Travelodge to open 26 new hotels this year January 6, 2010 TRAVELODGE will be opening 26 new hotels this year, adding 2,000 new rooms to their portfolio. Total investment in the projects will top £115m and includes new hotels in Edinburgh, London, Aberdeen, and Chichester. The new hotels will take Travelodge’s total UK properties to over 400, with in excess of 30,000 rooms. The building program [...]
New finance boss to heal Japan’s woes January 6, 2010 JAPAN has appointed a new finance minister to steer its economic recovery after his predecessor quit due to health problems. Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said deputy Prime Minister Naoto Kan will take over the finance brief from Hirohisa Fujii, who resigned yesterday. Kan will spearhead Tokyo’s efforts to combat deflation, a fragile economy and [...]
Citi exec enjoys $9m salary January 6, 2010 CITIGROUP’s head of investment banking took home more than $9m (£5.6m) in 2009, less than a year after the firm received taxpayer bailouts to the tune of $45bn. John Havens was given 2.7m shares of Citigroup stock at the end of December. Based on the company’s share price at the time, the shares – which [...]
Greece will not get a bailout, warns the ECB January 6, 2010 GREECE, struggling under escalating debt levels, will not be bailed out by its fellow Eurozone countries, the European Central Bank (ECB) indicated yesterday. ECB executive board member Juergen Stark was quoted as saying that markets were “deluding themselves” if they thought member states would “put their hands in their wallets to save Greece.” Greece’s deficit [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS January 6, 2010 MENZIES Numis believes the shares are significantly undervalued and raised its target price from 411p to 423p on the back of a positive trading update. Management said Menzies Aviation had seen a slight improvement in fourth quarter trading, while Menzies Distribution saw the rate of decline for magazine sales slow. UK COAL Charles Kernot has [...]
Barclay brothers buy DHL parcels unit January 6, 2010 SIR David and Sir Frederick Barclay started the year with a major acquisition for their home delivery business. They snapped up DHL’s parcels business for an undisclosed sum to merge with their Home Delivery Network (HDN). The deal will vastly increase the scale of HDN, doubling its turnover from £300m to £600m. Briant Gaunt, chief [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS January 6, 2010 Evolution Securities Garry Levin is to leave his role as managing director in corporate finance at KBC Peel Hunt to join rival Evolution Securities as head of its equity corporate finance division. Levin, 46, will take up his role formally in April 2010. Prior to his position at KBC Peel Hunt, he was joint chief [...]
How the Queen of support services wants to turn UK companies green January 6, 2010 GOING GREEN may not be the most original of strategies but that doesn’t make it any less lucrative. So Mitie Ruby McGregor-Smith’s decision to bet the future of her support services giant on cashing in on the trend for all things environmental has gone down well with investors. The FTSE 250 company is still busy [...]
DP World eyes London listing January 6, 2010 PORT operator DP World is looking to list on the London Stock Exchange after failing to drum up sufficient investor interest on the Nasdaq Dubai bourse. The Dubai-based group, which is more than three-quarters owned by the crisis-hit conglomerate Dubai World, said it was disappointed with the market valuation of the company and will now [...]
M&S reports sales boost but warns of tough 2010 January 6, 2010 MARKS & SPENCER has reported a rise in sales for the three months to Christmas but warned of a tough year ahead. The retailer saw like for like sales rise by 0.8 per cent with record takings on food on 23 December. Food sales overall were 0.4 per cent up on the previous year with [...]
