Hoberman’s internet-only furniture firm raises £6m January 10, 2012 MADE.COM, an online furniture group chaired by the Lastminute.com co-founder Brent Hoberman, yesterday announced it had raised £6m in a second round of funding. The New York-based investment group Level Equity led the fund-raising, supported by PROfounders Capital, a London venture capital group in which Hoberman is a partner. Ning Li, the firm’s 29 year [...]
Ross clinches Cosalt control January 10, 2012 Carphone Warehouse founder David Ross has won his bid to take control of oil services group Cosalt after a months-long rescue attempt. Cosalt said yesterday Ross, whose family have held a stake in Cosalt for three generations, passed the 50 per cent threshold needed to make his takeover offer unconditional. However, he fell short of [...]
Mears has a robust order book January 10, 2012 Shares in social housing and care provider Mears rose 3.2 per cent yesterday on news that contract successes have pushed it almost all the way to meeting the market’s revenue expectations for 2012. The company said its order book has risen to £2.8bn. The strong pipeline means that the company has booked 93 per cent [...]
Contracts stable at Balfour Beatty January 10, 2012 Contractor Balfour Beatty, which earlier this week won a £50m contract to manage some of the Olympic legacy venues, said yesterday its order book had remained stable in 2011 at over £15m, as increases in its US construction orders were offset by reductions in UK orders. In an update for the year to 31 December [...]
Philips profit alert due to weak Europe January 10, 2012 PHILIPS Electronics warned of soft fourth quarter profits yesterday, blaming weak European consumer markets that are leading to charges for inventory it cannot shift. Europe’s biggest consumer electronics maker said it will report a fall in underlying fourth quarter earnings to about €500m (£413m) from €910m a year earlier. The earnings report, due at the [...]
Olympus recovers some losses January 10, 2012 JAPAN’S disgraced Olympus saw its shares shoot up 20 per cent yesterday on the news it is suing its president and 18 other executives, past and present, for up to $47m (£30.4m) in compensation, as it struggles to recover from one of the nation’s worst accounting scandals. The maker of cameras and medical equipment said [...]
Smiths News on track for strong growth in 2012 January 10, 2012 MAGAZINE, book and newspaper distributor Smiths News said yesterday it was on track for strong profit growth in 2012, despite sales of print books disappointing over Christmas. Revenue at the group have increased 1.9 per cent year-on-year since September, with sales boosted by the recent acquisition of Dawson Books, Dawson Media Direct and Dawson Marketing [...]
Kodak unveils new structure and Apple spat January 10, 2012 KODAK announced a new business structure yesterday that divides its film group into its two other business units as the once-iconic photography company tries to refocus as a digital company to help fend off financial difficulties. Its US-listed shares jumped after the news and closed up 50 per cent. Separately, the company filed a lawsuit [...]
ORANGE LAUNCHES NEW TABLET January 10, 2012 ORANGE has released its first own-branded tablet, which is, of course, named after the largest island in the Windward group of the French Polynesian Society Islands. The Tahiti is manufactured by Chinese telecoms giant Huawei – a strategy that has already worked out quite nicely for Orange with its San Fransisco smartphone (which was made [...]
Rathbones assets grew through 2011 January 10, 2012 BRITISH wealth manager Rathbone Brothers defied the financial turmoil emanating from the Eurozone debt crisis during 2011, managing a modest increase in the amount of money it runs as its sales countered falling markets. Total funds under management at the end of 2011 stood at £15.8bn, up 1.4 per cent over the year. For comparison, [...]
