Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivered Labour’s first Budget in 14 years, announcing £40bn of tax rises, Central London Alliance comments
Retail investors drive Saga float towards £3bn April 23, 2014 INSURER Saga is set to put retail investors at the heart of the largest UK stock market float since Royal Mail, as it gears up to publish plans to list the firm in London as early as next week. Saga’s owner Acromas, which also owns the AA, is preparing to offload as much as £1.5bn [...]
Inside Track: Behind the scenes of the Pfizer and Astrazeneca talks April 23, 2014 IT WAS ever thus: investment bankers kick off the year talking up a economic environment ripe for throwing up industry-defining mergers and acquisitions. By Easter, they’re conjuring up myriad reasons why said deluge of deals has failed to materialise. To date, 2014 has done little to disabuse that idea. There are exceptions, of course, one [...]
Institutions get a stronger hand in new issues April 14, 2014 THE PENDULUM of power in the new issues market could swing back to institutional investors this summer after a spate of companies floated so far this year sank underwater. Big name issues in London including Brit Group, Just Eat, AO World and Pets at Home have all fallen below the price they floated at in [...]
Generation Wealth: Brands are overlooking the most lucrative demographic April 14, 2014 @LiamWardProud COURTING millennials is something of an obsession among media types. With brands chasing the digital trendsetters born between 1980 and 2000, marketing campaigns seem increasingly driven by Twitter hashtags, Facebook follows and all manner of social media buzzwords. This could be a huge mistake. The UK’s population is ageing – quickly. In 2015, over-40s [...]
Co-op in turmoil as Myners quits April 9, 2014 THE CO-OPERATIVE Group was plunged into fresh chaos last night after the man tasked with saving the troubled organisation quit the group. Lord Myners, a former City minister, is set to resign his post as senior independent director just four months after he was appointed to lead an overhaul of the company’s bloated structure. It [...]
Blur’s Alex James plays King of the farmyard in Canary Wharf April 9, 2014 KING may be in its post-IPO quiet period but the games-maker made a pretty loud statement in Canary Wharf yesterday. In a bid to push its latest game, Farm Heroes Saga (think Candy Crush but um, on a farm) King’s marketing whizzes set up a farm pop-up outside the station. It came with all of [...]
Let voters kick out MPs between elections and watch standards soar April 9, 2014 MARIA Miller’s claims on taxpayers’ cash towards her second home between 2005 and 2009 have been scrutinised in a variety of quarters. First, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards investigated the case after a complaint was submitted and came to her conclusions. Then the House of Commons Standards Committee deliberated and published its verdict. Numerous other [...]
Let voters kick out MPs between elections and watch standards soar April 9, 2014 MARIA Miller’s claims on taxpayers’ cash towards her second home between 2005 and 2009 have been scrutinised in a variety of quarters. First, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards investigated the case after a complaint was submitted and came to her conclusions. Then the House of Commons Standards Committee deliberated and published its verdict. Numerous other [...]
Candy Crush Saga maker King hunts staff for new bestseller March 31, 2014 CANDY Crush Saga game maker King Digital has gone on a hiring spree in a bid to dream up more bestselling games. The British computer games maker, whose shares tanked after its initial public offering (IPO) last week, is advertising 165 new jobs, which would increase its workforce by a quarter. Around half of the [...]
Inside Track: JP Morgan is outpacing rivals in UK equity transactions March 28, 2014 WHEN the venerable David Mayhew sold 50 per cent of Cazenove to JP Morgan 10 years ago, there were many who predicted the gradual demise of the influence of that august stockbroking house. After all the City memory bank is filled deep with the names of institutions, such as Warburg, Kleinwort Benson and Smith New [...]