L&G signs UK’s largest pension scheme buyout October 25, 2011 PENSION provider Legal & General yesterday penned a deal to take over a £1.1bn pension scheme for former staff of defunct asbestos manufacturer Turner & Newall, in the biggest deal of its kind in the UK. L&G has taken over the running of the T&N pension scheme after the UK’s pension bailout fund, the Pension [...]
Misery mounts for Japanese camera industry as flood effects start to bite October 25, 2011 OLYMPUS has grabbed the headlines for all the wrong reasons, but it is not the only struggling Japanese camera-maker. Canon was yesterday forced to slash its outlook following damage to its supply chain caused by the Thai floods. Thailand has become a major manufacturing base for Japan’s high-tech sector, with rivals like Sony Corp and [...]
Crown Estate picks first woman chief executive October 25, 2011 THE MONARCHY’S £7bn portfolio of land and property has hired Alison Nimmo as its new chief executive. The Crown Estate, known for owning most of Regent Street, several London housing estates and 144,000 hectares of agricultural land and forests, has never had a woman as chief exec or chairman since it was established in its [...]
City backing for Bramson’s cuts at F&C October 25, 2011 THE CITY took an upbeat view of F&C Asset Management after its new chairman wielded the axe on its back office functions. Shares closed up 2.65 per cent as Edward Bramson, the activist investor who took the post in February after winning a bitter boardroom battle, announced plans to nearly treble cost-savings to £33.2m by [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS October 25, 2011 Pemberton Capital Advisors The private equity firm has appointed Christopher Higgins as chief operating officer and Sarah Whitehead (pictured) as internal legal council. Prior to joining Pemberton, Higgins was chief adminstration officer of the non-core division of RBS and held a number of management roles in the debt and credit markets businesses of RBS’s global [...]
Finance firms better than rest at slashing pension deficits to zero October 25, 2011 FINANCE firms are sitting on far smaller pension deficits than their peers in other sectors after spending a year right-sizing their schemes, research out today shows. More than half of FTSE 350 financial firms now hold negligible deficits and most could pay their deficits off with just six days of earnings, pensions specialist Hymans Robertson [...]
BHP Billiton still looking to China growth October 25, 2011 BHP BILLITON’S chief commercial officer dismissed speculation that China is facing a downturn yesterday, saying the country could continue to grow at around seven to eight per cent. “Everything we see points to the fact that China, without doing anything extraordinary, can continue to grow at around seven to eight per cent,” Alberto Calderon said [...]
SERCO WINS NEW BORIS BIKE CONTRACT October 25, 2011 Support services firm Serco yesterday signed a £50m agreement to support the expansion of TfL’s Barclays Cycle Hire scheme into East London. The contract will run until 2015 and include the design, operation and installation of the scheme in Tower Hamlets, plus new docking stations to serve the Westfield shopping centre in West London. Serco [...]
Bunzl boosted by North America October 25, 2011 British-based business supplies distributor Bunzl said its third-quarter revenue rose as strong growth in its North American and continental European markets outweighed a weaker performance in Britain where economic conditions remain tough. FTSE 100-listed Bunzl, which supplies supermarkets, hospitals and hotels with products ranging from carrier bags to toilet rolls, said yesterday that group revenue [...]
Senior upbeat on 2012 demand October 25, 2011 Senior said yesterday it had not seen any material change in underlying orders since the end of June, despite an uncertain economy, as the engineering company’s most important end market – the commercial aircraft industry – continued to grow. Senior, which designs and manufactures technology components and systems for original equipment producers in aerospace, diesel [...]
