Canon slashes annual outlook April 26, 2011 Japan’s Canon slashed its annual outlook to below market expectations as it tries to deal with a quake-hit supply chain that it said was months away from being fixed. Canon, which competes with Sony Corp and Nikon Corp in cameras and Xerox Corp and Ricoh in copiers, also reported a five per cent fall in [...]
Montagu raises £1.7bn for new deals April 26, 2011 Montagu Private Equity said it has raised 2.5bn euros (£1.7bn) for new deals, tapping investors from across the globe who are increasingly picky about the buyout firms they back. Montagu, the former European buyouts business of HSBC, said Tuesday its fourth fund attracted investment from pension funds, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds from the [...]
Virgin Active in deal for Esporta April 26, 2011 Virgin Active is to buy 55 Esporta Gyms in a £77.6m deal The company has 71 fitness clubs and is on the expansion trail.
Lloyds eyes deal with Grainger April 26, 2011 Part-nationalised bank Lloyds is eying a deal with the UK’s largest listed housing landlord Grainger aimed at restoring the value of Lloyds’ housing portfolio which got hit by the credit crisis. A Lloyds spokesman said that Grainger had been picked as Lloyds’ preferred supplier for its “residential property asset management platform.” The likely deal between [...]
Heritage Oil in share buyback April 26, 2011 UK oil explorer Heritage Oil announced a $100M share buyback, after a halving in its share price since January and as the explorer faces a $313m lawsuit from former partner Tullow Oil. Explorers rarely engage in buybacks because their business model usually involves spending their cash on finding new fields. “The recent share price performance [...]
Minmetals pulls out of Equinox bid April 26, 2011 China’s Minmetals Resources bowed out of the battle for copper miner Equinox Minerals, saying Barrick Gold Corp’s C$7.3bn (£4.66bn) bid was too rich. Canada’s Barrick, the world’s largest gold miner, announced its agreed offer for Equinox , seeking to tap surging demand for copper from China and other developing economies that has pushed prices up [...]
UBS in client fund surge April 26, 2011 UBS reported a big rise in client inflows in the first quarter, attracting the most money for its wealth management arm since the financial crisis began. Switzerland’s biggest bank saw inflows of 11.1 billion Swiss francs (£7.4bn) at its core wealth management unit in the quarter after they were flat the previous three months and [...]
GE earnings surge April 21, 2011 General Electric posted an 80 per cent surge in first-quarter profit, blowing past Wall Street forecasts and joining a wave of better-than-expected earnings from US manufacturers. The largest U.S. conglomerate was helped by a pickup in demand for railroad locomotives – a weak spot over the past year – as well as higher revenues at [...]
McDonald’s profit up – but costs rise April 21, 2011 McDonald’s reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit as the world’s largest restaurant company posted March sales that topped analyst expectations. But the company’s profit margin took a hit because of rising food and paper costs, and it increased its inflation forecasts. It said it now expects food costs to rise between 4 and 4.5 per cent [...]
Morgan Stanley profit slumps 50pc April 21, 2011 Morgan Stanley’s first-quarter profit dropped nearly 50 per cent, hurt by a decline in fixed income trading revenue. The investment bank and brokerage posted net income for shareholders of $736m (£444m) or 50 cents a share, down from $1.41bn, or 99 cents a share, a year earlier. Fixed income trading revenue fell across Wall Street [...]
