Shell boosted by shale gas find in China December 6, 2011 ROYAL Dutch Shell has found shale gas in China, a development that could cap imports in a market natural gas producers are hoping will drive demand. An official with Shell’s partner PetroChina, a unit of the country’s top energy group, state-owned CNPC, said drilling results from two wells Shell drilled had been positive. Shell has [...]
RWE’s €2.1bn share sale hampered by S&P’s credit warning to the Eurozone December 6, 2011 RWE’s share sale fell flat yesterday as investors held back amid the Standard & Poor’s warning of a credit rating cut to Eurozone countries. The German utility said it raised €2.1bn (£1.8bn) by selling 80.4m shares to institutional investors at €26 a piece – well below the €2.5bn it had hoped for when it announced [...]
CITY VIEWS: SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT BE DOING MORE TO ENCOURAGE COMPANIES TO HEADQUARTER IN THE UK? December 6, 2011 ALAN MEEK MACROBERTS “Yes, of course, if it would bring business to this country. I’m not an expert, but surely additional tax revenues can only be a good thing?” PETER LAWREY PLUS MARKETS “It definitely should – certainly for larger global companies – and not just by reducing tax, which seems to be its main [...]
Debt crisis to bring market pain in 2012 December 6, 2011 BOND and equity investors should brace themselves for another torrid year as the Eurozone debt crisis enters “a final phase”, two senior executives at City fund manager Fidelity warned yesterday. Stock markets will see another year of high volatility and falling prices as the current crisis of confidence in weak states’ debt escalates into a [...]
Icahn in hostile offer for metals December 6, 2011 BILLIONAIRE investor Carl Icahn went hostile with his $1.73bn (£1.1bn) bid to buy Commercial Metals yesterday, a day after the metals recycler rejected his buy-out attempt. Icahn, who owns about a 10 per cent stake in Commercial Metals, said he will start a tender offer and will require the support of at least 40 per cent [...]
Kraft axes 200 jobs at Cadbury December 6, 2011 UP TO 200 jobs will go at US food group Kraft’s Cadbury plants over the next year, as part of a reorganisation that will see the company split into two. The firm admitted yesterday that redeployments and voluntary redundancies would hit sites in Bournville, Chirk and Marlbrook from next March – but said it would also [...]
India fails bid to censor web controversies December 6, 2011 INDIA has called for web giants Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo to screen content uploaded by internet users. The world’s largest democracy unsuccessfully urged the social networking sites to remove material that might “offend Indian sensibilities”. Kapil Sibal, India’s telecoms and information technology minister, met with executives from these companies earlier this week. He specifically [...]
Internet domains ending in .xxx now available to general public December 6, 2011 WEB domain names ending in .xxx were made available for purchase by the general public yesterday despite ongoing legal efforts to foil the move. Until now the .xxx pages, of which around 100,000 have been sold, were reserved for big brands. The first sites went live in September. Stuart Lawley, chief executive of ICM Registry, said: [...]
Job firm’s FD sold shares before alert December 6, 2011 THE FINANCE director of Michael Page sold £2.25m of shares in the struggling City recruiter fewer than three weeks before it issued a profit warning. Stephen Puckett and his wife, Amanda, sold nearly 595,000 shares on 17 and 18 November. They were not the only ones to cash in as Charles-Henri Dumon, managing director for [...]
Electra mulls asset raid amid banking shake-up December 6, 2011 PRIVATE equity house Electra is considering a raid on bank assets as lenders deleverage amid the Eurozone crisis and tougher regulatory demands. Electra will look healthy businesses, as well as those with a “bad balance sheet”, chief investment officer Alex Fortescue told City A.M. The buyout group is not interested in full-scale turnaround deals, however. [...]
