Sports Direct in share swoop February 22, 2010 RETAILER Sports Direct is trying to win a disputed 29 per cent stake in Blacks Leisure and potentially use its muscle to oppose its troubled rival’s rescue plans. Sports Direct’s subsidiary Sportsdirect.com is looking to acquire the shares as well as an 11 per cent holding in JD Sports Fashion from the administrators of collapsed [...]
Shakespeare takes top job at YouGov February 22, 2010 STEPHAN Shakespeare is to take the top job at online pollster YouGov, following chief executive Nadhim Zahawi’s selection as a Conservative parliamentary candidate. Shakespeare, who is currently chief innovation officer at the pollster and a City A.M. columnist, will begin transferring duties immediately. Zahawi will formally hand over the role when the election campaign begins [...]
Hitachi launches £1bn retail fund February 22, 2010 Japanese-backed Hitachi Capital has launched a £1bn fund to prop up the UK retail industry. The firm’s consumer finance division is ready to implement a plan that will invest the cash into the furniture, white goods, jewellery and other retail sectors in order to stimulate growth in sales. Consumer finance divisional managing director Gerald Grimes [...]
BMW hands pension to Deutsche February 22, 2010 Car maker BMW has offloaded £3bn of longevity risk from its UK pension scheme to Deutsche Bank, in the largest longevity insurance transaction conducted to date. Deutsche’s insurance subsidiary Abbey Life carried out the deal, which was structured with pension insurer Paternoster in which Deutsche is a shareholder, in order to cover the pension scheme [...]
Gatwick sale stings as BAA loses £822m February 22, 2010 THE pressured sale of Gatwick airport has left a bitter taste for BAA, which saw its full-year pre-tax loss more than double to £822m yesterday. A £277.3m writedown related to the £1.5bn offloading of Gatwick to Global Infrastructure Partners was a big contributor to the slump at the airport operator. The transaction, which was completed [...]
Eurostar defends itself after fault February 22, 2010 Eurostar defended itself after the breakdown of a Paris-to-London train on Sunday evening in which hundreds of passengers were stranded in darkened carriages for hours. Richard Brown, chief executive of the cross-Channel operator, said: “There was extra water and food already on the train when the rescue [train], which got there pretty quickly, arrived and [...]
Greek airlines agree to merge February 22, 2010 Greece’s two largest carriers, Aegean and recently privatised Olympic agreed to team up to form a stronger player better able to compete with foreign airlines. The merger will form one dominant carrier in the domestic market and ease pricing competition between the two airlines. Olympic Handling and Olympic Engineering will become 100 per cent subsidiaries [...]
Crossrail and Heathrow a priority February 22, 2010 Key transport projects like Crossrail and a third runway at Heathrow must urgently be carried after the general election, a report has found. The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said the success of the economy depended on improving the transport network. Crossrail would provide an east-west train travel artery across London while an expansion of [...]
Payments firm seeks banking licence as industry shake-up gathers momentum February 22, 2010 A UK payments firm is applying for a banking licence to provide a full range of bank services to businesses, joining a growing list of firms targeting the area as the industry reshapes after the financial crisis. Voice Commerce Group, an unlisted payments firm that is interested in buying bigger rival RBS WorldPay, said on [...]
Inflation puts strain on UK households February 22, 2010 THE rapid pace of inflation means that British households are still feeling the strain almost two months after the country officially emerged from recession, a survey revealed yesterday. Markit/YouGov data showed that UK consumer finances worsened again in February, partly because income levels were unable to keep pace with increases in prices for goods and [...]
