Expanded workforce helps push turnover up at Pimlico Plumbers June 28, 2015 INDEPENDENT plumbing firm Pimlico Plumbers said a recruitment drive had helped push turnover up during the year to 31 May, but warned that the talent pool of skilled engineers is shrinking. The London-based company saw a 25 per cent jump in sales in the year, up to £25m, which chief executive Charlie Mullins attributed to [...]
Moonpig owner sent greetings by buyout firms June 28, 2015 THE OWNER of online card retailer Moonpig.com may change its plans for a flotation on the London stock market after reports emerged yesterday that several private equity firms are interested in buying the company. Photobox, which operates a group of online businesses, including PaperShaker, Sticky9 and its core Photobox brand, has hired advisers at Goldman [...]
City Moves for 29 June 2015 | Who’s switching jobs June 28, 2015 Deloitte Richard Wood has been appointed senior adviser in the professional services firm’s private client and family office team. He was most recently head of real estate within UBS’s wealth management division. Wood has also held roles at Knight Frank, Cazenove and Arbuthnot Securities. Berenberg The private bank has appointed Dr Manfred Schlumberger as chief [...]
Best of the Brokers for 29 June 2015 June 28, 2015 To appear in Best of the Brokers, email your research to notes@cityam.com IG GROUP Numis reiterated its “hold” rating on the trading group, and said it believes “good strategic progress is being made with the stockbroking offering in the Netherlands and work towards a regulatory licence in Dubai”. The broker added that it has increased [...]
Mortgage data expected to hint at improvement – London Report June 28, 2015 MORTGAGE approvals data from the Bank of England, out today, is expected to show an improvement in housing market activity during May. The bank is expected to reveal that mortgage approvals for house purchases rose modestly further to be at a 15-month high of 68,500 during the month. GDP growth is likely to be revised [...]
Investors edgy on Greek fears and rates talk – New York Report June 28, 2015 ANXIETY about Greece and uncertainty about the timing of higher US interest rates may keep Wall Street on edge early next week, but one ray of hope for investors could be an unusually long streak of ambivalence on Main Street. Seen by some as a contrarian indicator of future stock market performance, a weekly poll [...]
Grexit: The bell is tolling for Greece – but it’s tolling for Europe now too June 28, 2015 “I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”– John Donne Monaco – It is surely beyond odd that Alexis Tsipras – Marxist firebrand Premier of Greece – and I share a guilty pleasure: the works of Ernest Hemingway. When pressed to the [...]
Stop tinkering: How the City is leading the charge to get London building June 28, 2015 Housing has been the public policy “elephant in the room” for too long. City businesses warn me that high housing costs are reducing London’s competitiveness as a location, colleagues across London councils say that housing features more and more at the top of their agendas, and all the declared candidates in the mayoral election cite [...]
Why we should mobilise public land to tackle London’s housing crisis June 28, 2015 A starter for ten. How much of the land in the London Borough of Southwark is owned by Southwark Council? 10 per cent? 20 per cent? More? Answer: 43 per cent, including, astonishingly, 10,000 garages, most of them part of council housing estates built in the 1960s and 1970s. Southwark Council is not exceptional. London’s [...]
With the Fed expected to raise rates later this year, should investors be concerned? June 28, 2015 Anton Eser is co-head of global fixed income at Legal & General Investment Management, says Yes. The impact of tighter US policy seems to be underestimated. When markets were unsettled by the potential for QE tapering in 2013, bond yields rose, equity markets corrected, and high yield and emerging markets saw heavy fund outflows and [...]
