M&S defends £15m pay deal for new boss July 14, 2010 SIR STUART ROSE, the outgoing executive chairman of Marks & Spencer (M&S), along with the British retailer’s board faced investor revolt yesterday over the pay package handed to incoming chief executive Marc Bolland. With some shareholders calling his £15m deal “obscene” at its annual meeting, senior executives were left defending Bolland’s pay. Rose, who faced [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS July 8, 2010 PROVIDENT FINANCIAL Numis has issued a “buy” recommendation for Provident Financial and with the interim results coming up it details what it expects from the two core divisions: consumer credit and Vanquis. Overall, despite the current tough market conditions, Numis said it expects the group interim profits to be broadly flat. TOTAL UBS has raised [...]
M&S sales up for new boss July 7, 2010 MARKS and Spencer’s new chief executive Marc Bolland yesterday warned that he was “very cautious” about the economic environment in the UK. Presenting M&S’s third consecutive quarter of sales rises, he said: “We know that consumers were concerned to see the measure of VAT being taken to 20 per cent but we will not see [...]
FORMULA ONE CHIEF UNLEASHES TAX FURY July 7, 2010 WITH all the hubbub about capital gains tax rates in the run-up to the recent Budget, investors are no stranger to vituperative attacks on their profits, but it does come as a surprise when the abuse comes from someone who’s supposed to be on their own side. The latest high-profile character to get vocal about [...]
FTSE is boosted by banks as stress test fears begin to ease July 7, 2010 BRITAIN’S leading share index ended higher after a choppy session yesterday, driven by a recovery in banking stocks on reassuring comments from US peer State Street and an easing of stress test fears. At the close, the FTSE 100 index was 49.82 points higher, or up 1.0 per cent, at 5,014.82, its high for the [...]
M&S sales up but Bolland urges caution July 7, 2010 MARKS and Spencer posted a third consecutive rise in underlying quarterly sales, though its rate of improvement slowed a little and it joined rivals in sounding cautious about the consumer outlook. The company said sales at British stores open at least a year rose 3.6 per cent in the 13 weeks to 3 July. That [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING July 6, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES BARCELONA SEEKS LOAN TO HELP PAY PLAYERS Barcelona, the Spanish football giants whose players will make up the bulk of Spain’s team in Wednesday’s World Cup semi-final against Germany, are seeking a €150m loan to help pay player and staff wages. The move was announced by new Barcelona president Sandro Rosell who took [...]
Results fall short as executive pay surges July 4, 2010 REMUNERATION committees at the UK’s largest companies are demonstrating a marked failure to adequately link executive pay with performance, according to a damning new survey to be published today. While the median remuneration for chief executives at FTSE 100 companies has risen five per cent to £3.1m in the past two years, earnings per share [...]
M&S readies for investor anger on pay July 4, 2010 A STRONG set of first-quarter figures from retail bellwether Marks and Spencer this week looks set to be overshadowed by animosity at the firm’s annual shareholder meeting, with investors set to clash with executives over the eternally thorny issue of pay. Sir Stuart Rose will officially hand over the chief executive’s reins to ex-Morrisons man [...]
Marks and Spencer July 4, 2010 FITTINGLY for a general retailer, Marks and Spencer’s first quarter results on Wednesday will be something of a mixed bag. Analysts are expecting food sales to be up by around 1.5 per cent, with sales of clothes and general merchandise up by 3.7 per cent. But it’s worth remembering that the comparatives are pretty forgiving: [...]