Asian ambition risks a Prudential departure November 14, 2012 PRUDENTIAL boss Tidjane Thiam failed in his bid for AIG’s Asian insurance arm AIA in 2010, but yesterday’s third quarter numbers show the insurer has not turned its back on Asia’s opportunities. Far from it, with the Asian part of the business showing £828m new business profit in the year to date, as against £683m [...]
Profits and market share increase at Sainsbury’s November 14, 2012 Supermarket J Sainsbury this morning beat expectations by reporting pre-tax profit of £373m over the half year to September, up 5.4 per cent year on year. The supermarket chain’s market share ticked up to 16.7 per cent, the highest for almost a decade, following 31 consecutive quarters of like for like sales growth. J Sainsbury [...]
City Moves | Who’s switching jobs November 11, 2012 Old Burlington Investments Lawrence Hannah has been appointed business development manager at the investment firm. He joins from Caerus Wealth Management, where he was responsible for building its alternative tax products business. Hannah has also worked at Merrill Lynch. NYSE Euronext Demetria O’Sullivan has been appointed chief risk officer at the exchange’s new derivatives clearing [...]
Micro Focus revenues in line November 8, 2012 Micro Focus, a software provider for 91 of the FTSE 100 firms such as Tesco and HSBC, said yesterday that in the past six months revenues were in line with the market for the period and earnings are slightly ahead of expectations. During the period the company reduced its net debt to $96.2m (£60.2m) from [...]
Ageas UK profits hit record high November 7, 2012 AGEAS UK, the British arm of the Belgian insurance giant, yesterday announced its best ever results as pre-tax profits jumped 36.4 per cent to £106.7m for the first nine months of this year. Total income crept up by less than one per cent but a strong underwriting performance allowed profits to surge. Barry Smith, chief [...]
Sainsburys ups market share as Morrisons lags November 6, 2012 J SAINSBURY, Britain’s third-biggest supermarket group, has lifted its market share, helped by investment in its cheaper own-brand products, industry data showed yesterday. Market researcher Kantar Worldpanel said Sainsbury’s sales rose 6.4 per cent in the 12 weeks to 28 October, increasing its share of the UK grocery market to 16.8 per cent from 16.4 [...]
Terry Price to retire from Tesco November 6, 2012 Tesco is set to lose yet another to another of its senior executives, as it confirmed yesterday that its head of non-food Terry Price, is leaving after 18 months in the role. The supermarket group said Price, who returned to the UK from Tesco’s China division to take up the role, is due to retire [...]
Tesco set for a Christmas tussle to win back customers November 6, 2012 TOWARDS the end of last year I discussed in this column how 2011 had seen Tesco’s brand perception scores fall throughout the year. As we would expect to see, perceptions proceeded sales. Tesco’s January announcement that its sales had dropped led to a sell-off that knocked around 100p from Tesco’s share price. This is a [...]
Comet’s passing brings a brief celebration for rivals’ shares but the challenges they face haven’t gone away November 1, 2012 COMETS are said to burn across the sky on the death of a prince. The passing of this Comet was marked instead by the rise of its rivals’ share prices, with Dixons Retail Group doing especially well on the assumption that its chains will pick up business. But no one can pretend that kind of [...]
Cheap doesn’t always mean bad but be prepared for a challenge October 29, 2012 bottleopener@cityam.com THE £5 bottle of wine has long been a staple in everyone’s shopping baskets but that’s changing. Today’s 20 per cent VAT and the general impact of inflation is quickly making it nothing more than a distant memory. With that in mind, accompanied by six City A.M. readers, I set on a quest to [...]