Hands promises not to rock the boat at £825m Four Seasons April 30, 2012 GUY Hands’ private equity house has sealed a long-awaited deal to buy Four Seasons Health Care in a deal worth £825m. Terra Firma will take a large majority stake in the market leading care home operator, which has around 24,000 beds. Four Seasons had been trading profitably but needed to refinance its £780m of debt [...]
Mortgage costs on the rise even with Bank rate anchored down April 30, 2012 HOME-OWNERS will this morning be hit by a wave of hiked interest rates from some of the country’s leading lenders, despite the Bank of England’s loose monetary policy. Standard variable rates (SVRs) will shoot up for over a million mortgage holders, tightening the squeeze on incomes even further. Yorkshire Bank and Clydesdale Bank will increase [...]
HKEx considers bid for London Metal Exchange April 30, 2012 THE parent company of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange yesterday confirmed that it is considering a bid for the London Metal Exchange (LME), which is estimated to be worth between £500m and £1.5bn. “The board confirms HKEx continues to participate in that process and understands it is one of a number of interested parties studying [...]
Doughty does Spanish deal April 30, 2012 DOUGHTY Hanson will create one of Spain’s largest private healthcare firms after agreeing to buy 40 per cent of Grupo Hospitalario Quirón from the Cordon Muro family. It did not disclose the value of the deal, which comes two months after it agreed to spend €355m on USP Hospitales. Doughty will bring the two firms [...]
RSM Tenon loses new chairman April 30, 2012 TROUBLED accountant RSM Tenon lost its second chairman since the start of the year yesterday, after Adrian Martin told the board he would step down as soon as a successor was found. Martin’s deputy, Michael Findlay, will also leave the board at the end May to rejoin Bank of America Merrill Lynch. RSM Tenon’s previous [...]
Spain back in recession as its austerity bites April 30, 2012 THE SPANISH economy shrank again in the first quarter of this year, according to official estimates published yesterday, making it the eighth Eurozone member to fall into recession. Meanwhile ratings agency Standard and Poor’s downgraded 11 Spanish banks, following its downgrade of the state last week from A to BBB+. GDP fell 0.3 per cent [...]
Lending to governments surges but private firms left in the cold April 30, 2012 GOVERNMENTS could be crowding out the private sector in the competition for credit, the latest official Eurozone statistics suggest. Data released by the European Central Bank (ECB) show that while lending to governments is surging on the continent, lending to private entities is either shrinking or stagnant. The numbers seem to confirm that the ECB’s [...]
SARKOZY NARROWING GAP ON HOLLANDE April 30, 2012 FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy has narrowed the gap between him and Socialist rival Francois Hollande with a week to go in the elections, according to the latest poll by Ipsos-Logica. Sarkozy trails with 47 per cent of the vote compared to Hollande’s 53 per cent, but has gained one percentage point since the last poll.
Greece’s retail sales down as Germany’s rise April 30, 2012 RETAIL sales plummeted again in Greece in February, official figures revealed yesterday, but increased in Germany, underlining the growing divergence between the core and peripheral Eurozone economies. Greek sales fell 13 per cent in the year to February, the fifth consecutive fall and an even sharper drop than the 10.6 per cent seen the previous [...]
Survey points to slower US growth April 30, 2012 ■ US government debt prices rose yesterday as anxiety over economic weakness in Europe and slowing growth in the United States led investors to favour lower-risk investments over stocks and other risky assets. A weaker-than-expected private report on business activities in the Chicago region in April fuelled jitters that the world’s biggest economy is experiencing [...]
