City ignores critics with rush to float June 16, 2014 LONDON’S fragile new issues market will shrug off the fears of sceptical fund managers this week as two of the country’s biggest employers pull the trigger on multi-billion pound listings. FTSE giant Lloyds Banking Group is expected to lift the bottom level of the price range for the listing of high street offshoot TSB, while [...]
Bottom Line: Swann’s SSP could prosper in City’s search for quality June 16, 2014 THERE was a telling comment last week during a session held at the Royal Institution of Great Britain examining initial public offerings. “We’re going to go through a rather different period now,” EY’s Richard Hall, a veteran of last year’s bumper Royal Mail float, told an audience of private equity investors. “There are still some [...]
Raw ambition: Meet Yo! Sushi founder and ex-Dragon Simon Woodroffe June 16, 2014 Harriet Green talks Yo! Sushi and embracing disaster with ex-Dragon Simon Woodroffe For one of Britain’s most ebullient entrepreneurs, Simon Woodroffe is modest about his first steps into business. “The initial motivation was desperation”, he says. The founder of Yo! Sushi, Yo! and former BBC Dragon says that he “started a restaurant in a world [...]
Boris Bentos to hit the South Bank at new Japanese restaurant June 11, 2014 London is full of themed restaurants but County Hall might have just become the site of the weirdest one –Izakaya Boris – a casual Japanese eatery for which BoJo is the mascot. There’s a plastic cartoon-like icon of Boris Johnson outside the restaurant and one inside and again on the menu. The question on everybody’s [...]
Index Ventures eyes up London for £325m fund June 10, 2014 INDEX Ventures, which invested in the recently floated Just Eat and King, will today unveil its seventh early stage fund as the venture capital firm increasingly looks to London for startups with an ambition to become global leaders in their fields. While the new £325m fund would be spread over investments across Europe, the US [...]
Taxi app Hailo scoops Europas award ahead of today’s bitter Uber strike June 10, 2014 HAILO may be embroiled in today’s anti-Uber taxi strike but there was no place for app-bashing at last night’s Europas Awards, the annual gong-giving bash for Europe’s tech start-ups. The taxi app, which has seen many of its black cab partners revolt against it, picked up the award for Best Transport app but aside from [...]
Dish of the Day: Sabrina Ghayour’s lamb biryani June 10, 2014 Picture: Liz & Max Haarala Hamilton PERSIAN food is much lighter than people expect and it’s the least spiced food in the Middle East. It uses an abundance of fresh herbs, lemons, tomatoes and molasses and we tend to eat a lot of lamb, chicken and fish. It’s a really good place to start if you [...]
Dish of the Day: Sabrina Ghayour’s lamb biryani June 10, 2014 Picture: Liz & Max Haarala Hamilton PERSIAN food is much lighter than people expect and it’s the least spiced food in the Middle East. It uses an abundance of fresh herbs, lemons, tomatoes and molasses and we tend to [...]
Short sellers in dash to bet on Saga share price fall June 9, 2014 HEDGE funds are queuing up to bet on a further fall in the share price of newly-floated companies like Saga and AO World amid renewed scepticism in the new issues market, statistics show. Short sellers, who borrow shares from other investors to make gains when the price falls, currently have close to one per cent [...]
Kings of Leon: Meet fast food entrepreneurs Henry Dimbleby and John Vincent June 8, 2014 Annabel Palmer talks fast food in heaven with Leon founders Henry Dimbleby and John Vincent BRITAIN’S foodies have never had it so good. Barely a week goes by without a new fad emerging to whet their sweetbreads (most recently, the rise of American-inspired dipping and Korean cuisine); BBC One’s Masterchef becomes ever more delectable as [...]