Coca-Cola Hellenic flees Greece October 11, 2012 Greece’s biggest company Coca-Cola Hellenic, which bottles Coca-Cola, yesterday said it would move the firm to Switzerland and switch its market listing from Greece to London. The company, whose shares make up a fifth of the Athens exchange, confirmed rumours it would seek a FTSE 100 listing to enhance liquidity opportunities open to the firm [...]
Direct Line IPO boosted by US intervention October 11, 2012 DIRECT Line Group yesterday celebrated a successful float as its shares jumped by more than seven per cent – however City A.M. has learned that London’s biggest initial public offering (IPO) in 17 months was heavily reliant on demand from US institutional investors. More than a third of the initial tranche of shares were bought by American funds, an unusually high [...]
BAE could be swallowed up by European firm in unsure future October 11, 2012 BAE could be approached by another European defence company in the wake of its collapsed bid with EADS. The Italian defence minister Giampaolo Di Paolo said yesterday that the break down of talks opened up opportunities for Italian defence firm Finmeccanica. “The failure of the scenario of a merger between EADS and BAE has created [...]
MPs criticise government housing plan October 11, 2012 A PARLIAMENTARY committee today slammed the government’s affordable homes programme for being poor value for money and failing to meet the demand for housing. The cross-party Public Accounts Committee said the government’s Affordable Homes Programme, which will make £1.8bn of grants to social housing providers to build 80,000 new homes, was badly designed and would [...]
Sales recovery provides relief for Burberry October 11, 2012 SHARES in Burberry surged yesterday as the luxury fashion house reported it had seen sales recover in recent weeks, while it blamed a slowdown in UK and China sales on the continued squeeze on middle class shoppers. Burberry finance chief Stacey Cartwright said while wealthy shoppers continued to spend, the “aspirational luxury consumer” – or [...]
Japan’s mobile giant Softbank mulls £7.9bn Sprint Nextel deal October 11, 2012 US MOBILE operator Sprint Nextel said yesterday it was in talks with Softbank, the Japanese telecoms giant, over selling a majority stake to the firm in what would be the biggest ever US investment from a Japanese firm. Sprint, the US’s third-most popular operator with around 56m subscribers, said it was negotiating with Softbank on [...]
Banks at threat of being cut as companies tap investors direct October 11, 2012 BANKS are at threat of being isolated from the financial system, as companies increasingly turn to the bond markets to borrow money, Ernst & Young has warned. The professional services firm said the banking system is being “disintermediated” from the financial system after the growth of the corporate bond market to finance firms over the [...]
Basel plans new capital rules for national banks October 11, 2012 BANKS considered nationally important will have to hold more capital than their smaller counterparts from 2016 onwards, the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision said yesterday. But the global watchdog said it would leave the question of how much more the domestic systemically-important banks should hold up to individual national regulators. The new rules are designed [...]
Lagarde urges Europe to put a brake on deep budget cuts October 11, 2012 THE INTERNATIONAL Monetary Fund (IMF) has backed giving debt-burdened Greece and Spain more time to reduce their budget deficits, cautioning that cutting too far, too fast would do more harm than good. But Germany pushed back and said back-tracking on debt-reduction goals would only hurt confidence, a stance that suggested some disagreement between the IMF [...]
European Central Bank concern over distortion in bond markets October 11, 2012 THERE are severe distortions in Eurozone sovereign bond markets stemming from unfounded investor fears about a potential break-up of the single currency, the European Central Bank said in its monthly bulletin yesterday. The ECB said its new bond-purchase plan – dubbed Outright Monetary Transactions, or OMT – was a “necessary, proportional and effective” instrument to [...]
