City applauds Tory cut-price shares move February 22, 2010 CONSERVATIVE plans to offer millions of people cheap shares in Britain’s nationalised banks have received a tentative thumbs-up from the City. Shadow chancellor George Osborne yesterday outlined a scheme to hand small investors shares in Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group when the government exits its £70bn stake. The “people’s bonus” would reward [...]
Greece is not looking for a bailout, says Prime Minister February 22, 2010 Greece is not looking for bailout money, according to its Prime Minister George Papandreou. He instead called for political support to enable Greece to borrow at the same rate as other EU countries. Papandreou told the BBC: “Give us the time, give us the support – and I’m not talking about financial but political support [...]
Royal London and Liver in merger talks February 22, 2010 ROYAL London and Royal Liver, Britain’s two biggest mutual companies, are understood to be in the early stages of merger talks. The proposed deal comes after Royal Liver failed in discussions with Liverpool Victoria, the UK’s largest friendly society, over a potential £10bn merger. Royal Liver turned down a previous bid from Royal London in [...]
Travelodge to construct a new hotel in heart of the City February 22, 2010 Travelodge will open three new hotels, including a development in the heart of the City, in time for the 2012 Olympic Games. A 77-bed hotel in a vacant office building off Cannon Street will cost £7.5m to develop. It hopes to attract business travellers as well as tourists visiting St Paul’s and Monument. The firm [...]
Threat of disruption from German Lufthansa strike February 22, 2010 Germany is bracing for a four-day strike at flagship airline Lufthansa from today that threatens to disrupt travel to and from Europe’s biggest economy. Lufthansa’s pilots plan to go on strike in a row over pay and job security, fearing the company could try to cut staff costs by shifting jobs to foreign subsidiaries such [...]
VT mulls £233m payout to block Babcock deal February 22, 2010 THE takeover battle between shipbuilder Babcock and services company VT Group has taken a twist after one of VT’s largest shareholders urged the board to open its books. Fund manager Tim Steer of Artemis said chief executive Paul Lester should cooperate with Babcock to encourage the larger firm to increase its £1.25bn indicative offer. Steer, [...]
It’s time to start bidding up the predator February 22, 2010 IT must be awfully hard for VT?Group to fend off Babcock, when it has been in hunter mode itself recently. It has been spinning a takeover of Mouchel with talk of synergies and scale, but balks when Babcock uses similar language. VT’s trump card, a shareholder payout totalling as much as £230m or 126p a [...]
Orange set to finally merge with T-Mobile February 22, 2010 ORANGE and T-Mobile look set to become the UK’s biggest network after their long anticipated merger received the thumbs up from Brussels. A drawn-out investigation by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) looked likely but a string of concessions appear to have smoothed the way for the merger to go ahead as early as this [...]
Bharti will sign letter of intent over Zain deal February 22, 2010 Kuwaiti telecoms firm Zain and India’s Bharti Airtel are expected to sign a letter of intent for their $9bn (£5.8bn) African assets deal this week. The letter will include the official offer and the schedule of payment. Bharti is in exclusive talks until 25 March to buy Zain’s African business, excluding Morocco and Sudan. It [...]
KPMG: Public services to require radical changes February 22, 2010 The delivery of public services must be redefined according to a study compiled by accountancy firm KPMG. Recommendations contained within the report suggests that UK public sector companies need to go through a raft of radical changes to successfully redefine their role. “At the moment there is a lot of focus on short-term measures to [...]
