Conviviality Retail in talks to buy Bibby’s Rhythm & Booze stores April 24, 2014 BARGAIN Booze owner Conviviality Retail confirmed yesterday it is in talks with rival off-licensing group Bibby Retail Services to buy a portfolio of stores as it seeks to gain a greater foothold in Yorkshire. The company, which floated on Aim last year, is understood to be interested in buying around 20 of the 50 shops, [...]
Card Factory to deliver £700m float in London April 22, 2014 CARD Factory boss Richard Hayes said yesterday that it hopes to emulate the success of other value retailers such as Poundland after announcing plans for float that could value the group at around £700m. The budget greetings chain, which has 700 stores, intends to raise £90m through an initial public offering that will allow its [...]
Old Mutual ups Boohoo stake April 22, 2014 FTSE 100 listed finance group Old Mutual, home of top investor Richard Buxton, has upped its stake in online fashion retailer Boohoo, helping it become one of the firm’s biggest institutional shareholders. The company yesterday revealed it had amassed a 9.4 per cent stake in the Manchester-based company, which floated on the London stock market [...]
Zeus Capital top of the board for junior flotations April 14, 2014 LONDON’S northern rival Manchester has emerged as a burgeoning scene for equity capital markets, with a Salford-based advisory rocketing to the top of the league for junior market listed flotations for the first time. Zeus Capital has soared to the top of the Alternative Investment Market (Aim) adviser rankings for new firms coming to market, [...]
Inside Track: The new issues market drifts into ever choppier waters April 10, 2014 THIS was the week when a sudden reality check intervened in the new issues market. It came after a blissful start to the year that has seen share prices popping, books covered multiple times and investors cashing out most profitably. The big losers earlier this week were the technology stocks, with shares in AO World, [...]
AO World shares steady after update showing 40pc growth April 10, 2014 SHARES IN newly-listed fridge seller AO World steadied yesterday after the firm’s maiden trading update confirmed it was on track to deliver 40 per cent revenue growth. AO, which floated in February, has been routed this week along with other tech stocks in London and the US on fears that a bubble was forming within [...]
Tech rout slams UK online giants April 8, 2014 BRITISH technology shares were pummeled for a second day yesterday as waves of uncertainty surrounding the sector continued, despite a recovery across similar stocks in the US. The FTSE 100 dropped for the second day in a row, falling over 32 points to 6,590.69, hampered by the poor performance of tech stocks. The top tech [...]
Bottom Line: Online retailers still falling out of fashion April 8, 2014 ON MONDAY, investors panicked. Having had the weekend to mull over the losses that sent the Nasdaq 2.5 per cent lower last Friday, sellers piled out of anything that could be broadly considered a tech stock – from FTSE 100 chipmaker Arm to recent market entrant AO.com. Yesterday, they seemed to have calmed down a bit. While [...]
Small flotations get £2bn boost after lean years April 7, 2014 THE LAST 12 months have been the most active for initial public offerings (IPOs) on London’s junior stock market since 2007, with the amount of funds raised nearly tripling, according to UHY Hacker Young. Research released today shows that in the 12 months to the end of March, firms floating on the Alternative Investment Market [...]
Just Eat taps into huge demand from investors for £1.4bn float April 2, 2014 LONDON’s appetite for highly-valued technology stocks will be fully tested today as conditional trading begins in the shares of Just Eat, the online takeaway food group. Bankers to the share issue, the first on the London Stock Exchange’s high growth segment, closed the books last night and intimated the valuation for the group would be [...]