Tracinda offloads MGM shares August 18, 2011 Billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian’s Tracinda Corp has sold 20m shares in gambling and resort operator MGM Resorts International, leaving it with a 22.8 per cent interest. Tracinda disclosed in a filing yesterday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it still held 111,173,744 shares after the sale. In April, Tracinda, which is based in [...]
TJ Hughes creditors lose £400m August 18, 2011 Discount chain TJ Hughes collapsed with total debts of £433.5m, administrators at Ernst & Young have said, and most creditors have little hope of recovering much of their money. The group, which collapsed in June despite investment from turnaround specialist Endless LLP, heard from 156 interested parties over a takeover or sale of the business, [...]
Science still below par as passes rise August 18, 2011 BUSINESS leaders yesterday said the number of students studying A-Level maths and science is still too low, despite an upswing in the number of candidates taking A-Levels in these subjects since 2010. The number of UK students sitting A-Level maths rose 7.8 per cent since last year, according to yesterday’s provisional data released by the [...]
Miners eye Colombia growth August 18, 2011 ANGLO American, Xstrata and BHP Billiton have approved a $1.3bn (£789m) expansion of the Cerrejon mine, home to one of the world’s largest coal deposits, in Colombia. The diversified miners said yesterday they would invest equal amounts in the project that will increase production and export capacity by 8m tonnes per annum (mtpa) to 40 [...]
Tax programme lures high achiever August 18, 2011 PEOPLE always assumed Jasmine Cope, a high achiever who skipped a year at the Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School in Aylesbury, would go on to university. But Cope, who turns 17 tomorrow, turned her back on higher education after the tuition fees increase left her “unable to justify” finishing her studies with so much debt, [...]
The UK is lagging behind despite growth in maths August 18, 2011 DESPITE the jump in students taking mathematics at A-Level, the UK risks falling further behind other nations unless the qualification becomes more popular, an education charity claims. “[A]s recent reports have highlighted, the UK still lags well behind its industrial competitors in terms of participation in mathematics education beyond GCSE level,” said Mathematics in Education [...]
Noble Energy inks $3.4bn deal to develop shale gas August 18, 2011 OIL and gas producer Noble Energy will pay $3.4bn (£2.06bn) to Consol Energy to form a partnership to develop Consol’s assets in the Marcellus shale. The move is S&P 500-listed Noble’s first into the Marcellus shale deposit in the eastern US, one of the largest natural gas fields ever discovered, and comes amid a natural [...]
CITY VIEWS: DO YOU THINK EXAMS ARE GETTING EASIER OR STANDARDS ARE GETTING HIGHER? August 18, 2011 MICHAEL WATTS | BERENBERG BANK “I do think that students are working harder. But I think that results are being driven by the government trying to ensure pass rates get higher year on year, which makes me quite cynical of the statistics we are seeing.” PAUL MILLER | TARDIS GROUP “I don’t think the increase [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS August 18, 2011 Mercer The HR group has appointed Michael Dempsey as head of the investment management division for EMEA and a member of the firm’s EMEA executive team and its global investment management leadership team. Dempsey most recently led Mercer’s investment management business in Ireland, where he launched the Dynamic De-Risking Solution. Dempsey replaces Tom Murphy, who [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS August 18, 2011 HENDERSON UBS rates the asset manager “neutral” and has trimmed its target price by 10p to 145p following Wedensday’s first half results figures. The broker has also cut its earnings forecast for the year by six per cent and now expects modest outflows from the group’s retail segment. UBS also sees signs that integration with [...]
