Peacocks sold to Edinburgh Woollen Mill February 22, 2012 EDINBURGH Woollen Mill has rescued the distressed fashion chain Peacocks out of administration, saving 6,000 jobs, though thousands of staff are still to be made redundant. Administrator KPMG said the deal, which was settled at the weekend, will save 388 shops but more than 244 stores have ceased trading with immediate effect, leading to 3,100 [...]
Tchenguiz brothers set for new battle with SFO February 22, 2012 PROPERTY tycoons Vincent and Robert Tchenguiz have won the right for a judicial review of the circumstances surrounding their arrests last year during a Serious Fraud Office probe. Yesterday the embattled SFO did not contest High Court applications by the brothers, who were held in March as part of the SFO inquiry into the collapse [...]
Shell in £1bn bid to snap up Cove Energy February 22, 2012 ROYAL Dutch Shell yesterday announced a £992.4m bid for Cove Energy as it seeks to expand its footprint in the East African market. Cove’s main asset is an 8.5 per cent stake in the Rovuma Offshore Area 1 in Mozambique where more than 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas has already been identified. Shell [...]
MEET THE ADVISERS February 22, 2012 GERALDINE Murphy heads the oil & gas advisory team at Standard Chartered Bank and is leading the team advising Cove Energy. She joined the bank in 2007 following the acquisition of Harrison Lovegrove & Co and has over 20 years of oil and gas deal experience. Prior to joining Standard Chartered she was an executive [...]
OIL MAJOR’S AFRICAN ADVENTURE February 22, 2012 *£992.4m – bid value *8.5 per cent – Cove’s stake in the Rovuma Offshore Area 1 *30 trillion cubic feet – Operator Anadarko has found more than 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in Rovuma *£31m – the amount Cove’s three most senior executives — chief executive John Craven, chairman Michael Blaha and finance [...]
Centrica buys up Total’s UK fields February 22, 2012 ENERGY group Centrica has agreed to buy $388m (£246m) worth of UK North Sea oil and gas assets from French firm Total. Centrica, parent company of British Gas, said its purchase of the seven sites would raise its reserves by around five per cent, or 22m barrels of oil, and is expected to produce 9,300 [...]
Drax shelves plans for new biomass plant February 22, 2012 COAL-FIRED power producer Drax has scrapped plans to build a dedicated biomass plant on its site in North Yorkshire. The company, which also reported a smaller-than-expected drop in full-year core earnings yesterday, said state support levels for using only biomass in power generation were still too low. High costs of transporting fuel to its inland [...]
SUNDAY TIMES REPORTER KILLED IN SYRIA February 22, 2012 Marie Colvin, the veteran Sunday Times foreign correspondent, has been killed in Syria. Born in New York, she covered almost every war zone in the world during the last quarter of a century. She died in the city of Homs alongside French photographer Remi Ochlik after an artillery shell hit their safe house. President Bashar [...]
Protesters on the brink as legal bid fails February 22, 2012 PROTESTERS from Occupy London appear set for an angry confrontation with bailiffs after they lost a last-ditch legal bid to preserve their camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral. Yesterday three judges dismissed the activists’ applications for the right to appeal against an earlier eviction order, paving the way for the City of London Corporation to clear [...]
HP profits plunge as PC sales slump February 22, 2012 HEWLETT–PACKARD has announced a 44 per cent decline in quarterly earnings as the computer giant was hurt by weak sales of PCs and printers. The Silicon valley company reported net income of $1.47bn (£938m) for the first fiscal quarter, down from $2.6bn a year earlier. Revenue dropped by seven per cent to $30bn, missing forecasts. [...]
