A tale of two companies shows why chief execs count May 30, 2012 IT WAS the best of times for Britain’s biggest food wholesaler Booker on 24 May. Its preliminary results showed another good year: sales of £3.9bn, pre-tax profit up 27 per cent to £90.8m and a net cash pile of £63.4m. Why then did its share price rise yesterday by almost 10 per cent after it [...]
CITY VIEWS | WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THE PASTY TAX U-TURN? May 29, 2012 HOWARD WATT FIDELITY I bought a pasty from Greggs this morning and it did seem a little expensive, but it’s still much cheaper than a lot of the other food that is being sold in the City. I think booze and cigarettes should be taxed to encourage healthy lifestyles and pasties are quite fattening too. To [...]
The Facebook debacle deserves a reaction from London May 28, 2012 THE controversies surrounding the historic $104bn flotation of Facebook in the US should have reminded all of us that although the New York financial markets may currently be the place to go for technology flotations, they are not infallible. What is disappointing is that with so much wrangling about how the float was handled, very [...]
Harsh but efficient: the lemon detox May 28, 2012 FITNESS & DIET EXPERT This week I continue my search for the city’s best beach shape-up regimes. Here I try and test the Lemon Detox (www.lemondetox.com). This is one of those diets that if you’re any kind of self respecting weight watcher, you’ll want to try once in your lifetime. Beyonce used it to drop [...]
Vive la revolution May 28, 2012 Anyone can be a wine expert these days. For a few quid you can book yourself on a tasting course where you’ll learn to tell your claret from your beaujolais. Fine beer, though, tends to be associated with the Campaign for Real Ale brigade, which conjures images of a tweed jacketted James May – the [...]
Stamford Bridge scores with Marco May 22, 2012 RESTAURANT MARCO Stamford Bridge, SW6 1HS FOOD ***** SERVICE **** ATMOSPHERE *** Cost per person without wine: £50 Here’s an odd one: a banker I know is a Gunner: an Arsenal supporter, that is. But, he confesses, he’s also a regular at Stamford Bridge. That’s enemy territory: home of my team, the Blues, Chelsea FC. [...]
Dubai nightlife gets an injection of Mayfair fun May 20, 2012 LONDON night owls tired of seeing the same old faces – and tired of the chill – might do well to make a trip to the United Arab Emirates. Die-hard City folk can easily feel an affiliation with Dubai thanks to an influx of club, bar and restaurant openings all mimicking the best of what [...]
Swimming star shares her tips with City A.M. May 7, 2012 FITNESS & DIET EXPERT With just over two months to go until the Olympics, team GB hopeful Keri-Anne Payne still found time to be an official ambassador for this year’s Swimathon (swimathon.org), an event that a whopping 26,078 swimmers across the UK took part in. I caught up with her to get her take on [...]
FIT IN THE CITY April 30, 2012 FITNESS & DIET EXPERT Over the next few weeks I’m going to be trying out some of the City’s top weight loss methods in the lead up to bikini/Speedo season. Tried and Tested: The Food Doctor Clinic Last week I visited The Food Doctor Clinic in Harley St (www.thefooddoctor.com), to see how a holistic (in [...]
A riot of flowers and fish in Gauguin’s paradise April 29, 2012 What’s in Bora Bora?” I asked a frequent visitor there. “Sharks – but in a good way”, was the answer. Did that justify twenty hours flying time to French Polynesia, I wondered. A few weeks later, swimming in a lagoon so blue it looked digitally enhanced and watching grey-tipped reef sharks, I had my answer. [...]