What do a scarecrow, a five foot chocolate Easter bunny and a glass eye have in common? January 2, 2019 Budget hotel brand Travelodge said today that weird and wacky items customers had left behind in its rooms last year included a blue eyed cockatoo called Brexit, a five foot teddy bear made of popcorn and a doggy throne. The hotel chain said pet owners had been particularly forgetful with three butterfly tail fish named [...]
German prosecutors drop insider trading probe into former Deutsche Boerse boss January 2, 2019 Former Deutsche Boerse chief executive Carsten Kengeter agreed today to pay €4.8m (£4.3m) to end an insider trading probe stemming from the botched merger with the London Stock Exchange. Prosecutors were investigating Kengeter’s purchase of €4.5m worth of shares in the German exchange in December 2015, two months before it announced it was in talks [...]
Shares in law firm Gordon Dadds resume trading following Ince & Co merger deal January 2, 2019 Shares in listed law firm Gordon Dadds resumed trading today after it sealed a merger with shipping firm Ince & Co. Shares in Gordon Dadds were suspended in September after City A.M. broke the news that the pair were in late-stage merger talks. Gordon Dadds has taken over the UK assets of Ince, having originally [...]
Cathay Pacific to honour bargain business class tickets following website mix-up January 2, 2019 Asian airline Cathay Pacific has said it will honour cut-price first class and business class fares offered on its website by mistake. Lucky travellers that scooped a bargain in the accidental January sale will get to keep their tickets, which included business class seats from Vietnam to New York for $675 (£533) return. Seats on the same [...]
Early cost estimates for HS2 were wildly inaccurate says former insider December 17, 2018 A former insider at rail project HS2 has said that the early land and property cost estimate considered by MPs was “enormously wrong”. HS2’s chairman Sir Terry Morgan resigned from the project this month after cost overruns at another project he chaired, Crossrail. However, Morgan hinted that HS2 could face similar problems. Now former head [...]
Could the UK be on the brink of a US-style class action explosion? December 16, 2018 The Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group, Tesco, Google and Mastercard. These are just a handful of the household names that have been targeted in group action lawsuits in the UK with billions of pounds at stake. The UK, unlike the US or Australia, does not have a long history of class action-style lawsuits, [...]
Men’s fashion retailer Blue Inc victim of high street carnage as it enters administration December 16, 2018 Men's fashion retailer Blue Inc has become the latest victim of the carnage on the high street as it crashed into administration last week. The chain appointed turnaround specialist Begbies Traynor to find a buyer last month after a string of cost-cutting and restructuring measures had failed to take it into the black. However, no [...]
Report into audit sector commissioned by John McDonnell calls for break-up of Big Four December 14, 2018 A report into the audit sector commissioned by shadow chancellor John McDonnell has called for the break-up of the Big Four audit firms. The report, published today, recommended that the audit business of accounting firms must be legally separate from everything else and says it should be a criminal offence for auditors to perform non-audit [...]
Blair says UK must prepare for a second Brexit referendum December 14, 2018 Former Prime Minister Tony Blair is to say that the UK and EU should prepare for a second referendum because parliament is unlikely to be able to agree on a Brexit deal. Blair will say it is perverse that the UK and the EU are preparing for a potentially economically damaging Brexit without any deal, [...]
Half of homes could boost their broadband Ofcom says December 14, 2018 Half of British homes could switch to a faster broadband service, Ofcom said today as it plans new rules to encourage people to get the best deal. The media regulator’s research showed that 94 per cent of UK homes and offices can now get superfast broadband but less than half have taken it up. It also [...]
