RECORD SALES FOR IKEA September 17, 2009 SWEDISH furniture giant Ikea yesterday posted record sales of €21.5bn (£19.1bn) despite its slowest growth in more than a decade. Ikea’s new chief executive Mikael Ohlsson (pictured) said sales for the year to 31 August rose by 1.4 per cent, down from seven per cent growth in the previous year. Ohlsson’s predecessor Anders Dahlvig had [...]
DTZ says trading is in line with expectations September 17, 2009 Commercial property agent DTZ yesterday told shareholders it was trading “in line with expectations”, two months after reporting an annual pre-tax loss of £35.1m. Chairman Tim Melville-Ross yesterday said that the group’s £50m cost cutting programme had accelerating and “savings were well advanced”. Melville-Ross said: “The global economic crisis and resulting unrelenting pressure on global [...]
DAREDEVIL CHIEF ROLET BRINGS A BREATH OF FRESH AIR TO FUSTY LSE September 17, 2009 XAVIER Rolet is certainly freshening things up over at the London Stock Exchange. The exchange’s new boss has been busy over the past few weeks, having shaken up the LSE’s marketing team, struck a deal to replace its IT provider and got rid of its trusted PR adviser Finsbury (the super-spinner and its arch-rival Brunswick [...]
GOVERNMENT IS ACCUSED OF HIDING DEBT September 17, 2009 A FORMER Treasury adviser has accused the government of hiding the full extent of the public debt crisis by using controversial accounting rules to squirrel £32.5bn of spending off its books. An astonishing 87 per cent of private finance initiative deals – under which the taxpayer pays private firms to build and run hospitals, roads [...]
LLOYDS’ TOXIC DEBT PLAN HIT September 17, 2009 LLOYDS Banking Group’s hopes of avoiding participation in the government’s Asset Protection Scheme (APS) were dashed yesterday, as the Financial Services Authority (FSA) said the bank did not have sufficient capital to spurn the facility. FSA officials, who have been stress testing the bank, have told Lloyds that the level of capital it would have [...]
Blackstone poised to snap up half of BritishLand’s Broadgate complex September 17, 2009 PROPERTY investment firm British Land is poised to complete the sale of half of its £2.2bn City office complex Broadgate to US private equity house Blackstone. The two firms were last night thrashing out the terms of the deal, which will see Blackstone enter into a joint venture with British Land. Blackstone will pay just [...]
Hershey eyes Cadbury bid September 17, 2009 THETRUST in charge of US confectionery maker Hershey has hired bankers to advise on a possible bid for Cadbury, after fellow American giant Kraft had a $16.7bn (£10.2bn) bid rebuffed. Hershey has drafted in Goldman Sachs banker Byron Trott and boutique banking firm Watch Hill Partners to advise on a bid for the company. Trott [...]
Google’s printing deal is revolutionary September 17, 2009 GOOGLE has come in for a lot of flak from publishers, some of it justified. But if you want to understand why it remains an exceptional company, there is no better place to start than with its latest deal. Over the last seven years, Google has scanned 2m out-of-print books from libraries and made them [...]
Levene: stop bashing City September 17, 2009 LLOYD’S of London chairman Lord Levene has launched a fierce defence of the City, after suggestions its size should be curbed following the financial crisis. Speaking at the Lloyd’s City Dinner, Levene last night accused politicians of “pandering to populist outrage” with “knee-jerk reactions”. He said political suggestions the so-called “real economy” is “superior and [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING September 17, 2009 FINANCIAL TIMES UK RAISES OPEL ‘SUBSIDY WAR’ FEARLord Mandelson called on Brussels last night to ensure that Germany’s offer of multibillion-euro subsidies to smooth the sale of General Motors’ European arm does not begin a “subsidy war”, with governments using state aid to protect jobs. The UK business secretary’s intervention in the political row over [...]
