BALFOUR BAGS OLYMPIC LEGACY WORK January 9, 2012 Balfour Beatty has won contracts to maintain parts of the Olympic Park once the Games are over. The London-listed engineering firm will run the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and the ArcelorMittal Orbit sculpture, while leisure centre operator Greenwich Leisure Limited has signed up to operate the aquatics centre and the multi-use arena. The Olympic Park [...]
GOLF RETURNS TO THE BOARDROOM AS CITY FIRM TEES UP TENANTS January 9, 2012 PLAYING golf in the office has gone the same way as four-hour lunches and six-figure bonuses in the austerity City. Or has it? Teeing up deals on the putting green will be business as usual at the new City offices run by serviced office provider Co-Work, which is looking for 101 tenants for its latest [...]
Rolls-Royce’s car sales hit a record high January 9, 2012 UPMARKET carmaker Rolls-Royce, owned by BMW, said it sold a record number of cars in 2011, benefiting from a surge in demand for luxury and bespoke cars from customers in emerging markets. The 107-year-old company said it sold 3,538 cars in 2011, up 31 per cent on the year before, as sales of its Phantom [...]
Property investor Patron picks up forecourt group January 9, 2012 PRIVATE equity house Patron Capital has snapped up forecourt operator Motor Fuels Group. The property investment specialist has taken control of 58 mostly freehold petrol filling stations in a joint venture with a new management team backed by oil industry veteran Alasdair Locke. The petrol stations trade under the BP, Shell, Esso, Total and Jet [...]
New legal row facing Olympus January 9, 2012 AILING Japanese technology firm Olympus is suing its president and three of its former directors over the $1.7bn (£1.1bn) accounting scandal. The maker of cameras and medical equipment has filed proceedings against its president, Shuichi Takayama (pictured), along with three former executives identified by investigators as having engineered or helped cover up the fraud at the [...]
Experian announces shock death of finance boss Brooks at his US home January 9, 2012 BRITISH credit information firm Experian yesterday announced the death of chief financial officer Paul Brooks (pictured right). “Paul died suddenly this weekend at his home in California. Our thoughts and deepest condolences are with Paul’s family at this time,” the company said in a statement. Brooks, 58, had been Experian’s finance chief since October 2001, [...]
L&G in £1bn pensions transfer deal January 9, 2012 LEGAL & General has become the latest City firm to offset the cost of paying out to pensioners who live longer than expected. L&G has agreed to take on the cost of unexpected increases in the lifespan of 11,500 retired workers from glassmaker Pilkington in return for an undisclosed fee, and transferred 90 per cent [...]
AstraZeneca repeats data after blunder January 9, 2012 DRUGMAKER AstraZeneca was forced yesterday to reiterate its 2011 and mid-term financial forecasts after mistakenly releasing confidential company information to analysts. The Anglo-Swedish firm described the released details as “out of date planning information” which it said did not represent its forecast for the full year for 2011 or for future periods. “The most recent [...]
GSK shares are hit by drug trial results January 9, 2012 SHARES in GlaxoSmithKline slipped four per cent after the announcement of disappointing results from its new asthma drug yesterday. Britain’s biggest drugmaker said it still planned to put lung medicine Relovair up for regulatory approval in the middle of this year. But clinical trials have not shown the new treatment to be better than GSK’s [...]
Statoil spurs fuel hopes in Norway after striking oil in the Barents Sea January 9, 2012 NORWEGIAN oil firm Statoil has made a second big oil discovery in the Barents Sea in less than a year and predicted more discoveries to come in the region, further boosting the remote Arctic region’s oil prospects. The discovery will also improve the oil prospects of Norway, the world’s eighth-largest oil exporter and the second-largest [...]
