CITY MOVES WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS April 10, 2012 OpCapita Stephen Alexander has been appointed operating partner at the private investment firm, which over the past six months has acquired Comet, the electricals retailer, and Game UK, the video games retailer. Alexander has more than thirty years’ experience in European consumer businesses. He began his career with Imperial Foods, before moving to Allied Domecq, [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING April 9, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES AstraZeneca faces calls for shake-up Some of the biggest investors in AstraZeneca are calling for a radical shake-up of the board and executive team, as a new chairman prepares to join the underperforming Anglo-Swedish pharma group. With the company trading on the lowest price/earnings multiple in the sector, some shareholders have been lobbying [...]
London leads UK recovery, but large retailers drag on growth April 9, 2012 THE ECONOMY is growing once more – and London led the recovery in the first quarter, influential survey data showed yesterday. However, other indicators pointed to weakness in some parts of the UK, with increasing numbers of retailers entering administration in the first three months of the year. Every English region except the north east [...]
Pret A Manger sets its sights on expansion April 4, 2012 PRET A MANGER is to create 550 jobs in Britain and step up its expansion plans abroad after it unveiled soaring revenue and earnings growth in 2011. Chief executive Clive Schlee said the sandwich chain plans to “invest heavily in future growth” with at least 44 shop openings this year, of which 24 will open [...]
CITY MOVES WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS April 3, 2012 Post Office Virginia Holmes is joining the board of the Post Office as a non-executive director. Holmes has previously served as chief executive of AXA Investment Managers UK, and spent more than a decade with the Barclays Group, where she was ultimately managing director of Barclays Bank Trust Company. She currently sits on the board [...]
Firms fight to clinch Whitgift mall overhaul April 2, 2012 PLANS to turn Croydon’s Whitgift shopping centre into one of London’s biggest malls reached a stalemate yesterday when its owners sided with two different developers, Westfield Group and Hammerson. The centre’s leaseholders Royal London Asset Management and Irish Bank Resolution, who together own a 75 per cent stake in the mall, said they had signed [...]
The early bird catches the right information April 2, 2012 WHEN the social media site Twitter started making headlines, the cynics came out in force to lambaste it. Most jibes were based on the myth that people were only tweeting and following the mundane – they were then ignorant of the fact that some of the world’s great thinkers were using the site. Most of [...]
Maybe the co-operative model isn’t so good after all March 29, 2012 PSST. Don’t tell Nick Clegg, but “co-operative” is not a byword for success. Earlier this year, the deputy prime minister said he wanted Britain to become a “John Lewis economy”, in reference to the firm’s employee-owned structure. Yet there are just two major co-ops in the UK. John Lewis, the patron saint of retailers, is [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS March 29, 2012 Assura The UK’s leading primary healthcare property company has announced the appointment of Graham Roberts as its new chief executive, with immediate effect. Roberts has worked in the property sector for the last sixteen years, most recently as finance director of British Land, one of the UK’s largest real estate investment trusts. Roberts replaces Nigel [...]
FTSE 100 dragged lower as fears of fresh slump weigh on bank shares March 29, 2012 HEIGHTENED worries over global economic growth, after more disappointing data from America and the UK, dragged Britain’s leading shares lower yesterday, with energy and banking stocks taking the biggest hit. The FTSE 100 index closed down 66.96 points or 1.2 per cent at 5,742.03, extending its falls into a third straight session and reaching a [...]