Former BT chief joins CityFibre board February 17, 2014 CityFibre, provider of fibre optic infrastructure, has appointed Sally Davis to its board as non-executive director. Davis previously worked as chief executive of BT Wholesale before stepping down in 2011 after four years. Davis also serves as a director at Logitech and Norwegian telecoms firm Telenor. “Sally’s expertise in delivering large scale telecoms solutions in [...]
Vodafone eyes UK broadband and TV markets February 6, 2014 VODAFONE is considering a move into the UK broadband and television market, its chief executive confirmed yesterday, while its UK mobile revenue declined for the seventh consecutive quarter. When asked about Pay-TV chief executive Vittorio Colao said: “We are watching the space. Today, there’s not an urgent need to be there. It could be different [...]
Bottom Line: A tie-up to take on BT could put Voda within range of new growth February 6, 2014 VODAFONE’S investors were yesterday rightly pleased about a plan for the company’s future that doesn’t include the initials A, T and T. With a takeover from the States off the cards for a few months, and its Verizon stake gone, the telecoms giant has got some time to put its affairs in order. Pressing on [...]
Witts joins Imperial Tobacco board February 5, 2014 Kingfisher’s finance director Karen Witts has been appointed as non-executive director of Imperial Tobacco, the owner of DIY chain B&Q said yesterday. Witts will join Imperial Tobacco’s board today with immediate effect, taking the number of women on the company’s board to three and meeting the target set out in Lord Davies’ 2011 report for [...]
TalkTalk customer base hits 4m as it signs new Sky Sports deal February 4, 2014 TALKTALK will begin offering its customers £9.99 pay-per-day access to Sky’s sport channels as part of a new three year wholesale deal with the satellite broadcaster. The deal was announced along with TalkTalk’s third quarter results which showed a 5.1 per cent year-on-year increase in revenue to £436m, and 175,000 new TV customers during the [...]
BT profits from growing sport and broadband customers January 31, 2014 BT said its sports customer numbers passed 2.5m in the last three months of 2013, reporting what chief executive Gavin Patterson has described as an “encouraging set of results”. In November, BT paid almost £900m for the rights to broadcast Champions League football from 2015-18. Its efforts to drum up customers have saw six per [...]
Investors back BSkyB despite drop in profits January 30, 2014 INVESTORS remained confident in BSkyB yesterday, despite a 18 per cent drop in half year profits, as Britain’s biggest pay-TV broadcaster added over 100,000 new customers during its second quarter. Shares in Sky closed up 4.4 per cent on the results, which included news of a new deal with HBO to secure exclusive access to [...]
Sponsors line up to steal Barclays’ Premier crown January 27, 2014 THE PREMIER League is bracing itself for a sponsorship bidding war if Barclays decides to pull out of the deal next year, it emerged yesterday. The high street lender, which has sponsored the league since 2001, is mulling plans to end the £40m a year deal when the rights come up for renewal in 2015. [...]
Bottom Line: BSkyB’s forecast still uncertain January 26, 2014 WHILE headlines surrounding BSkyB’s second quarter results on Thursday will certainly centre around an expected drop in profits – which analysts say could be as much as 10 per cent – the escalating cost of sports rights and the uncertainty of hanging on to the most precious of those rights continues to cast a shadow [...]
London Report: Growth figures set to show UK’s strong recovery January 26, 2014 GROWTH figures for the fourth quarter are expected to give further proof of Britain’s booming recovery. Economists predict expansion of 0.8 per cent in the final three months – giving the UK its strongest yearly growth since 2007. Jonathan Loynes, of Capital economics, said: “We think that the preliminary estimate of GDP in the fourth [...]