Zoopla: Unusually for a tech stock, this one’s looking as safe as houses – Bottom Line August 14, 2014 Being old and boring, I spent last Friday mooching around a somewhat less-than-salubrious corner of our city, looking for a flat that I could buy as an investment. I dropped into two estate agents to ask questions about the area because, back in my day, that was how one did things. The first agent was [...]
Star Man from the Pru’s results turns spotlight on to Standard Chartered – Bottom Line August 12, 2014 It’s little surprise that the chief executives of Standard Chartered and Prudential “have a very good existing relationship,” to quote the latter. Peter Sands and Tidjane Thiam may come from very different corners of the world – Sands was born in England, Thiam in the Ivory Coast – yet these days both can regularly be [...]
Baker & McKenzie revenues surge August 10, 2014 BAKER & McKenzie has become the first law firm to rake in more than $2.5bn (£1.5bn) in a year, since before the financial crisis. The firm, which has over 1,400 partners worldwide and offices in 47 countries, printed revenues of $2.54bn in the year ending 30 June, it revealed this morning. Profits per equity partner increased [...]
Time for Balfour Beatty and Carillion bosses to rebuild bridges – Bottom Line August 10, 2014 Playing hard to get has always been an obvious tactic for any bunch of executives who find their firm targeted by a takeover-hungry rival. Yet knocking back your suitors has become especially modish this year, with the boards of Astrazeneca and Time Warner notably resolute in their determination to go it alone. To some extent [...]
Mark Wilson has put Aviva back in the game – Bottom Line August 8, 2014 When I think of Norwich, three things come to mind – Norwich City, Norwich Union and Alan Partridge. You’ll be relieved to hear that I’m going to spare you any terrible puns based on the latter, but I will dare to make an albeit clumsy connection between the first two. Aviva, as it is now [...]
Regulators beware. Your banker-bashing could end up harming us all – Bottom Line August 4, 2014 Let’s face it. It’s not difficult to see why banker-bashing is an easy sport to play along with these days – what with all the bailout-grabbing, bonus-paying, Libor-fiddling, forex-meddling, PPI mis-selling, granny-mugging, and orphan-punching of recent years. I may have made up the last two, but you get the idea. Little surprise, therefore, that few [...]
Pharma is just the pill for risk hungry traders – Bottom Line August 3, 2014 A badly kept secret about share prices: we don’t really know what keeps them at their exact levels. The very nature of a market price is that it is determined by a vast number of transactions undertaken by a vast number of people, and is thus guided by a multiple of different perceptions based on [...]
Interest rate hike may cost firms over £2bn per year July 27, 2014 A one per cent rise in interest rates would cost UK firms over £2bn per year, a firm of accountants warns this morning. With the British economy set to grow by more than three per cent in 2014, the Bank of England is increasingly expected to lift rates from their historical low of 0.5 per [...]
Bottom Line: Not such a funny old game if Sky take eyes off the ball July 21, 2014 Football can be damn expensive, these days. As a season ticket holder at one of London’s clubs (clue: the one with more league titles than the rest put together) I am well aware of how costs have escalated during the Premier League era. For fans like myself, the price of following top flight football is now [...]
Rupert Murdoch empire split becomes a blessing for 21st Century Fox takeover bid July 16, 2014 Exactly three years ago this weekend, Rupert Murdoch was sat plonked in front of a group of disapproving MPs. The occasion was supposed to mark a profound chastening for the media mogul, who faced an intense grilling over the hacking scandal that sensationally brought down the News of the World. Murdoch played along, putting on [...]
