AssetCo faces new calls for cash from unpaid suppliers March 29, 2011 TROUBLED fire engine provider AssetCo admitted yesterday that its unpaid bills had caused a “substantial” creditor to present it with a winding up petition. AssetCo, which has seen its chief executive, finance director and chairman replaced, and raised £16m in an emergency share placement this month, said it had paid the unnamed creditor in full [...]
Mouchel tanks after rejecting two bidders March 29, 2011 MOUCHEL’S shares tanked yesterday after it announced it has rejected overtures from two possible buyers. Rival Interserve and construction firm Costain were both kicked to the curb by the Mouchel board, wiping £60m off its already battered market cap – more than a third of its value. Mouchel said it rejected the offer from Interserve, [...]
Babcock confident due to improved order pipeline March 29, 2011 BABCOCK International, the engineering support services company, said it was confident about the next financial year thanks to a strong order book and a growing bid pipeline. The firm said the slowdown seen in the first-half of the year, which saw the number of new contracts coming up for tender drop, had reversed itself in [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS March 29, 2011 BT GROUP JP Morgan Cazenove (JPM) rates the telecoms group “overweight” and has cut its 12-month target price by 6p to 214p to reflect changes to the firm’s pensions deficit. The broker thinks many of BT’s short-term cost efficiencies might be reinvested to achieve growth targets, meaning slowing momentum before the firm returns to sustainable [...]
FTSE rises after upbeat Wolseley results outweigh bank dips and debt worries March 29, 2011 THE FTSE 100 rose moderately in light trade yesterday with support from miners and upbeat results from Wolseley outpacing falls in banks on European debt worries. The FTSE 100 climbed 27.68 points, or 0.5 per cent, at 5,932.17. The index regained more than 3 per cent the previous week following losses sparked by the earthquake [...]
US trading volume low amid uncertainty March 29, 2011 STRENGTH in energy lifted US stocks yesterday as investors concentrated on adding to winning positions as the quarter winds down, but uncertainty kept trading volume light. About 6.2bn shares traded in composite volume on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Amex and Nasdaq, the second-weakest of 2011 and below last year’s estimated daily average of [...]
Why jet-setting employees are a legal headache March 29, 2011 SUPPOSE an employee – let’s call her Snow White – works in Paris but lives in London. How much “home” or “train” work does White need to do to be covered by English laws? In the recent case of British Airways v Mak, the Court of Appeal decided that English tribunals have jurisdiction to hear [...]
Tweeting in court could damage your business March 29, 2011 IMAGINE that your business is in court. And now imagine that some people in that courtroom are sending out a constant barrage of tweets about the proceedings – every accusation, every negative claim and every judicial comment appears instantly on the internet, in a context-destroying 140-character form. And now imagine the effect it could have [...]
Watch out for Osborne’s foreign currency plans March 29, 2011 A FEW ears pricked up on budget day when George Osborne announced a surprising and potentially expensive plan to rebuild Britain’s foreign currency reserves. There are two methods of executing this plan. The first is to print sterling to buy foreign currency. This could be regarded as quantitative easing (QE) by another method. Indeed, it [...]
IRELAND MAY BE ENDING THE RISK TRADE March 29, 2011 DIRECTOR OF CURRENCY RESEARCH, GFT JUST take that castor oil and swallow it. It’s good for you.” That prescription no longer seems to be working in the periphery economies of Europe. From Portugal to Ireland, the public is starting to rebel against the fiscal austerity measures imposed by the EU and the IMF and the [...]
