Bayer swallows Schiff Nutrition October 30, 2012 GERMAN pharma group Bayer is to buy US vitamins maker Schiff Nutrition International for an agreed $1.2bn (£747m) as it seeks stable sources of growth to complement its more volatile prescription drugs business. Bayer said it was offering $34 per share in cash to Schiff shareholders, a 47 per cent premium over Friday’s closing price. [...]
Russian sale helps BP hike its dividend October 30, 2012 OIL giant BP yesterday announced a quarterly dividend hike of 12.5 per cent, as it reported a jump in third quarter profit. The dividend increase to nine cents a share, which will be paid in the fourth quarter, was announced just days after BP confirmed it is to sell its 50 per cent stake in [...]
Were BP’s results what you were expecting? October 30, 2012 RICHARD HUNTER | HARGREAVES LANSDOWN The recently announced agreement with Rosneft leaves BP with exposure to the important Russian region without some of the previous distractions, and the hike in the dividend is proof of management’s optimism for prospects. JONATHAN JACKSON | KILLIK & CO The results are strong, and they provide reassurance that the [...]
Centamin plummets as Egyptian courts say right to operate gold mine is invalid October 30, 2012 SHARES in Egyptian gold miner Centamin lost a third of their value yesterday, as an Egyptian court said the company’s right to operate its flagship Sukari Gold Mine was invalid. However, the miner yesterday said that the concession agreement, which allows Centamin to explore, develop and extract gold from the Sukari mine, is part of [...]
Strike-hit miner Lonmin plans $800m cash call October 30, 2012 PLATINUM miner Lonmin yesterday said it was planning an $800m (£497m) rights issue to shore up its balance sheet in the wake of a violent five-week strike over the summer. The world’s third-largest platinum miner had previously warned of the possibility of an equity raising, after the strike at its Marikana mine in South Africa [...]
Advisers JP Morgan Cazenove October 30, 2012 INVESTMENT bank JP Morgan Cazenove is likely to have won a role advising Lonmin on its $800m rights issue. It has worked with the miner previously, on a share subscription with Shanduka last year. The team is likely to be headed up by Michael Wentworth-Stanley, a senior rainmaker at the bank. He has been a [...]
PwC seeks funding for manganese bronze October 30, 2012 The administrators of London black cab maker Manganese Bronze yesterday called for potential lenders to contact them “as a matter of urgency”, after the company confirmed it had appointed PwC’s Matthew Hammond, Tony Barrell, Ian Green and Mike Jervis. The maker of the iconic vehicles went into administration after failing to secure new funding last [...]
30 lenders now ready to take state funding October 30, 2012 THE NUMBER of banks and building societies looking to take cheap funding from the government more than doubled in the last month, according to official figures published yesterday. The Bank of England revealed another 17 have signed up to the Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS), which offers lenders cheap funds in the hope that they [...]
Middle Britain hit by stagnant living standard October 30, 2012 LOW and middle income earners in the UK are in the midst of a long stagnation in living standards, according to a key report published this morning. The independent Commission on Living Standards – set up by the Resolution Foundation – says that “large swathes” of households will be no better off in 2020 than [...]
Digital economy jobs leap as clamour for engineers grows October 30, 2012 DEMAND for IT jobs leapt by more than a fifth in the last few months, as firms increasingly invested in app and website development, and internet retail and advertising picked up. Figures from online job website Freelancer.co.uk showed that adverts for the world’s 50 most popular digital jobs grew from 230,614 in the third quarter [...]
