Man chief exec sees pay drop March 19, 2012 THE CHIEF executive of Man Group was awarded a package of nearly $7m (£4.4m) for last year but missed out on another $14m after the hedge fund suffered during several years of market turmoil. Peter Clarke’s package for 2011 included a $2.9m salary, bonus and share award and a deferred three-year incentive award which could [...]
Profits fail to rise at owner of Hovis bread March 19, 2012 PREMIER Foods, the owner of brands including Batchelors soup and Hovis bread, has admitted that it will be forced to sell more assets as part of an enormous debt restructuring plan. Britain’s biggest food manufacturer says it will focus on its core businesses as it struggles to deal with a £1bn debt pile which built [...]
Sprint slumps as analyst cites bankruptcy risk March 19, 2012 SHARES in Sprint Nextel fell 4.5 per cent yesterday after an analyst report said there is an increasing risk that the US mobile provider could end up filing for bankruptcy in the next five years. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett downgraded Sprint shares to “underperform” from “market-perform” saying that the company will face “new and larger [...]
Public lost taste for food brands March 19, 2012 Premier Foods may have spent a lot of dough on Hovis but it has proved to be a major drag on the firm’s profits. Its 2007 purchase of arch-rival Rank Hovis McDougall, the then-owner of the iconic bread brand, for £1.2bn in a debt-laden transaction, now seems typical of the overly-optimistic deals that preceded the credit [...]
BBC’s Mark Thompson to leave after the Olympics March 19, 2012 THE BBC has stepped up its search to find the next director general after Mark Thompson confirmed yesterday he will leave the corporation in the autumn after the Olympics. Thompson, who has been in the job since 2004, told BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten of his departure in a meeting yesterday and said that the [...]
Amazon buys robot-maker March 19, 2012 Amazon said yesterday it has agreed to buy Kiva Systems for $775m (£488m) in cash, a deal that will bring more robotic technology to the e-commerce company’s giant network of warehouses. The acquisition, which has been approved by Kiva’s stockholders, is expected to close in the second quarter of 2012, Amazon added in a statement. [...]
Revenue growth slows at Adobe March 19, 2012 Adobe, maker of Photoshop and Acrobat software, said yesterday that revenue growth has slowed as sales of its widely used Creative Suite software fell, missing its forecasts, ahead of widely anticipated product launches this quarter. Revenue rose 1.7 per cent to $1.045bn (£657m) in its quarter ended 2 March. Sales at the digital media unit [...]
London boost for Berkeley March 19, 2012 HOUSEBUILDER Berkeley says it has hit over £1bn in forward sales, up from £813m last May, driven by strong demand for residential property in London and the south east. The firm used a trading update to announce that it had acquired seven sites for a total of £80m since November, including a former Royal Mail [...]
ANALYST VIEWS: CAN BERKELEY’S BOOM CONTINUE DURING 2012? March 19, 2012 ROBIN HARDY | PEEL HUNT I’m quite surprised that the share price has been as weak as it has been. They’ve bought a lot of land while keeping their debt under control. People would have expected their debt to be north of £100m and it’s only at £84m. SIMON BROWN | NORTHLAND UK A doubling [...]
JUSTIN KING GOES THE EXTRA MILE FOR SPORT RELIEF March 19, 2012 SAINSBURY’S chief Justin King has been busy pounding the pavement in order to raise money for Sport Relief ahead of the Sport Relief Mile this Sunday. King, whose stores stock much of the Sport Relief charity merchandise, has run 32 miles across the UK in March in the hope of beating last year’s efforts for [...]
