Greece’s brand new long-term bonds fail to attract investors March 12, 2012 MARKETS are pricing in another Greek default as trading in its brand new long-term bonds opened at a discount of over 75 per cent yesterday. Athens announced that it has completed the largest debt restructuring in history yesterday as it swapped €177bn (£149bn) worth of bonds for a mix of new instruments including long-dated Greek-law [...]
Game teeters on the brink of insolvency March 12, 2012 GAME shares plunged as much as 78 per cent yesterday to just three quarters of a penny after it was unable to assure investors that the value of its shares could be redeemed or grown. Just weeks after renegotiating its banking covenants, Game said it was “uncertain” whether any of the solutions being discussed with [...]
Mashable’s Scottish chief stands to gain if CNN buys his tech site March 12, 2012 YET another British entrepreneur has been forced to look beyond the UK’s coastline for cash, as reports suggest Pete Cashmore is about to sell his technology blog website Mashable to American broadcaster CNN. The deal, which would see the Time Warner-owned news website buy Mashable for more than $200m (£128m), could be announced as early as [...]
RBS investors set to sue bank over crisis March 12, 2012 A GROUP representing investors in Royal Bank of Scotland plans legal action to recover at least £2.4bn lost when they bought shares in the bank shortly before it fell victim to the financial crisis. Mike Neill, who is coordinating the legal action on behalf of the RBoS Shareholders Action Group, said yesterday the claim was [...]
Oriel makes staffing cuts March 12, 2012 ORIEL Securities yesterday trimmed its workforce by around 10 per cent in response to the uncertain market conditions that have hit so many of the City’s financial services firms. “[I]t is important that the firm’s cost base is efficiently managed and this has, regrettably, resulted in a number of redundancies,” said the firm. Unlike some [...]
Temenos pulls out of merger bid for Misys March 12, 2012 TEMENOS has walked away from its all-share merger with banking software company Misys after two other bidders entered the picture waving the possibility of wads of cash. The Swiss company said on 3 February it was in talks with Misys, and four days later announced plans for Misys to own 53.9 per cent of the [...]
Ziggo brings a ray of sunshine to IPO market March 12, 2012 ALONG with the sunshine came a hint of optimism about the future of the faltering IPO market yesterday as the Dutch cable group Ziggo revealed there was sufficient demand for its upcoming £550m share issue. Private equity owners Cinven and Warburg Pincus, advised by STJ Advisors, are selling 35m secondary shares with guidance of €16.50 to [...]
ANALYST VIEWS: WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO MISYS NOW? March 12, 2012 JULIAN YATES | INVESTEC The worst case scenario is off the table – we see Temenos’ withdrawal as a positive, as we foresaw material integration risk. It now becomes a guessing game. The downside risk is less with Misys as a standalone play (even without a chief executive) than with the Temenos merger. GEORGE O’CONNOR [...]
Sainsbury’s closes gap in online sales March 12, 2012 SAINSBURY’S has claimed to have become the second-biggest online grocer after its orders topped 165,000 a week. The supermarket said a 20 per cent rise in orders per week, with an annualised turnover of £750m, makes its website the fastest growing online grocery business. Overall, Sainsbury’s still ranks third behind Tesco and Asda, but the [...]
Campari drops as it misses annual earnings targets March 12, 2012 CAMPARI’S shares fell six per cent as the Italian drinks company disclosed it had missed profit forecasts for the year despite positive growth in most areas. Sales were up 9.6 per cent to €1.27bn (£1.07bn) leading to a net profit growth of 1.9 per cent to €159.2m – but both fell short of analysts’ respective forecasts of [...]
