All Star Lanes scores £3.5m strike after successful turnaround February 12, 2017 All Star Lanes has secured a £3.5m refinancing after a successful 2016 saw its underlying profits jump 39.5 per cent to £1.4m. The American-inspired ten-pin bowling chain has one branch in Manchester and four in London, including its recently reopened Brick Lane flagship location. Although the company was founded in 2006, it was only after [...]
The Body Shop attracts buyout bidders in £850m sale February 12, 2017 Potential buyers are emerging in the $1bn (£850m) sale of ethical beauty brand The Body Shop. Apax Partners, a high-profile backer of companies including Karl Lagerfeld and Orange, has registered its interest, The Sunday Times reported yesterday. Current owner L’Oréal put the iconic British store up for sale last week, saying it wanted to “give it [...]
Boden appoints Tesco veteran as new CEO February 12, 2017 British clothing brand Boden has appointed Jill Easterbrook as its new CEO. Easterbrook formerly worked at Tesco for 15 years, holding at different times the roles of chief customer officer, group business transformation director and managing director of clothing. She left the company in 2016 and has been a non-executive director at Auto Trader since [...]
British film and TV industries storm ahead with £1.6bn investment February 12, 2017 Spend on British film and TV production jumped 13 per cent in 2016 to 1.6bn, in a stellar year for the UK’s creative industries. Figures from the BFI showed that 48 major UK-based films accounted for 1.35bn of total investment. Last year’s top three grossing films at the UK box office were all filmed on [...]
Klimt painting set to fetch more than £45m at auction February 12, 2017 A painting by Gustav Klimt is expected to sell for at least £45m at auction next month. The 1907 landscape, entitled ‘Bauerngarten’, will go up for sale at Sotheby’s in London on 1 March. It was previously sold at Christie’s for $5.8m in 1994, and appeared in a Royal Academy exhibition last year. Works by [...]
British business leaders urge government to improve the UK’s lagging infrastructure February 6, 2017 Two thirds of British business leaders think that the UK’s infrastructure is worse than other developed economies, according to a Lloyds Bank survey released today. Only 8 per cent of the 77 boardroom-level executives who responded thought that the national infrastructure of the UK was better than that of other countries. The results of the [...]
Economists following Bank of England’s lead raise UK growth forecasts February 5, 2017 City economists are raising their predictions for the UK economy’s growth in line with the Bank of England’s more positive outlook. In a survey conducted by Consensus Economics, the average forecast for 2017 growth rose to 1.4 per cent, The Sunday Times reported today. The positive outlook is up from a low of 0.6 per [...]
RMT boss says “fiasco” rail franchise system is beyond reform February 5, 2017 The RMT Union has welcomed the findings of a House of Commons select committee in its damning report on rail franchises. RMT general secretary Mick Cash called the franchise system a “fiasco” and said that the report confirmed the government had covered up Southern Rail’s poor performance. However, he did not think the suggested reforms [...]
BP’s profits set to halve for the second year in a row due to low oil prices February 5, 2017 Energy giant BP’s full-year profits are expected to halve to under $3bn, down from almost $6bn last year. The predicted fall in annual profits comes at the end of a year of low oil prices and a difficult environment for downstream business. BP’s investor relations team projected underlying profit of $560m (£448.5m) for the final [...]
No change in interest rates expected by economists ahead of Superthursday January 30, 2017 The Bank of England is set to keep its interest rate at 0.25 per cent this week, economists predict, despite forecasts that inflation is creeping up. The bank's monetary policy committee (MPC) meets ahead of publishing its latest rates decision this Thursday. On the same day, the bank will publish its quarterly inflation report, making [...]
