Shoppers lose sweet tooth for Thorntons December 21, 2011 CHOCOLATE maker Thorntons has warned that full-year profits will fall short of expectations, blaming weak consumer confidence and frenzied discounting among rival retailers in the run-up to Christmas. Shares plunged 37.5 per cent after the confectionary chain said it now only expects to break even for the year to 30 June 2012, before taxation, exceptionals [...]
Barratts to cut 170 jobs before Christmas Eve December 21, 2011 BARRATTS Priceless, the ailing footwear company, will shut 18 stores before Christmas, resulting in the loss of 170 jobs, its administrators said yesterday. Deloitte, which has been trying to find a buyer “for all or part of the rest of the business” as a going concern, said five Barratts shops and 13 Priceless stores will [...]
CITY VIEWS: DO YOU FEEL MORE INCLINED BE CHARITABLE AT CHRISTMAS? December 21, 2011 SHAKTI ANAND TATA CONSULTANCY “Yes, I carry out a lot of charitable actions at Christmas time. I like to make a visible difference as it gives me satisfaction over the holiday period.” ALAN CULLEN LAING O’ROURKE “Definitely, it is the Christian thing to do. It is a time for being with the family, which makes [...]
ED SAATCHI SCALES UP TO SOCIAL MEDIA IPO December 21, 2011 IMAGINE logging on to Facebook and it already knows who your friends are, says Edward Saatchi, the red-headed son of the advertising legend Maurice Saatchi. This is the idea behind the “social, data-driven” networking site that is NationalField, the business world’s answer to Facebook that launched in spring 2008 as a way of connecting staff [...]
Ten of the top givers in the City December 21, 2011 AS we now know from the tremendous response to this newspaper’s first ever Christmas charity appeal, the City is full of givers. Despite the tougher times many of our readers have experienced, as a group this year they dug in to support a charity that helps people help themselves. This page is a tribute to [...]
Thorntons issues profit warning December 21, 2011 Chocolatier Thorntons issued a profit warning as hard-up consumers stayed away from the 100-year-old group at one of its most important times of the year. The company’s shares plunged by more than 30 per cent after the announcement. Thorntons, which slashed its dividend in September, said it had been hurt by the continued weakness in [...]
Kean on the brink as Coyle enjoys the spoils December 20, 2011 BLACKBURN 1 BOLTON 2 BLACKBURN manager Steve Kean edged closer to the sack last night after the club’s fans staged angry demonstrations against him and owners Venky’s before, during and after last night’s defeat against relegation rivals Bolton. First half goals from Mark Davies and Nigel Reo-Cocker put the visitors, who had lost their previous [...]
City redundancies are sent via text message at 4am December 20, 2011 DOZENS of bankers might have wished for a seasonal lump of coal for Christmas yesterday: instead they received a handy text message telling them that their job no longer exists. Investec laid off 90 of its front-office staff before dawn, with those who had opted into the text alert system receiving an SMS at 4.30am [...]
Oh Hoare Govett. What’s in a name? December 20, 2011 I was told yesterday that a private equity group has approached a former star from Hoare Govett to look at ways of extricating the group from its troubled parent RBS. Though the identity of the individual is a mystery, there is some logic to the idea. Hoare Govett, despite years of being in the hands [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING December 20, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES BP, TOTAL AND STATOIL SECURE ANGOLA RIGHTS A new exploration frontier off the coast of Angola that may be similar to oil fields found in Brazil is to be opened after the government of the African country awarded drilling rights to some of the world’s largest energy groups. Britain’s BP, Total of France [...]