SAB Miller to face protest July 28, 2009 Global brewer SAB Miller was yesterday hit with an alert by shareholder advisory group Pirc , urging investors to reject the company’s “excessive” levels of executive pay at this Friday’s annual meeting. Pirc yesterday said bonuses of 500 per cent of base salary were too high, while the minimum performance targets that are attached to [...]
A STITCH IN TIME July 28, 2009 ADMINISTRATORS for prestigious Mayfair tailor Douglas Hayward – famous for making suits for 1960s stars including Michael Caine and Richard Burton – has secured Mount Street Tailors as a buyer for the long-established business. The sale has safeguarded the jobs of all Hayward employees and preserved the establishment which was set up more than 40-years [...]
Jobless rise hits retailers July 28, 2009 RETAIL sales fell faster than expected in July as consumers tightened their belts in the face of rising unemployment, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said yesterday. The CBI’s monthly distributive trades survey sales balance was -15 per cent this month, an improvement on -17 per cent in June, but worse than the -12 per [...]
How the seasons affect our beer drinking habits July 28, 2009 AS it gets warmer, beers get more popular. Our BrandIndex scores show a seasonal pattern climaxing around mid-August and lowest in February. But Guinness is an exception. The first graph shows Guinness relative to the basket of scores, and it moves in the exact opposite way to other brews. I wouldn’t want to be misleading: [...]
Bad debt fear hits Deutsche despite profit July 28, 2009 DEUTSCHE Bank posted a 67 per cent rise in second-quarter profits yesterday as it was boosted by a barnstorming performance from its investment banking operations, but saw its shares fall on fears of mounting bad loans. Net profit for the quarter reached €1.1bn (£948m) compared to €645m in the equivalent quarter of 2008, thanks largely [...]
RUNNING FOR COVER July 28, 2009 US media giant Viacom yesterday said second quarter profit tumbled 32 per cent as revenues slumped due to a weak advertising market, slower video game sales and lower box office results. The group, owner of Paramount Studios, which produced the Transformers films (above), earned $277m compared with $407m for the same period a year earlier. [...]
US housing market improves but consumer confidence hit July 28, 2009 US HOME sales rose for the first time in almost three years in May but ongoing weakness in the jobs market hit July consumer confidence hard, data showed yesterday. The S&P/Case-Shiller composite-20 index rose 0.5 per cent month-on-month in May, which saw the annual decline moderate to 17.1 per cent. But these figures are not [...]
Bullish Aussie dollar will be threatened by Chinese bubble July 28, 2009 THREE weeks ago, risk aversion was firmly back in the markets and commodity currencies were looking shaky. But equities and commodities have been surging across the board as investors rediscover their taste for risk. In such an environment, the Australian dollar ought to be doing well thanks to its economy’s dependence on exports of base [...]
PWC BOARD GET THE X-FACTOR TREATMENT IN SURPRISE CONTEST July 28, 2009 RECENT surveys have shown that employees’ sense of job security has improved in recent months, but it seems it is now so high that poking fun at the board is back in vogue. The PwC board were half way through a three-week UK tour last week – in which they met 850 partners – when [...]
Good-looking but a trifle shallow July 28, 2009 THE FACTS: AUDI A5 SPORTBACK 3.2 LITRE FSI QUATTRO7-SPEED S TRONIC PRICE: £36,110 0-62MPH: 6.6secsTOP SPEED: 155mph CO2 G/KM: 379g/kmMPG Combined: 30.4/216g/km AUDI is celebrating a one hundred-year history of building cars, competing in motorsport and having its vehicles at every red carpet event. How is it celebrating? By building more cars. Whatever your needs [...]
