Lloyds’ away win piles pressure on Skeoch July 26, 2019 A score draw? For Standard Life Aberdeen, that’s probably an overly generous classified check after the final whistle on its £109bn fund management dispute with Lloyds Banking Group. It’s hard not to look at the result as anything other than a come-from-behind victory for Britain’s biggest high street lender instead. The £140m cash sum it [...]
Vodafone rings cynical tone with token gesture on executive pay July 12, 2019 Talk about a late call. By the time Vodafone signalled a concession this week over long-term share awards granted to its top executives, the damage had already been done. The “voluntary request” (a phrase underlining the City’s talent for tortured tautology) made by Nick Read and Margherita Della Valle has stuck in the craw of [...]
Domino’s picks a Rennie after Wild excess June 21, 2019 A Rennie is a long-held cure for indigestion. Domino’s Pizza Group’s franchisees, who have been complaining that they have had as much as they can swallow of boss David Wild, should, then, welcome the fact that a Rennie is exactly what they’re in line to get. Having acknowledged in March that searches were underway for [...]
Unilever’s board has now lost the Lynx effect with UK investors, a new era for spin city and a hand from above October 5, 2018 How ironic that one of the world’s great consumer marketing machines – responsible for brands like Lynx, Persil and Magnum – should be making such a hash of a sales pitch to its own investors. Unilever’s insistence that it remains “confident” of winning this month’s vote to scrap its British headquarters sounds more strained by the [...]
No smoke without fire in BAT boardroom, Vereker charms the CBI and Nationwide’s 10x deal September 21, 2018 No prizes for guessing what the directors of British American Tobacco (BAT) are smoking – it’s all about next-generation products these days. Still, the owner of Lucky Strike and Dunhill believes there’s enough life in its core portfolio to sound an optimistic note about the future of the business under its next chief executive. Like [...]
No smoke without fire in BAT boardroom, Vereker charms the CBI and Nationwide’s 10x deal September 21, 2018 No prizes for guessing what the directors of British American Tobacco (BAT) are smoking – it’s all about next-generation products these days. Still, the owner of Lucky Strike and Dunhill believes there’s enough life in its core portfolio to sound an optimistic note about the future of the business under its next chief executive. Like [...]
The clock’s ticking for Smiths Group to shape its destiny, Big Four accountancy firms’ flaws and Paul Pester’s parting mistake September 7, 2018 The clock is ticking for Andy Reynolds Smith, chief executive of the industrial conglomerate Smiths Group. Talks about a combination of Smiths Medical, which manufactures devices ranging from tracheostomy tubes to chest drainage catheters, with US-listed ICU Medical have been ongoing for the best part of four months. When Reynolds Smith presents the company’s annual [...]
The GKN break-up is a test for Melrose, don’t bank on a tax cut and Marc Bolland is not just any NED June 29, 2018 Vultures. Asset-strippers. Corporate predators. The board of Melrose has had these perjorative labels and more thrown at it in the months since its initial bid approach for GKN. This week’s approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States of the £8bn takeover removed the final obstacle to a deal that elicited greater [...]
Sir Martin Sorrell’s mission: To out-fox former WPP allies, proxy voting pressure and fintech in focus June 1, 2018 It was there in black and white. In his farewell memo to 180,000 WPP staff in mid-April, Sir Martin Sorrell couldn’t have been more explicit: “As a founder, I can say that WPP is not just a mattter of life or death, it was, is and will be more important than that. Good fortune and [...]
The City’s pay schizophrenia will fuel discord March 17, 2017 There won’t be much sympathy on the streets of the City today for the eight dozen-or-so people who chair FTSE-100 remuneration committees. Call it Thumbscrews Day, if you like – because by the close of play, Whitehall will have been deluged with all sorts of funky ideas about how boards should be addressing the Prime Minister’s desired clampdown on [...]
