More Yuletide misery for the City December 3, 2012 DECEMBER signals the advent of Christmas: a time for celebration, relaxation, and over-indulgence. But less so this year. The last 12 months have been terrible for those plying their trades in London’s Square Mile. Those who still have a job should be grateful. The City has been butchered this year, and more than a few [...]
Ditch the tired old turkey this Christmas December 3, 2012 Head chef, Paternoster Chop House Call me an old Scrooge but the thought of eating turkey at Christmas fills me with dread. I know I’m in the minority here but I find it dry and tasteless, even if turkeys have come on a lot in recent years (more succulent birds include black or bronze turkeys). [...]
Fitness-based Christmas gifts have never looked so good December 3, 2012 FITNESS & DIET EXPERT GONE ARE the days where presents for your fitness-loving friends meant a toss-up between a pedometer and the latest fitness DVD. Now there are gifts galore for the active, gadget-happy exec. Here are this year’s pick of the bunch. 1 Perfect for the fitness fanatic who also happens to be fan [...]
Online retailers prepare for busiest day ever December 2, 2012 HIGH street shops and online retailers will face one of their fiercest battles yet for customers this Christmas, with today set to mark the busiest internet shopping day of the year. UK online sales will peak today – dubbed Mega Monday by City analysts – with Visa Europe expecting 6.8m transactions worth £320m to be [...]
Hobbs gets the ladies on board without quotas December 2, 2012 NICKY Dulieu, the boss of fashion retailer Hobbs, has managed to recruit a nearly all-female board since taking up the helm in 2008 but insists that imposing quotas is not the way to increase the number of women in the boardroom. Asked whether she was in favour of quotas, Dulieu told City A.M: “I genuinely [...]
Happy Bday SMS! Txts turn 20 2day but less msgs being sent December 2, 2012 TWENTY years ago today the first text message – “Merry Christmas” – was sent. The greeting was sent by Neil Papworth, an engineer working for Sema Group in the UK and a member of a team developing SMS software for Vodafone. Today, upwards of seven trillion text messages are sent every year, more than 200,000 [...]
Drown and out experience that took place on the path to charity December 2, 2012 WHEN I started swallowing water, I gave up hope. I was so tired I didn’t want to swim anymore. The “rip” or “undertow” had dragged me a long way from the beach, which was now just a long white band topped with greenery, a meaningless mirage I couldn’t reach. I had no surfboard; I had [...]
How to plan for the Autumn Statement December 2, 2012 WITH so much focus on tax in the past few months, it would be no surprise if this week’s Autumn Statement sets taxpayers up for a long and cold winter. Its contents are as yet unknown, and George Osborne has vowed to keep his silence ahead of Wednesday’s Statement. That, however, should not prevent taxpayers [...]
Beckham mulls next move after savouring a Hollywood ending December 2, 2012 FORMER England captain David Beckham insists he is no nearer to deciding his next destination after ensuring a Hollywood ending to his six-year stint at Los Angeles Galaxy on Saturday night. Beckham, 37, brought the curtain down on his American adventure by helping the Galaxy beat Houston Dynamo 3-1 to retain the Major League Soccer [...]
Dixons steals Comet’s place in the spotlight November 29, 2012 THERE are two kinds of people in this world: winners and losers. And if the contrast between rivals Dixons and Comet’s recent luck is anything to go by, the same looks to be true of companies. Luckily for Dixons, it looks like Comet’s demise has put the firm’s star firmly in the ascendant. Its shares [...]