The firm may be ready to fly to a new home November 21, 2011 THE NEWS that debt-laden Phoenix Life Group is at the centre of a budding bid war has surprised quite a few in the City. With £2.5bn of debt, three quarters of it due within the next five years, it was thought to be an unlikely contender for a takeover. The level of interest in Phoenix [...]
HP prepares for slow road to recovery November 21, 2011 HEWLETT-PACKARD unveiled a 91 per cent drop in fourth-quarter profits last night after absorbing a $3.3bn (£2.1bn) write down of its WebOS division and continued weakness in its personal computer business. Delivering her maiden results, HP’s new chief executive Meg Whitman said the group made a profit of $200m in the quarter ending 31 October, [...]
Meg Whitman: Politics and power November 21, 2011 MEG Whitman, a New York native, was born in 1956 and received her Bachelor of Arts from Princeton in 1977. She moved on to get her Master of Business Administration from Harvard in 1979. After graduation, Whitman worked for companies such as Procter & Gamble, Bain & Company and the Walt Disney Company. Whitman moved [...]
TIME LINE | CHANGES AT HEWLETT-PACKARD November 21, 2011 November 2010: Ray Lane, a respected Silicon Valley veteran, is named chairman of Hewlett-Packard. November 2010: Leo Apotheker is named chief executive of HP after the messy departure of ousted Mark Hurd. January 2011: Shortly after her failed political campaign, Meg Whitman is added to the board of directors at HP. June 2011: HP launches [...]
BSkyB external lawyers to check all journalist emails above board November 21, 2011 BSKYB, the broadcaster 39 per cent owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, has appointed external lawyers to review the emails of some of its most successful journalists to check there were no signs of illegal newsgathering. A BSkyB spokesman said yesterday the company had appointed Herbert Smith to review emails going back to 2005 in [...]
DELAUNAY RESTAURANT SHUNS PUBLICITY FOR ITS LOW-KEY OPENING November 21, 2011 THERE has been a media blackout on the imminent launch of The Delaunay, the sister restaurant to the Wolseley from restaurateurs Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, on the corner of Drury Lane and Aldwych. There won’t even be a launch party, as you might expect from the duo who once owned celebrity haunts The Ivy, [...]
Posen: central banks should up bond buys November 21, 2011 THE EUROPEAN Central Bank (ECB) upped its purchases of peripheral Eurozone debt last week, but bought less than many analysts expected. The ECB announced that it bought €7.986bn (£6.888bn) in the week to 18 November. With the single currency area’s government debt crisis rolling on, the ECB now holds €194.5bn of debt. Yet dovish Bank [...]
Economy in the Eurozone set to shrink by 0.3pc November 21, 2011 THE EUROZONE economy will shrink by 0.3 per cent next year, a leading group of economists has predicted. Economic activity across the 17-state single currency area will thereafter stage only a “modest recovery” in 2013, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) said yesterday. “The latest plan to resolve the crisis is expected to comprise coordinated bank [...]
Hungary goes cap in hand to both the IMF and EU November 21, 2011 HUNGARY has requested precautionary financial help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union, it was confirmed yesterday, as the government seemingly reversed its previously-voiced opposition to working with the international lender. A statement from IMF chief Christine Lagarde revealed that Hungary had asked for assistance, several days after an IMF delegation arrived [...]
New Spanish PM refuses to lay out plans November 21, 2011 PRIME Minister-elect Mariano Rajoy resisted pressure yesterday to disclose his plans for rescuing Spain from economic disaster, keeping anxious Spaniards and impatient investors on edge following his election triumph. The landslide victory of his conservative People’s Party (PP) at the polls on Sunday failed to lift investors, who were desperate for some detail on his [...]
