Hands set to buy garden centres January 29, 2012 TERRA Firma, the private equity house owned by Guy Hands, is close to snapping up Garden Centre Group, it is understood. It is expected to enter exclusive talks later this week with the sellers, which include Lloyds Banking Group. The deal is said to value the business at around £300m. Formerly called Wyevale, GCG delivered [...]
Panel: UK will fall back into recession in 2012 January 29, 2012 MORE than two thirds of our panel believe the UK will fall back into recession before the end of 2012, with 27 per cent seeing a double dip as “highly likely”, according to the results of our latest Voice of the City poll, in association with PoliticsHome.com. Following GDP figures for the end of 2011 [...]
Seymour Pierce heads list of advisers to AIM-listed UK firms January 29, 2012 SEYMOUR Pierce has topped a list of brokers to the UK businesses listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), counting 72 of its components among its clients. The investment bank added two clients last year to pull ahead of FinnCap, with whom it tied last year. During the same period FinnCap lost one client, taking [...]
PWC BOARD PARADE IN PANTOMIME EXECUTION January 29, 2012 IGNORANCE is bliss. Just ask the children at PwC’s performance of Aladdin, who “didn’t have a clue” that the pantomime dames parading in front of them included four of the Big Four firm’s most senior auditors: Richard Oldfield, Richard Sexton, Stephanie Hyde and Kevin Ellis. Far better to focus on the Justin Bieber showtunes, which [...]
BILL OF THE WEEK January 29, 2012 THERE was competition for Bill of the Week from Boisdale of Belgravia on Burns Night. The table of 13 Norwegians who spent £1,797 toasting Norway’s four-year ownership of the Orkney islands in the fifteenth century almost made it into this week’s column – but then along came a group of “independently wealthy” locals who went [...]
Patron saint of retailers says co-ops won’t work for everyone January 29, 2012 RESPONSIBLE Capitalism. Moral Markets. Whatever you call it, the debate raging around executive pay and “predator” business shows no sign of dying down. All political parties have tried to claim the issue as their own, but they have struggled to articulate what a fairer form of capitalism might look like. Enter John Lewis, the patron [...]
Average household pays £650,000 in tax January 29, 2012 AN AVERAGE household can now expect to pay a quarter of a million pounds in income tax over its lifetime, according to research out today from the Taxpayers’ Alliance. Once £101,000 in VAT has been added, as well as taxes including national insurance contributions and council tax, total payments to the state amount to £656,000. [...]
MPs fear scandal if party funding rules are not altered fast January 29, 2012 THE GOVERNMENT must quickly implement new rules on political party funding, or risk a fresh scandal developing, a committee of MPs warned yesterday. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee demanded quick action that would not favour any party over others – but acknowledged deep divisions remain even among its own members on the best course [...]
Immigration policies are harming private colleges January 29, 2012 THE GOVERNMENT’S determination to cut immigration is having a devastating effect on private higher education, a new report revealed yesterday. Prohibiting some international students from working part-time to support their studies in the UK must be reversed, the Centre Forum think tank argued. “Since these controls were introduced in 2011, enrolment numbers are estimated to [...]
UK can opt out of EU laws over crime and police January 29, 2012 THE UK government has an opportunity to repatriate 130 European Union laws over crime and policing, the think tank Open Europe has claimed. By June 2014 the coalition must decide whether the EU laws will continue to apply to the UK. “If the government opts out of any one of the existing laws, it has [...]
