High speed rail line gets the green light January 10, 2012 A new £32bn high-speed rail line between London and Birmingham has been given the go ahead by the government. Transport Secretary Justine Greening has announced extra tunnelling for sections of the 90-mile (140km) link in response to environmental concerns. This first phase of High Speed Two (HS2) could be built by 2026. The first phase [...]
Swatch reports record sales January 10, 2012 Swatch Group, the world’s largest watchmaker, shrugged off the impact of the strong Swiss franc to post record sales in 2011 and said it is confident of more growth in 2012. The group, which is best known for its colourful plastic Swatch watches, said sales rose 21.7 per cent at constant rates in 2011 compared [...]
Debenhams trading nudges over forecasts January 10, 2012 Debenhams posted a better than expected performance in underlying sales in the last 18 weeks, proving it could trade well through even the most difficult of conditions. Shares in the department store group lifted by eight per cent after it said it had enjoyed record sales in the final week before Christmas, as its diverse [...]
Jubilant to invest $80m in Myanmar oil and gas block January 10, 2012 London-listed explorer Jubilant Energy expects to initially invest between $70m (£45m) and $80m on an onshore oil and gas block it was recently awarded in Myanmar, a senior company official said. The India-focused energy company is in talks with the Southeast Asian country to buy stake in another block, and hopes to finalise a decision [...]
M&S sales rise fuelled by discounts January 10, 2012 Marks & Spencer posted a slim rise in underlying Christmas sales as deep discounts helped to lure cash-strapped shoppers, and said it expected trading conditions to stay challenging. Britain’s biggest clothing retailer said it was making additional cost savings to offset a fall in profit margins due to the discounting. Sales at British stores open [...]
Olympus to sue 19 executives January 10, 2012 Japan’s disgraced Olympus Corp is suing 19 current and former executives, including its current president, for up to almost $50m (£32m) in compensation, as it struggles to recover from one of the nation’s worst accounting scandals. The maker of cameras and medical equipment said all board members subject to the lawsuit would quit in March [...]
Top Swiss banker felled by scandal January 9, 2012 EMBATTLED Swiss National Bank governor Philipp Hildebrand yesterday resigned from his role with immediate effect, succumbing to weeks of pressure from politicians and the media over controversial currency transactions made by his wife. Hildebrand admitted yesterday he could not provide “conclusive and final evidence” that Kashya Hildebrand had bought half a million US dollars in [...]
Cameron’s pay claims under fire January 9, 2012 COALITION attacks on “crony capitalism” at Britain’s top companies are flawed and based on outdated views of the composition of UK boardrooms, according to a leading advisory group. Sarah Wilson, chief executive of proxy voting adviser Manifest, told City A.M. that David Cameron’s policy was “a big soundbite but it does not have much behind [...]
Panicking investors now pay Germany to take their cash January 9, 2012 ● Safe haven reward for Germans ● Merkel wants euro budget deal ● Sarkozy to forge ahead on FTT ● Cameron urges transfer union YIELDS at a six-month German debt auction became negative yesterday, as investors were so desperate to lend to Europe’s safest state that they paid the government to take their cash. Germany [...]
Time to root out fake facts on boards and pay January 9, 2012 REWARDS for failure are bad; rewards for doing well are good. That is one of this newspaper’s guiding principals; as I argued in this space yesterday, the Prime Minister is right to be giving more powers to shareholders to make sure they exercise closer control over boards. It is wrong and indefensible for CEOs who [...]
