Why the future of the BBC’s sports coverage is made even more uncertain now Sky has renewed its Premier League highlights deal November 10, 2015 Last week Sky announced that it will be making Premier League highlights available on demand next season, after renewing its rights to "near-live highlights", the value of traditional highlights programmes, in particular, the BBC’s flagship football show, Match of the Day, into question and again leads to serious discussions about the future of sport on [...]
BT begins placement of £1bn of shares to fund EE acquisition February 12, 2015 BT is selling £1bn worth of shares to fund its £12.5bn deal for mobile network EE. The new shares will be listed through an accelerated bookbuilding process to fund part of the cash element of the deal, the telecoms giant confirmed this morning. The bookbuilding for the sale of 5p ordinary shares to institutional investors, [...]
Deal spree to provide relief to the City with Shire on verge of tie-up with Baxalta January 11, 2016 A string of mega deals is set to provide welcome relief to the City after a rocky start to the year saw £85bn wiped off the value of the UK’s biggest firms in the first trading week of 2016. London-listed pharmaceutical giant Shire is on the verge of inking a £22bn deal with US rival Baxalta, [...]
BT set for a year of scrutiny on £12.5bn EE deal February 5, 2015 BT has sealed its deal to buy mobile operator EE in a whopping £12.5bn transaction. The British telecoms giant said the deal will likely face a year of investigation by the UK’s merger and regulatory authorities completing sometime next year. The transaction will combine BT’s more than 10m retail customers and EE’s 24.5m mobile [...]
City Moves for 14 January 2016 | Who’s switching jobs January 14, 2016 Capital Access Group Investor engagement adviser Capital Access Group has announced that Bruce Packard has joined its investor analytics team. Bruce has 15 years’ experience in the City and has been part of several highly ranked banks’ teams. Having covered the UK banking sector since 2000 at Credit Suisse, ING, Societe Generale, Evolution and Seymour [...]
Liverpool ticket price protest: Premier League clubs should not lower the cost of attendance February 10, 2016 The ticket price row at Liverpool is only the latest squabble about the cost of attending football matches. The new £5bn-plus TV deal guaranteeing Premier League teams huge increases in revenue offers an occasion for clubs to lower admission prices. Retired footballers, journalists, media commentators and MPs all seem to be convinced that that they [...]
Digital probe sparks row over broadband as Sky and Talk-Talk press Ofcom to break up BT and Openreach March 12, 2015 A battle between the UK’s largest telecommunications businesses intensified yesterday, as Sky and Talk-Talk pounced on a decision by the regulator to launch a wide-ranging probe into the sector. Both firms ramped up pressure on Ofcom to break up BT from the part of its business – called BT Openreach – that runs the UK’s broadband [...]
BT agrees deal to buy mobile network EE for £12.5bn February 5, 2015 BT has agreed terms to buy mobile phone network EE for a massive £12.5bn. The deal, which will give BT access to EE’s 31m customers and the largest 4G network in Europe will be paid in a combination of cash and ordinary BT shares, issued to both Deutsche Telekom and Orange. The transfer of shares will mean [...]
BT deal and oil resurgance lead to late FTSE rally – London Report February 5, 2015 THE FTSE 100 recovered from earlier losses, as a late rally yesterday in crude oil prices boosted energy stocks and telecom firm BT Group advanced after its strategic acquisition of mobile operator EE. The UK Oil and Gas index rose 1.2 per cent after crude jumped about 5 per cent on falling output and rising [...]
Premier League sells TV rights for record £5.14bn to Sky and BT February 10, 2015 Premier League games are worth more money than ever before after the league agreed a new TV rights deal worth an incredible £5.136bn with Sky and BT. The average live Premier League football game will cost £10.2m to screen from the 2016-17 onwards, after Sky and BT shared the 168 games split across [...]