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 [...]
The Long View: UK leadership of the international space race isn’t entirely out-of-this-world November 14, 2013 WHO SAYS the sky has to be the limit? Britain’s space industry has ambitions to become a global leader. The sector’s new growth plan, announced this week, includes establishing a British spaceport within five years. It wants our 6.5 per cent share of the global space market in 2010 to be 8 per cent by [...]
Costa owner Whitbread looks for Habgood successor November 14, 2013 Whitbread, the owner of Costa Coffee and Premier Inn, is on a hunt for a successor to Anthony Habgood, reports Sky News City editor Mark Kleinman. The FTSE 100 group, which also owns Beefeater and Table Table, has brought in headhunters to find a new chairman. Habgood, who also chairs Reed Elsevier, is likely to [...]
Exclusive: Shearer: I fear fans will be victims of pay TV war November 13, 2013 FORMER England captain Alan Shearer fears ordinary supporters are in danger of being priced out of football following BT Sport’s blockbusting £900m acquisition of Champions League broadcast rights. From 2015 British fans will have to subscribe to both BT and Sky in order to watch their clubs in all major competitions, meaning they are likely [...]
Pets at Home groomed for market debut November 12, 2013 FINANCE firm KKR has fired the starting gun on a £1.5bn stock market listing of UK pet store Pets at Home. The Wall Street group, which took over Pets at Home in 2010, has asked Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Nomura to draw up plans to sell its stake in the company [...]
TV succeeding for TalkTalk despite losses November 12, 2013 TALKTALK fell into the red during the six months to 30 September as the telecoms operator invested in new customer growth and yesterday dismissed battles over TV sports rights as “not our fight”. The strategy appears to have been successful. TalkTalk boasted yesterday an additional 167,000 TV customer signups in the last quarter alone, putting [...]
Glaxo slumps as heart drug misses study goal November 12, 2013 AN EXPERIMENTAL GlaxoSmithKline drug, designed to fight heart disease in a new way, has failed to meet its main goal in a major late-stage clinical study, dealing a blow to one of the company’s biggest new treatment hopes. Darapladib’s inability to reduce the overall risk of heart attacks and strokes in the first of two [...]
Mix it up: Stir in a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down November 12, 2013 @philip_salter Flourishing species ultimately perish, rising civilisations fall in the end, and conquering nations are eventually defeated; but human beings – at least as long as we walk this planet – will always want to get drunk. Though getting inebriated is a constant, the way we imbibe changes over space and time. And, like everything [...]
Premier League bids to hit £5bn November 12, 2013 War between BSkyB and BT for TV football rights set to escalate THE COST of broadcasting Premier League matches is set to soar as soon as next year, as competition over the coveted rights intensifies between BSkyB and rival BT. After Sky’s sports dominance was challenged over the weekend by BT’s knockout £900m bid to [...]
Metro boss gets extra fee bonus November 12, 2013 METRO Bank’s boss is to earn extra cash for finding new branch premises for the lender, it emerged yesterday, on top of his salary. Founder and chairman Vernon Hill is paid £75,000 per year, and gains up to £175,000 more a year for finding new offices. The figure came out in a fundraising prospectus seen [...]