Hot weather to prove thirsty work and give pubs a boost July 12, 2009 The City has good reason to focus on the pub this week, with numbers from JD Wetherspoon, Enterprise Inns and Mitchells & Butlers all likely to be high on the agenda. The recent hot weather should have provided some welcome business for the hard-hit pubcos. But investors will also look for firms to further defend [...]
ASHLEY FACES DIRECT HIT July 12, 2009 Sports Direct is set for an investor battle on Thursday as it reports its first set of results with like-for-like comparisons. The group, led by Mike Ashley, is expected to scrap its dividend to pay down debts. Ashley has been in the spotlight for his row with rival sportswear chain JJB Sports’s executive chairman Sir [...]
Google is not the only challenger to Microsoft July 9, 2009 GOOGLE opened yet another front in its war on Microsoft earlier this week by announcing the launch of its new PC operating system. Chrome will compete directly with Microsoft’s sacred cash cow, Windows, which accounted for around 45 per cent of the software giant’s $22.5bn operating profit last year. Google’s decision to take on Microsoft [...]
Jones puts his house in order as loan row grows July 9, 2009 Embattled JJB executive chairman Sir David Jones has put his main home on the market, in the midst of a storm over a £1.5m loan from Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley. It was revealed yesterday that Jones has been trying to sell his seven bedroomed home in West Yorkshire for three months. The property features [...]
JJB Sports claims Mike Ashley’s tale of events on controversial loan is false July 8, 2009 TROUBLED JJB Sports yesterday claimed that Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley’s version of events regarding a loan payment to Sir David Jones were “false.” In an escalating row between the two sportswear retailers, Ashley’s team of lawyers, Mishcon de Reya, were yesterday understood to be working flat-out on a denial of JJB Sports’s statement to the [...]
JJB pledges support for Jones in spat July 7, 2009 AILING sportswear retailer JJB Sports yesterday backed its executive chairman Sir David Jones amid a growing storm over a £1.5m loan he received from Mike Ashley, chief executive of arch-rival Sports Direct. JJB Sports said that the board had given its “unanimous support” to Jones and said it believes “that he is the right person [...]
JJB Sports shares dive on cash call July 6, 2009 JJB SPORTS yesterday suffered a 25 per cent plunge in its share price to 23p after investors were rattled by a confirmation of a £50m rights issue and a controversial row involving executive chairman Sir David Jones. The ailing sportswear chain yesterday said it is looking to raise working capital in a placing and open [...]
WILL JJB SPORTS BE ABLE TO RECOVER FROM THIS SET BACK? July 6, 2009 NICK BUBB PALI INTERNATIONALNews of the deeply discounted rights issue has obviously hit the group. I’m not too surprised by that. JJB’s rival Sports Direct reports trading figures next week and this ‘loan leak’ is designed to hurt Sir David Jones’ reputation and therefore hurt JJB’s abilitiy to raise money and fight back – it’s [...]
Failure to take tourism seriously is a big mistake July 2, 2009 WHICH industry is worth £114bn, is responsible for 2.65m British jobs and represents 8.2 per cent of UK GDP? Perhaps surprisingly the answer is the tourism industry. So, given the clear importance of this key economic activity, it is surely worrying to consider that tourism bosses believe their business interests are not taken as seriously [...]
Automatic for the people? June 30, 2009 THE best high-performance cars come with a manual gearbox, right? Well, not according to Mercedes-Benz. On the evidence of this car, their stance appears to be that machines can change gear more efficiently than humans. But where’s the fun in that? Having driven this car in automatic form, I was yearning to feel how it [...]