Car dealer Pendragon to raise £75.2m through deeply discounted rights issue July 14, 2011 LISTED car dealer Pendragon yesterday said it plans to raise about £75.2m through a rights issue to reduce its debt. The nine-for-eight issue is to be priced at 10p per new ordinary share, representing an eye-watering 54 per cent discount to the stock’s Wednesday close. Shares in Pendragon had closed at 21.75p per unit on [...]
PULP FICTION: CITY FILM PRODUCER LEADS DEAL FOR £2M COMIC DEBUT July 12, 2011 ITS COMIC potential has been compared to The Full Monty, Kingpin and The Hangover, but it has been made on a shoestring of £2m – and by a former management consultant. The independent film, Pulp, is the brainchild of Adam Hamdy, who worked at the management consultancy Bridgewater before founding an internet start-up and retiring [...]
Commodity shares lift FTSE on sunny US and China stats July 7, 2011 COMMODITY stocks led the FTSE 100 sharply higher yesterday, as US jobs data boosted confidence that the world’s biggest economy was showing signs of picking up heading into second-half. Integrated oils rose along with crude oil as reports showed US private employers stepped up hiring in June and the number of Americans filing for jobless [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING July 3, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES JLR IN 50 PER CENT BOOST TO SPENDING Jaguar Land Rover is to boost its spending on products by 50 per cent from about £1bn to £1.5bn as the UK’s largest premium carmaker prepares to launch the most important vehicle since Tata Motors bought the group from Ford Motor three years ago. CHI-X [...]
China gives support to Eurozone June 26, 2011 CHINESE premier Wen Jiabao is expected to throw his weight behind the future stability of the Eurozone when he meets with David Cameron at Downing Street today. As part of wide-ranging talks touching on issues from trade to human rights, Wen will discuss the use of China’s massive cash reserves and spending power to help [...]
Welcome to London’s business paper June 3, 2011 WELCOME to our first ever Saturday edition to celebrate the greatest and most exciting sporting event of the year. Here at City A.M., we are truly passionate about the Investec Derby as well as horse-racing in general. Our growing numbers of readers in and around London work very hard – but they also love to [...]
Admiral passes pay resolutions May 9, 2011 Motor insurer Admiral’s annual meeting ended with all resolutions passed yesterday and 98.7 per cent support for the remuneration report. Admiral, which posted a 50 per cent rise in first-quarter revenues last week, also saw chief executive Henry Engelhardt, finance chief Kevin Chidwick, operating chief David Stevens and its eight non-executive directors re-elected.
Quake budget agreed as auto markets suffer May 2, 2011 JAPAN’S parliament yesterday passed a $50bn (£30bn) emergency budget for disaster relief after the 11 March earthquake and tsunami, a downpayment on what is set to be country’s biggest public works effort in six decades. Opposition parties backed the first round of spending to finance work such as clearing rubble and building temporary houses. Reaching [...]
The man who’s locking horns with indecisive EU regulators April 17, 2011 MENTION Brussels to any senior London-based insurer and you will always get the same reaction: anger and exasperation. With just over 18 months to go before the introduction of Solvency II, the insurance industry’s equivalent of the new Basel III banking rules, European regulators have still not produced a framework that properly reflects the business [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING April 5, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES KEY INVESTORS FLOCK TO GLENCORE FLOTATION Demand from key institutional investors for shares in Glencore on its flotation has been well above the group’s expectations, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, according to bankers involved in the initial public offering. The Swiss-based company plans to allocate between 20 and 30 per cent [...]