FDM is valued at £300m June 17, 2014 FDM, an IT support services group, yesterday completed a flotation that valued the company at a touch over £300m. The deal, which was advised on solely by Investec, sees the private equity group Inflexion selling its entire shareholding to raise £234.7m. Rowena Murray, who was part of the Investec team on the deal, said the [...]
SSP employees take a bite out of firm’s £2bn stock market debut June 17, 2014 THE OWNER of train station food retailers Millie’s Cookies and Upper Crust is set to give its 30,000 employees a chance to buy a stake in the business. SSP, which unveiled plans to raise £500m from City investors by listing shares on the stock market, is considering plans to include an employee share ownership scheme [...]
Jefferies bank profits rocket June 17, 2014 INVESTMENT bank Jefferies yesterday reported solid growth in the second quarter of the year, seeing profits shoot up by more than 50 per cent. Pre-tax profits came in at $99m (£58m), up from $65.5m in the same period of 2013. Equity trading revenues rose 25 per cent to $177m, while equity capital markets income rose 56 [...]
London house prices surging June 17, 2014 LONDON house prices jumped by 18.7 per cent in the year to April, nearly three times as fast as the rate in the rest of the country and the most rapid increase since mid-2007. The capital’s house prices are now nearly one third higher than they were before the financial crisis, up 31 per cent [...]
House bills to rise with rates June 17, 2014 A LARGER interest rate hike than is currently expected would add thousands of pounds to UK mortgage holders’ bills, according to a warning from Legal & General. The financial services firm said yesterday that for the average property, a three per cent increase in interest rates would add £163.38 to a mortgage bill – the [...]
UK inflation rate fell to lowest level in five years last month June 17, 2014 Inflation fell to its lowest level in five years this May, coming in at just 1.5 per cent, despite the continued strength of the economic recovery. A 3.2 per cent drop in air fares between April and May, driven by a spike around the Easter school holidays, helped to trim CPI to its slowest growth [...]
German investor optimism dips as euro labour costs slow down June 17, 2014 GERMAN investors this month registered the poorest economic sentiment since the end of 2012, according to the country’s influential ZEW survey. The index dropped to 29.8 from 33.1, the sixth month of decline. However, a figure above zero suggests optimism in general about the economic situation, and the score is still marginally above the long-term [...]
China is hit by investment fall June 17, 2014 NEW FOREIGN investment into China dropped by 6.7 per cent in May, compared to the same month last year – the worst reading for the country since early 2013. Since the beginning of 2014, the country has seen only a 2.8 per cent increase in foreign direct investment (FDI), compared to the same five-month period [...]
Fear of default in Argentina June 17, 2014 ARGENTINE markets stabilised yesterday as some investors gambled that the country would find ways to stave off a default, despite suffering a major defeat in the US Supreme Court where a small group of creditors won an order for full compensation from a 2001 default. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said yesterday: “What I cannot [...]
Extel Awards with Megabank’s Alex Masterley prove to be a very animated occasion June 17, 2014 It's not very often that an award winner gets his name read out by a cartoon character, but guests at yesterday’s Thomson Reuters Extel Survey Awards (dubbed the City’s Oscars) were treated to that very sight, as Alex Masterley, the fictional co-head of Megabank (and lead character in The Telegraph’s satirical finance cartoon), presented the [...]
