Inflation held up by steeper food prices June 14, 2011 INFLATION is widely expected to balloon past five per cent in the coming months, after rising food costs held the consumer price index to a two-and-a-half year high of 4.5 per cent in May. May’s steady rate on the CPI “represents just a temporary pause in an upward trend which could take inflation to 5.5 [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING June 13, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES PARCOM CAPITAL TO SELL SEE TICKETS FOR £120M See Tickets, one of the largest ticketing companies in Europe, is in the advanced stages of being sold by Dutch investment firm Parcom Capital for between £100m and £120m. The sale, which has reached second round bidding, has attracted interest from a handful of private [...]
Lloyds may shed 15,000 jobs as part of far-reaching savings plan June 12, 2011 LLOYDS could cut up to 15,000 jobs as part of a new £1bn cost-saving plan. Whole layers of management could be stripped out of the bank, with hundreds of jobs likely to go at its head office and thousands of posts to be cut across the UK and in its remaining international outposts. Lloyds, which [...]
Why critics of ETFs should be ignored June 5, 2011 IN the UK, like in many other countries, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are increasingly becoming a threat to old-school fund managers. ETFs, for those not yet familiar with the product, are investment funds that are traded on stock markets – like ordinary shares. But perhaps because of their growing popularity with investors, who enjoy their [...]
New chairman Leighton signals change of Pace May 31, 2011 ALLAN Leighton, who was confirmed as the successor to Mike McTighe at the struggling TV set-top box maker Pace yesterday, is planning to launch a strategic review of the Yorkshire-based company. Leighton, who has led the boards of the Post Office and supermarket chain ASDA, said: “I’ve watched the Pace business develop with both its [...]
Tata Steel reports record profit May 26, 2011 India’s Tata Steel warned rising raw material costs could hurt margins for a couple of quarters after posting its highest-ever annual net profit, bolstered by a surge in prices and demand in Asia’s third largest economy. The world’s No.7 steelmaker, whose European operations account for two-thirds of its global capacity of about 28 million tonnes, [...]
RETURN TO SENDER: ROYAL MAIL SPINNER POSTS P45 TO ITV’S PR May 25, 2011 ALL GOOD things come to an end, and so it is that ITV is parting company with Tulchan, its financial public relations adviser of four years, The Capitalist can reveal. The commercial broadcaster, whose new press chief is former Independent and Sunday Telegraph journalist Mary Fagan, has told Tulchan it wants a regime change among [...]
FACING UP TO THE FEAR OF FAILURE May 25, 2011 AUTHOR ASK what was holding me back and I can tell you immediately: fear. Fear of failure, in fact. This self-fulfilling mental condition is a disaster for too many careers. I wrote What’s Stopping You? out of frustration with this and the self-help universe. I saw a disconnect between what the psychologists stated were our [...]
Greencore: we are not for sale says chief exec May 24, 2011 SANDWICH and chilled foods maker Greencore posted a net half-year loss yesterday as costs from its failed merger with Northern Foods wiped out gains from a steady sales rise. The Irish group booked a €13.4m (£11.7m) charge for its bid to merge with Northern Foods, a convenience food specialist that was prised out of its [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS May 24, 2011 May Gurney Margaret Ford, Baroness Ford of Cunninghame, will become non-executive chairman at the company’s AGM on 7 July 2011. In the interim she will be appointed to the board as a non-executive director, with immediate effect. Gurney, 53, recently retired from Serco as senior independent director and has extensive public company experience, including Grainger [...]