Reed Elsevier sells part of RBI July 8, 2009 Reed Elsevier has agreed to sell a small part of the RBI trade-magazines unit – whose sale it scrapped last year – to entrepreneur Clive Jacobs for an undisclosed sum. The travel-publishing division comprises Travel Weekly, Travolution, Gazetteers.com and associated online services and events, and accounts for about 1 per cent of RBI’s revenues, which were £1.244bn [...]
JJB Sports claims Mike Ashley’s tale of events on controversial loan is false July 8, 2009 TROUBLED JJB Sports yesterday claimed that Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley’s version of events regarding a loan payment to Sir David Jones were “false.” In an escalating row between the two sportswear retailers, Ashley’s team of lawyers, Mishcon de Reya, were yesterday understood to be working flat-out on a denial of JJB Sports’s statement to the [...]
Google plans to launch an operating system to rival Microsoft Windows July 8, 2009 GOOGLE yesterday revealed plans to attack Microsoft’s core business by taking on the software giant’s market-leading Windows operating system. The Californian internet firm announced the plans just nine months after launching internet browser Chrome, a product which also pitched its tents onMicrosoft’s turf by competing with Internet Explorer. Google said the operating system would initially [...]
Booker posts strong first quarter sales, stock rises July 8, 2009 CASH-and-carry group Booker yesterday posted a 7.8 per cent increase in underlying first-quarter sales, stronger than it anticipated less than two months ago, and said profit was in line with its expectations. Booker, which runs over 170 branches supplying grocers and caterers as well as schools and prisons, said total sales in the 12 weeks to [...]
Sky Capital six in fraud charge July 8, 2009 SIX former employees of Wall Street retail brokerage Sky Capital were yesterday charged with running a $140m (£87.2m) “trans-Atlantic boiler room” to defraud investors in both the US and the UK. US prosecutors announced a criminal indictment of fraud against Sky Capital’s founder and chief executive Ross Mandell and five others, while the Securities and Exchange [...]
3i cash raising efforts see it halve its debt July 8, 2009 3i GROUP, the listed private equity giant, said yesterday it had managed to cut its debt in half over the last three months as it offloaded assets and completed a heavily-discounted rights issue. The £732m raised in the rights issue – where existing shareholders were offered bargain-priced shares as the group scrambled to raise cash [...]
CITY AM SHADOW MPC July 8, 2009 ALLISTER HEATH CITY A.M.Growth is returning slowly to the UK economy. But the Bank will increase quantitative easing this month; it has little choice really as the markets (and the Treasury) are not ready to face any exit strategy. SIMON WARD HENDERSON NEW STARExpand gilt purchases by £25bn but halve the pace to £12.5bn a [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS July 8, 2009 GKNBoA Merrill Lynch reiterated its “buy” rating on GKN, saying that its 6:5 rights issue addressed its major concerns. The broker has new 2009-11 forecasts and a new price objective of 105p, down from 155p. ANGLO AMERICANRoyal Bank of Scotland lowered its earnings forecasts by one per cent on average for 2009-11 and upgraded its [...]
Tullow cuts output target and its revenue forecasts July 8, 2009 OIL explorer Tullow Oil slashed its full-year output target yesterday, and said revenue in the first half would slump by 23 per cent to £290m, as low oil prices hit the sector. “The reduction is due to the lower sales volumes and most significantly the reduction in realised commodity prices during the first half of [...]
Meriwether fails again as his hedge firm JWM shuts down its main fund July 8, 2009 JOHN MERIWETHER, the hedge fund veteran whose last firm Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) spectacularly collapsed just over 10 years ago, is closing his main hedge fund at JWM Partners. His Relative Value Opportunity II hedge fund, which invested in bonds, has run aground after losing 44 per cent of its value over the last [...]
