Brit Insurance June 14, 2010 BRIT INSURANCE has been a source of frustration to investors for some time. Before Apollo came along, the stock was trading on less than 0.7 times 2010 net tangible assets (NTA), a deeper discount than many of its peers on the generally undervalued Lloyd’s of London market. Quite what a large-scale US private equity player wants with a [...]
HYUNDAI STUNG BY ITV HD AD BLUNDER June 14, 2010 MUCH has been made of ITV HD’s impeccably timed blunder at the weekend, when millions of viewers missed England skipper Steven Gerrard’s fourth-minute goal due to a rogue advertising spot interrupting the channel’s match coverage. But surely there was one beneficiary in all of the frustration: namely Hyundai, the carmaker whose ad appeared in the [...]
Retailers hit hard by card transactions June 14, 2010 PUNITIVE handling fees mean that accepting payment by card rather than in cash can cost a retailer up to 16 times more, according to the annual Cost of Collection Survey from the British Retail Consortium (BRC), which is published today. The survey, which covers 53 per cent of total UK retail sales in 2009 and [...]
Spirit Airlines hit by pilots’ walk-out June 14, 2010 A PILOTS’ strike at America’s Spirit Airlines has prompted the carrier to extend flight cancellations into the middle of the week. Pilots represented by the Air Line Pilots Association (Alpa) struck on Saturday after last-ditch talks with the discount carrier failed to bridge differences over pay. Florida-based Spirit said it would offer affected customers flight [...]
House sellers test market June 14, 2010 SELLERS flooded onto the market in May following the recent abolition of home information packs (Hips) by the coalition government, the latest monthly survey from the Royal Institution for Charted Surveyors (RICS) will show today. However, the sharp increase in new instructions to +21 per cent from +11 per cent was not enough to prevent [...]
Tesco on special offer after being oversold June 14, 2010 TESCO share prices tumbled to 397p last week after the announcement that chief executive Sir Terry Leahy was to step down after 14 years at the helm. Sales data released today is expected to be lacklustre, and combined with an expected weak consumer environment in the UK, Tesco’s margins in the near future look vulnerable [...]
Peacocks could be put back on the block with £600m tag June 14, 2010 FASHION CHAIN Peacocks could be put up for sale, after its owners commissioned a review of the retailer’s options. It is understood the retailer could secure a price-tag of £600m if put on the market, handing its US hedge fund owners a neat multi-million pound windfall. Peacocks’ management is currently reviewing the company’s operations, including [...]
Latitudinal thinking in Aldwych June 14, 2010 28-50 140 Fetter Lane, EC4A 1BT 020 7242 8877 www.2850.co.uk Cost per person without wine: £30 THE first thing to chew on at 28-50 is its name. It gets stuck in the teeth, frankly, involving two non-symmetrical numbers that bear no obvious relation to each other. For the innumerate among us, it’s a bit intimidating, [...]
TASTING NOTES June 14, 2010 FINDING an excuse to enjoy chocolate is always welcome. And – as with all the naughtiest things in life – if it is of the highest quality then it is probably a bit less bad for you. Well, still another way to mitigate the dangers of greedy chocolate consumption is to learn more about how [...]
European executive eyes new watchdog to control speculators June 14, 2010 THE EUROPEAN executive dealt a blow to French and German hopes of a permanent EU-wide ban on some forms of trading after throwing its weight behind empowering new watchdogs to rein in financial speculators. Last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy wrote to the European Commission demanding it look at outlawing [...]
