Hong Kong firm to buy Aquascutum May 2, 2012 ■ Collapsed clothing retailer Aquascutum could be bailed out of administration in the next week after administrators FRP Advisory said it had entered exclusive talks with Hong Kong’s YGM Trading, which already owns the rights to the brand in Asia.
Munch’s Scream goes on the block May 2, 2012 ■ Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” was set to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in Manhattan last night. The iconic piece is expected to break new ground at the famed New York auction house with its pre-sale estimate of at least $80m, the highest pre-sale amount ever listed at Sotheby’s.
Ken and Boris: The Story So Far May 2, 2012 KEN LIVINGSTONE ● Promises to cut public transport fares by seven per cent and then peg future rises to inflation ● Reintroduce Educational Maintenance Allowance for young Londoners ● Help parents back into work with improved childcare services ● Save Londoners £150pa on energy bills by buying fuel through Transport for London contracts ● Reinstate [...]
Candidates in final pitch to London voters May 2, 2012 BORIS Johnson and Ken Livingstone yesterday made their final appeals to voters as today’s mayoral election remains too close to call. Livingstone has fought his way back into the race and the most recent YouGov poll placed him just four percentage points behind Conservative Boris Johnson. Privately neither side is confident of victory and both [...]
Home Retail to scrap payout as profit falls 61pc May 2, 2012 HOME RETAIL GROUP, the owner of Argos and Homebase, has scrapped its final dividend for the first time in six years after reporting a 61 per cent slump in full-year profit. Chief executive Terry Duddy continued to defend his strategy for the group, saying there would not be “an en masse store closure programme” of [...]
DID HOME RETAIL PROVIDE ANY CLARITY ON PLANS TO STEM THE DECLINE? May 2, 2012 SIMON IRWIN LIBERUM There is almost nothing in the statement about what management is going to do to arrest the decline in sales and profitability. Consequently it still appears that any significant degree of change is now unlikely until 2013. KEITH BOWMAN HARGREAVES LANSDOWN For now, Home remains arguably the retail equivalent of the “canary [...]
Next’s online sales help offset weaker trading on high street May 2, 2012 NEXT said yesterday that customers flocking to buy clothes through its online Directory business helped offset a fall in first quarter sales at its high street stores. Total Next sales rose 1.4 per cent in the three months to 28 April, the high street chain said. While retail sales across its 536 fashion and homewares [...]
Wetherspoon rallies against higher taxes May 2, 2012 PUBS OPERATOR JD Wetherspoon said yesterday “unsustainable” higher costs from a tough tax regime in Britain left it cautious on full-year prospects, even as it reported a rise in third-quarter sales. The company, which has over 800 pubs across Britain, said its tax bill in the current financial year would be about half a billion [...]
JOHN LEWIS CHAIRMAN BAGS £1M May 2, 2012 CHARLIE Mayfield, chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, took home a total salary of £954,000 last year. Mayfield’s base salary was £825,000, with additional payments including a partnership bonus of £115,000 – equal to the 14 per cent bonus awarded across the group. The firm said Mayfield’s salary was 60 times the average basic salary [...]
One-man firms worth a billion could be reality May 2, 2012 RESEARCH by a leading M&A advisory firm suggests that we are approaching an age where companies can be worth billions despite having “near-zero” employees. Magister Advisers believe that the success of firms such as photo-sharing service Instagram – sold for $1bn (£617m) last month despite being less than two years old and having just thirteen [...]
