O’Neill’s owner Mitchells & Butlers profits rise to £150m November 26, 2013 Pub and restaurant group Mitchells & Butlers profits rose to £150m for the year ended 28 September 2013. The group whose branded bars and restaurants include All Bar One and O'Neill's saw revenue rise 2.2 per cent to £1.2bn with like-for-like sales growth of0.1 per cent in the first eight weeks of the fiscal year [...]
Thomas Cook sells Neilson to Luke Johnson November 25, 2013 LUKE Johnson, the serial restaurant entrepreneur best known for putting Pizza Express on the map, yesterday struck a deal to buy specialist sports travel group Neilson from Thomas Cook for £9.15m. The deal is Johnson’s second in the travel sector this year after his investment vehicle Risk Capital bought a majority stake in online holiday [...]
Hammerson and Westfield plans for Whitgift Centre win approval November 25, 2013 PLANS for the £1bn redevelopment of the Whitgift Centre in Croydon were given the go-ahead by the council’s planning committee last night. Developers Westfield and Hammerson have been granted outline planning consent to convert the tired 1960s shopping centre into a 1.5m square feet retail and leisure destination with 600 new homes. The scheme, which [...]
Catering group Searcys put up for sale with price tag of £25m November 24, 2013 SEARCYS, the operator of the restaurant at the top of the iconic Gherkin tower, has been put up for sale with a price tag of around £25-30m. The upmarket catering company, which also operates the champagne bars at the One New Change shopping centre in the City and at St Pancras station, has hired financial [...]
Discovering the entrepreneurial spirit behind Argentine wine November 24, 2013 Laura Ivill travels to Mendoza in Argentina to experience the wine-making journey from humble grape to fine-dining staple DRAW a line on the map from the bustling streets of Buenos Aires west across Argentina’s interior and you reach the soaring 6,000-metre peaks of the Andes. In the foothills, the low-rise sprawling city of Mendoza lends [...]
Good fortune comes with great design November 21, 2013 Positive energy guru Kerry Ann Smith tells City A.M. why feng shui interior design is just common sense THE OLD proverb says that an Englishman’s home is his castle. But with the rise of tablets and home-working, the castle is looking increasingly like, well, an office. Kerry Ann Smith, an interior design consultant, thinks she’s [...]
Government helped get my business going – now it’s boosting startups again November 19, 2013 TWENTY odd years ago, I stepped into a print shop on Albert Square in Manchester. It was an industrious place – full of whirring machines and the smell of printing ink. I knew then and there that I wanted to open my own printing business. But at 21 years of age, the bank manager wasn’t [...]
Chile: the most varied country in the world November 17, 2013 From mountains to desert, Ashwin Bhardwaj is enchanted by the diverse delights of Chile AT UNIVERSITY, we teased our Geographer housemate for doing a degree in “colouring in.” But we secretly envied his trips to exotic corners of the globe, digging ice cores and monitoring volcanoes. Visualising geography is difficult in England as this green [...]
McDonald’s plans $3bn facelift November 14, 2013 McDonald’s said last night that it plans to spend $2.9bn to $3bn next year to open 1,500 to 1,600 new restaurants and remodel about 1,000 others – roughly in line with this year’s reduced spending forecast. The world’s biggest hamburger chain, which recently has struggled to meaningfully expand sales at established restaurants, last month trimmed [...]
Caravan park operator sold by private equity owners for £170m November 12, 2013 THE SOUTH east’s largest operator of caravan parks, Park Holidays, was sold by its private equity backers yesterday to London-listed fund Caledonia Investments. Graphite Capital, which owns London’s Hawksmoor restaurant chain, sold the company for £172m, after overseeing it for seven years following a purchase in 2006. The deal is notable because Caledonia’s buy is [...]