Drop in mining stocks takes a toll on the FTSE but Rolls-Royce begins to recover November 8, 2010 BRITAIN’S top shares fell yesterday as mining and energy stocks tracked lower commodity prices, while financials eased on Basel III and sovereign debt concerns. Rolls-Royce rose 2.7 per cent after the engine manufacturer announced progress in understanding the cause of the failure of a Trent 900-powered A380 Qantas flight on 4 November, adding the incident [...]
Embarrassment grows further for Serco November 7, 2010 EMBARRASSMENT grew at government contractor Serco last night after it admitted two of its suppliers gave in to its bully-boy tactics. The firm received condemnation after a letter demanding a rebate from its suppliers was leaked to the press. It was shamed into issuing a grovelling apology and says the “relatively small” amount of money [...]
Royal Mail to cut supplier costs by 20pc November 7, 2010 ROYAL MAIL has told its suppliers to strike new deals as it looks to cut 20 per cent costs from each contract. The top 150 suppliers to the company were told in a meeting in London ten days ago the operator was looking to “radically reduce costs” ahead of plans to privatise the service, according [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS November 4, 2010 BT UBS rates the telecoms group a “sell” with a 12-month target price of 120p. The broker forecasts a four per cent fall in revenue when BT announces its quarterly results next Thursday, and believes the company’s huge pension deficit will remain the primary focus. It also predicts that the firm will have made moderate [...]
Serco makes humiliating rebate U-turn November 1, 2010 SERCO, the FTSE 100 outsourcing firm, was forced into a grovelling apology yesterday for demanding money back from suppliers, despite promising the government it would not do so. In September Serco financial director Andrew Jenner wrote to the company’s 193 biggest suppliers saying that “like the government, we are looking to determine who our real [...]
Commodities and banks lift FTSE but gains are tempered by Fed QE decision November 1, 2010 Miners led Britain’s top shares higher yesterday, boosted by strong data from China, but gains were tempered as investors looked ahead to the outcome of the US Federal Reserve’s meeting tomorrow. Miners rose after data showing demand in China, the world’s biggest consumer of metals, was holding up. The world’s biggest integrated zinc producer Xstrata [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING October 31, 2010 THE SUNDAYS The Sunday Telegraph MAUDE DEMANDS SERCO ANSWER Serco is to be ordered to explain to the government why it took the highly unusual step of writing to its leading suppliers to demand that they pay a blanket 2.5 per cent “cash rebate” on their work this year or risk losing future contracts. Serco, [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS October 4, 2010 Yell Group The company behind the Yellow Pages has appointed Tony Bates as chief financial officer, effective from 22 November. He will also take up the role of executive director from 1 November. Bates, 54, served as chief operating officer at Colt from 2002 until the end of July. Before this he was with record [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING September 21, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES MOVES TO WEAKEN YEN NOT OVER, SAYS KAN Japan stands ready to intervene again in foreign exchange markets, but also plans to put in place broader economic and monetary policies that will help to weaken the yen, according to Naoto Kan, the prime minister. Mr Kan stressed that Tokyo’s yen-selling intervention last week [...]
We need real reforms as well as cuts September 14, 2010 IMAGINE a failing, near-bankrupt corporation, saddled with out of control and deeply inefficient subsidiaries. A new management team has just been sent in. The previous incumbents failed miserably; the firm’s divisions are loss-making, following their own insular agenda and producing poor products at too high a cost. In the private sector, the solution would be [...]