What the other papers say this morning – 01 July 2014 June 30, 2014 FINANCIAL TIMES EU slams US over Microsoft privacy A US attempt to force Microsoft to hand over emails held on servers in Ireland has drawn a strong rebuke from Brussels in one of the first tests of cross-border privacy raised by cloud computing. The US demand could contravene international law and should have been handled [...]
What the other papers say this morning – 30 June 2014 June 30, 2014 FINANCIAL TIMES Value of M&A hits $1.7 trillion Deal frenzy, animal spirits, merger mania – call it what you like, it is back. The value of global mergers and acquisitions hit $1.75tn in the first six months of the year, a 75 per cent rise on the same period last year and the highest since [...]
Bottom Line: AA stalls, but this is no scrapheap stock June 23, 2014 IT’S ALL rather manic in the markets right now. A year that started at break-neck speed has been run off track by a series of IPO flops, leaving folk on the buy-side mightily unimpressed. And as the road rage intensifies, investors are directing much of their anger at private equity sellers. Such a toxic and [...]
The new machine age: Britain must not miss out on the robot revolution June 23, 2014 MORE and more people are concerned about a wave of robots stealing their jobs. But for Britain, there’s a more pressing concern: what if the robot economy doesn’t arrive here at all? For a while now, pundits have been speculating that robots, self-driving cars and clever algorithms will take many of the jobs now done [...]
Vodafone to talk to machines with Cobra Automotive deal June 16, 2014 VODAFONE yesterday announced its intention to buy Cobra Automotive Technologies for €1.49 per share in cash, in a deal worth €145m (£115m). The Italian firm specialises in car electronic services including vehicle tracking, usage-based insurance and security to the car industry. The deal comes as Vodafone seeks to expand its range of machine to machine [...]
Vodafone set to buy Cobra Automotive Technologies June 16, 2014 Vodafone has announced its intention to launch a voluntary takeover of Cobra Automotive Technologies for €1.49 per share in cash, valuing the company's entire fully diluted ordinary share capital of Cobra at €145 million (£115m). Cobra has operations in a host of countries including China, Brazil, Japan and the UK and is listed on the [...]
Why the car insurance industry faces a difficult future June 12, 2014 The Competition and Market Authority's (CMA) proposed plans for change in the private motor insurance market aim to increase competition and reduce the cost of premiums for motorists. If implemented, they stand to do just that. This is great news for customers, but what does this mean for an industry that is already exceptionally competitive, [...]
Don’t count on brownfield: It won’t solve the housing crisis alone June 11, 2014 IN TODAY’S Mansion House speech, George Osborne is expected to outline new plans to encourage housing development on brownfield sites. The speech follows in the wake of an IMF report, which urged the UK government to relax planning rules that constrain both brownfield and greenfield development in order to sort out the grave imbalances in [...]
What the other papers say this morning – 11 June 2014 June 10, 2014 FINANCIAL TIMES Merkel warns Cameron over EU job Angela Merkel yesterday told David Cameron to stop making “threats” over the allocation of top jobs in Brussels, as centre-right EU leaders met to discuss the bloc’s future economic direction. The German chancellor is frustrated by Mr Cameron’s claim that the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker as European [...]
AA races ahead with plans for £1.4bn flotation June 6, 2014 BRITAIN’S largest car insurer and roadside recovery firm, the AA, yesterday confirmed its intention to list on the London Stock Exchange in the second half of this month. The company’s current private equity owners want to sell off the stock to a buy-in team, backed by institutional investors, who will then take it public. They’ll [...]