [...]
Party time for Beijing stars August 26, 2008 Celebrations for Great Britain’s most successful Olympic Games for 100 years are set to continue into today as the nation’s new sporting heroes toast their overwhelming success in Beijing. The 300-strong squad were met by crowds of flag-waving fans yesterday as they touched down at Heathrow Airport on a British Airways plane painted with a [...]
Setanta shows ITV the way to succeed in commercial TV August 8, 2008 By now there is little more to be said about ITV. The expected bloodbath duly arrived on cue this week and advertising revenue may not recover for 18 months. How different for ITV’s rival Setanta which is broadcasting the FA Cup and England internationals. The Irish pay TV sports broadcaster goes into the new football [...]
Jon Moulton: why making money is my hobby as well as my profession September 5, 2008 The City’s most outspoken private equity chief talks to Katie Hope about the credit crunch At a time when most of the financial services sector is in despair over how bad the economic crisis is, Jon Moulton can barely contain his glee. He estimates the credit crunch will go on for “at least two years” [...]
Budget airlines have become a part of modern life, for better or worse August 1, 2008 Rising oil prices mean that cheap flights are under threat. But is that a good or a bad thing? Such arcane things as the price of oil were until recently beyond the ken of most ordinary folk. But the workings of massive Kazakh exploration companies and the politics of laying pipelines across Uzbekistan are now [...]
Whitbread wields axe as speculators circle October 24, 2005 Whitbread is expected to reveal plans to axe a quarter of its head office work force tomorrow. As he reports disappointing interim figures on Tuesday, chief executive Alan Parker is expected to confirm that up to 250 jobs will go at the leisure group’s Luton headquarters. Parker is fighting to keep the disparate business together. [...]
‘No talks’ at Whitbread October 26, 2005 The wind was knocked out of Whitbread’s sails yesterday after chief executive Alan Parker moved to quieten the takeover talk that has buoyed its shares. The leisure group was one of the biggest fallers of the day after Parker said there had been “no talks” with private or trade buyers about selling off any of [...]