Inside Track: Intelligent Energy deal hasn’t been looking too clever July 17, 2014 I was sitting with an investment banker from one of the City’s bulge bracket banks yesterday who was describing the performance of London’s new issues this year as “broadly positive”. Of course, this statement is true, as far as it goes. But there have been some well publicised cases, such as Saga and Card Factory, [...]
Inside Track: Sir John Peace has done Chris Bailey no favours at Burberry July 14, 2014 SIR John Peace, Burberry’s beleaguered chairman, did not return my telephone call yesterday to discuss his failure to convince the luxury group’s investors to back the controversial £20m pay package for its chief executive Chris Bailey. His reluctance to put his case mirrors his sorry performance in the run-up to the shareholder meeting, when he [...]
Seven is the magic number as Kelvin MacKenzie sells stake in son’s Base 79 July 8, 2014 Kelvin MacKenzie, the former chief executive of Talksport, the radio group, has made £5m from selling his stake in his son’s video aggregation business where he was founding chairman. His son Ashley, has made £7m on the sale of his shares, replicating the success of his father when he sold his stake in Talksport for [...]
BSkyB CEO Jeremy Darroch is set on change July 7, 2014 Chief executive Jeremy Darroch tells David Hellier how he is bent on encouraging even more people to fall in love with Sky Talking about the way BSkyB has changed over the years, its chief executive Jeremy Darroch says: “You don’t keep being successful by doing things in the same way.” As he speaks, [...]
Inside Track: Bankers ponder early holidays as latest IPO is left on the shelf July 2, 2014 THERE was always an inevitability to what is currently happening in London’s new issues market. A spate of issues flooded the market at the beginning of the year, some a touch overvalued. A number of the issues traded down, leaving investors nursing losses and accusing the sellers of assets as being too greedy. Now, not [...]
Inside Track: Doing the splits is proving tricky July 1, 2014 EUROPEAN banks are still in the market for raising equity to strengthen ravaged balance sheets, with Portuguese bank BCP the latest to join the queue last week. Investors have been generally keen to back such deals, but their mood will not have been lightened by the share price performance of Banco Espirito Santo since its [...]
Banks on SSP flotation hope the price will come in high June 30, 2014 BANKERS on the £1bn plus flotation of the food concessions group SSP said last night they were confident of getting the issue away at a healthy price. Books were covered on the full deal size late on Friday, the day it launched bookbuilding. The business is targeting £490m–£570m, with books closing around July 9. Goldman [...]
Portugal’s Banco Espirito Santo loses support June 30, 2014 Shares in Banco Espirito Santo, one of Portugal’s two biggest publicly traded banks, fell 17 per cent yesterday after Bank of America downgraded the lender’s bonds. The shares have lost nearly half their value in a few weeks. Banco Espirito Santo, advised by Morgan Stanley and UBS, raised €1.04bn (£832m) in May to strengthen capital [...]
Barclays’ Antony Jenkins must show dealmakers some love June 30, 2014 On the day that Barclays felt the full brunt of allegations about its so-called “dark pools” from a New York attorney general, its corporate finance arm in Europe was reporting a significant success. The London Stock Exchange (LSE) announced a merger deal and with it a near £1bn rights issue, solely underwritten by Barclays. This [...]
EasyHotel boss is putting money where his mouth is June 25, 2014 Simon Champion, the chief executive of EasyHotel group, hasn’t had an easy time raising money for his growing group. “There’s no doubt investors are busy and stressed about the amount of IPOs in the market at the moment,” he told me yesterday. So he’s pleased with the £30m he’s raised for capital investment in new [...]
