Compass trading on track May 18, 2011 COMPASS Group, the world’s biggest caterer, shrugged off a £5m hit from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan to report a better-than-expected first-half operating profit yesterday. Compass said it had made a good start to the year, delivering strong organic revenue growth and an improvement in its margin. “After absorbing the expected profit impact of [...]
Ageas hit by sovereign bonds May 18, 2011 BELGIAN insurance giant Ageas posted a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss yesterday as a positive performance in the UK failed to offset large declines in its holdings of government bonds. Ageas, reborn from the insurance arm of the European banking group Fortis after the firm was part-nationalised, made a group loss of €154m (£135m), worse than the [...]
Irish Life growth hit by rise in mortgage arrears May 18, 2011 IRISH banking and insurance group Irish Life said a rising number of its mortgage holders were in arrears, pulling its performance down despite steady growth in its saving and investment products yesterday. Its Permanent TSB mortgage bank, which is loss-making and was found to need an extra €4bn (£3.5bn) of capital in recent stress tests, [...]
General Mills has top Yoplait stake May 18, 2011 GENERAL Mills plans to buy a controlling stake in French yogurt maker Yoplait for €810m (£713.8m), securing US distribution rights to one of the best-selling global yogurt brands. General Mills entered into exclusive talks two months ago with private equity fund PAI Partners and French dairy cooperative Sodiaal. General Mills said yesterday it will buy [...]
Xstrata halts Australia smelting May 18, 2011 Xstrata, the world’s fourth-largest copper producer, plans to phase out copper smelting and refining in Australia by the end of 2016 in the face of a worldwide capacity glut, dismantle its plants and shift to sales of concentrates. Steve de Kruijff, chief operating officer of the company’s Copper North Queensland division, cited poor margins in [...]
Kier says order book is strong May 18, 2011 British construction group Kier has said its order books in building and services are strong, backing evidence that the latest gloomy official data is out of tune with experiences in the industry. Kier said it booked £600m of work since the end of December, securing all of this year’s expected construction revenue and 80 per [...]
Speedy Hire sees bumpy road May 18, 2011 Tool-rental firm Speedy Hire expects the next 18 months for the business to be “bumpy”, and said its finance director Justin Read had resigned to join a bigger UK firm. Speedy Hire, whose customers include Tesco and British engineering firm Costain, forecast a further 0.8 per cent fall in construction output this year. Speedy Hire [...]
US growth boosts Experian May 18, 2011 British credit information firm Experian narrowly beat profit forecasts, helped by a recovering US banking sector and expansion in Latin America, and said it was set for good growth this year. Experian, best known for carrying out consumer credit checks for banks and retailers, made a benchmark pre-tax profit of $973m (£602.5m) in the year [...]
Pole position maintained by Bank’s doves May 18, 2011 TWO THIRDS of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee continued to oppose any normalisation of interest rates this month. As the committee’s uber-hawk Andrew Sentance bowed out, after a term of over four and a half years, the meeting’s minutes revealed little appetite for a rise in the Bank rate. Sentance, who has called [...]
Private sector boosts building May 18, 2011 PRIVATE sector activity is driving the UK’s construction industry forwards again, a survey revealed today. Workloads in the building industry shot up in the first three months of the year, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said. Workloads were up by a net balance of six per cent, from a decline of five per [...]
