Hermes GPE raises $620m from pension funds to plough in to co-investment deals October 5, 2017 Hermes GPE, the firm which invests in private equity funds and deals, has raised around $620m (£472m) for its co-investment strategy. The fund raked in commitments from a club of pension funds, professional investors and asset managers – including the Local Pensions Partnership, a collaboration between Lancashire County Pension Fund and the London Pensions Fund [...]
Carillion Middle East suitor plots takeover attempt and prized London listing September 26, 2017 At least one Middle Eastern construction firm is eyeing Carillion’s update this Friday ahead of a potential takeover bid for the struggling builder. Final touches are being put to an offer from a new suitor to buy up Carillion’s shares and give the operator access to the firm’s London listing, City A.M. understands. The bidder [...]
Editor’s Notes: End of the road as Bell Pottinger shuts up shop, Jeremy Corbyn’s Venezuela shame and Old McDonnell had a strike September 8, 2017 For staff at Bell Pottinger the weekend probably can’t come soon enough. The disgraced PR firm’s fall from grace and into likely administration has been breathtakingly fast. For the 200 UK employees, the vast majority of whom had nothing to do with the scandal that sank the company, an uncertain few weeks await them. Some [...]
Why Liverpool’s Champions League qualification cost Chelsea and Manchester United over €10m in revenue August 24, 2017 Liverpool and Celtic both cruised into the Champions League group stage this week, costing Chelsea, Manchester United, Manchester City and Tottenham an average of €13m in the process. For Liverpool, the financial uplift from securing their place amongst Europe’s elite will be significant in prize money alone. The Reds and the Hoops both earned €2m [...]
EY heads off competition and snares BHP Billiton audit from 2019 August 22, 2017 Big Four accountant EY has snared a lucrative victory, replacing KPMG as mining giant BHP Billiton’s auditor. BHP conducted an audit tendering process during the year in the wake of regulations forcing firms to rotate their statutory accountants. As a result, incumbent KPMG did not bid to continue its role. EY will take over from [...]
TalkTalk fined by data watchdog for putting 21,000 sets of customer data at risk of being accessed by scammers August 10, 2017 TalkTalk has been fined by the UK’s information regulator after 21,000 sets of customer data were at risk of falling into the hands of scammers and fraudsters. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) slapped the FTSE 250 firm with a £100,000 fine. Personal information was at risk after an Indian firm TalkTalk used to resolve complaints [...]
What Alan Shearer has to teach us about inflation August 4, 2017 So who are the world’s three biggest spenders on defence these days? That’s right – the US, China and … Manchester City. Boom, boom. Yes, we may still be a week away from the start of the 2017/18 English Premier League season but of course it has been generating back-page headlines for weeks now thanks [...]
Revealed: The most-traded investments in July reflect a commodities recovery August 2, 2017 Investment and trading platform Interactive Investor has revealed its top most-traded for the month of July. The rankings reflected a recovery in commodities price, the ever-present poplarity of tech stocks, and strong demand for Lloyds. Top by a mile Most traded large cap shares Lloyds AstraZeneca Glaxosmithkline BP BT Despite missing analyst expectations in its [...]
Ukraine’s central bank pulls plug on PwC bank audit rights over PrivatBank’s balance sheet hole July 20, 2017 The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) announced today that it had pulled the plug on PwC’s domestic bank auditing rights, after it had failed to identify a $5bn (£3.9bn) balance-sheet hole at the country’s largest lender in previous audits. It comes after last December’s state takeover of PrivatBank by the NBU, in a move aimed [...]
BT’s Openreach checks £1.5bn Carillion deal July 17, 2017 Openreach, the infrastructure arm of BT, has launched a “forensic investigation” into its landmark £1.5bn contract with crisis-hit Carillion after the construction firm had over half its value wiped out in under a week. The telecoms giant is examining how Carillion’s troubles could affect the delivery of much-needed upgrades to Britain’s internet infrastructure, sources told City [...]