The stiff competition facing Royal Mail May 21, 2014 Ahead of its first set of full-year results as a listed company tomorrow, Royal Mail’s announced it’s going to trial delivering parcels on Sundays. Later this summer, it’ll open about 100 offices on Sunday afternoons for customers to pick up parcels. It’ll also pilot delivering parcels within the M25; and from June, Parcelforce Worldwide, its [...]
Market authority set to greenlight Sky Europe deal May 11, 2014 THE UK’s newly established Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) yesterday said it would likely greenlight a deal by Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox to consolidate its pay-TV European holdings were it to be approved by the EC. In 2010, European authorities approved News Corp’s bid to take full control of BSkyB. Murdoch is said to [...]
EE stung by cost of new rules but 4G numbers rise April 28, 2014 BRITAIN’S biggest mobile network EE now has over 2.9m customers signed up to its superfast 4G internet service and is aiming to exceed 6m by the end of the year. Despite the growth in 4G, EE’s revenues fell 3.6 per cent to £1.55bn as the operator added only 123,000 new contract customers during the three [...]
Best of the Brokers for 23 April 2014 April 22, 2014 To appear in Best of the Brokers, email your research to notes@cityam.com ENERGY ASSETS Numis gives Energy Assets an “add” rating and target price of 380p after the firm’s acquisition of the electricity metering business BGlobal for £2.3m on a debt free basis. Numis says the deal “provides the opportunity to cross-sell electricity metering services [...]
Watchdog set to probe BT’s fibre pricing April 14, 2014 BT IS PREPARING for a battle with the regulator to defend its wholesale pricing of superfast fibre to other operators such as Sky and TalkTalk. Last May TalkTalk complained to Ofcom, alleging that BT had been abusing a dominant position by making the wholesale price, that all providers pay, too close to its own fibre [...]
Best of the Brokers for 11 April 2014 April 10, 2014 To appear in Best of the Brokers, email your research to notes@cityam.com ROYAL MAIL UBS has a “sell” rating and a target price of 450p on the newly-privatised postal firm. The broker is worried about the effects of Ofcom’s investigation into pre-sorted mail contracts, which make up 55 per cent of the UK letter market and [...]
Royal Mail’s facing a nasty threat, and it’s set to grow April 10, 2014 Royal Mail warned yesterday that an Ofcom review into wholesale mail prices will mean a period of uncertainty. This morning, shares in the FTSE 100 firm have fallen to 502p – down nearly three per cent. The investigation will look at Access market contract charges – Access mail is the type that’s pre-sorted, before being [...]
What the other papers say this morning – 10 April 2014 April 9, 2014 FINANCIAL TIMES Firms in the dark over pension charges Employers running final-salary pension schemes can be charged 10 times more than more efficient competitors, according to a new regulatory study that exposes a further lack of transparency in Britain’s investment industry. Research by The Pensions Regulator has also found that nearly a quarter of the [...]
Inside Track: HSBC to get one over on Barclays with capture of Moreno April 9, 2014 LIKE hands-on managers who get rebranded as directors of football, senior advisers at investment banks often find their august titles are merely stepping-stones on the way to a graceful exit. HSBC’s latest recruit suggests that theory is unfounded at Europe’s largest bank. City sources say it has signed up Glen Moreno, the chairman of Pearson, [...]
Vodafone challenges EE with 150 new stores April 2, 2014 VODAFONE is set to go on a high street spending spree, splashing £100m on opening 150 new retail stores over the next 12 months it announced today. Vodafone’s high street presence has lagged behind EE ever since the rival network was created from the merger of T-Mobile and Orange in 2010, leaving the new telecoms [...]