Autonomy avoids gloom thanks to banking deals July 22, 2008 Software firm Autonomy yesterday reported expectation-busting figures for its second quarter and was bullish about the second half of the year, sending its shares soaring to an eight-month high. The Cambridge-based company, which develops software for tracking email and phone conversations, said pre-tax profits rose by 85 per cent to £25.4m, exceeding analysts’ expectations of [...]
Wall Street giants hit by SEC probe into short-selling July 17, 2008 American regulators have subpoenaed top investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch as part of an investigation into the suspected manipulation of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers shares. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also approached more than 50 hedge funds to obtain trading and communications data. The inquiry aims [...]
Setanta’s £125m bet July 1, 2008 Setanta Sports has upped its multimillion-pound gamble to take on the dominant Sky Sports by paying a record £125m for the rights to the Scottish Premier League. The new four-year deal is the largest in Scottish football history and will go through to 2014. It is more than double the £54m Setanta paid for its [...]
Harley Street might help steer ITV back to good health July 18, 2008 At least you can’t accuse ITV of not trying. The colour advertising spreads promoting its new drama Harley Street were everywhere yesterday. We will know today whether ITV has managed to engineer that increasingly rare phenomenon, a new drama hit. At least the Radio Times made it Pick of the Day and noted that while [...]
Telefonica agrees £18bn deal for O2 November 1, 2005 Long term takeover target O2 has agreed to a £17.7bn offer from Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica in a deal that will see yet another British phone firm fall to foreign ownership. Since leaving BT four years ago O2’s relatively small size in Europe has seen it touted as the perfect target for acquisitive rivals. O2 [...]
JC Flowers seals Refco futures deal October 19, 2005 American hedge fund Refco has thrashed out a deal to sell its core futures brokerage to a consortium led by JC Flowers and has decided to put the rest of the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The beleaguered company agreed heads of terms for a $768m (£440m) deal to sell the division yesterday. Also [...]
Boomtime for Credit Suisse November 3, 2005 Credit Suisse became the latest big bank to report soaring profits on the back of stronger financial markets. The Swiss bank reported a 42 per cent rise in third quarter profits to Sfr1.92bn (£846m) thanks to growth across its investment banking, private banking and asset management divisions. Oswald Grübel, chief executive, called the results “satisfactory”. [...]
Caution urged over Peacocks buy-out November 1, 2005 Broker Numis warned Peacocks shareholders to scrutinise the budget retailer’s performance at the half year as the recent run of strong trading could make the proposed £404m take-out price look “conservative”. The Peacocks management team, backed by Goldman Sachs, Debenhams chairman John Lovering and American hedge funds Och-Ziff Capital Management Group and Perry Capital LLC, [...]
Jurys backing offer October 13, 2005 The board of the Irish hotels group Jurys has recommended a bid led by the daughters of the late founder P.V Doyle to take the company private. The hotel group board announced yesterday that it had reached terms with JDH Acquisitions, a group that has the support of 40 per cent of Jurys shareholders. A [...]
Advisers in all night Refco talks October 17, 2005 Refco held a second day of weekend meetings yesterday as a group of about 50 advisers gathered in New York in an effort to salvage the disgraced group’s regulated futures brokerage arm and determine the fate of its ailing operations. The advisers had begun emergency meetings on Saturday that stretched late into the night to [...]