Modern drawing room farce disappoints, despite strong cast October 31, 2013 THEATRE RAVING Hampstead Theatre | Two stars I THOUGHT you didn’t agree with stereotypes?” says Keith to his wife Briony. “You’ve restored my faith in them,” she fires back, stingingly. Actor and playwright Simon Paisley Day obviously has plenty of faith in them, too – the whole of Raving is built on them. Keith (Barnaby [...]
Knives are out for Rodriguez’s Machete Kills October 13, 2013 FILM MACHETE KILLS Simon Thomson, Cert 15 Three Stars MACHETE KILLS hits you like a shot of tequila. It’s a frantic, stupid, cartoonish mess and that’s what makes it so fun. In this sequel to Robert Rodriguez’s 2009 film Machete, Danny Trejo returns as the former Mexican federale and cleaver-like knife enthusiast, Isador “Machete” Cortez. [...]
City A.M. shadow MPC votes to hold rates September 4, 2013 ALLISTER HEATH | CITY A.M. “The time has come to raise bank rate to 0.75 per cent. With such obvious signs of strength emerging, and growth likely to rise in the third quarter, we cannot afford any more of the distortion caused by ultra-loose policy.” GRAEME LEACH INSTITUTE OF DIRECTORS “The economy is clearly strengthening, but [...]
City Moves for 09 September 2013 | Who’s switching jobs September 8, 2013 Ernst & Young The professional services firm has hired Sheila Nicoll as a senior adviser in its asset management practice. She was most recently director of conduct policy at the Financial Services Authority. Prior to that, she was deputy chief executive of the Investment Management Association. Coutts The private bank has announced the appointment of [...]
Standard & Poor’s cuts ratings on 18 Italian banks citing prolonged high cost of funding July 24, 2013 Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has cut its ratings on 18 Italian banks, citing increased industry risks from a sustained higher cost of funding than in most other eurozone banking markets. It added that it doesn’t see Italy’s downward per capita GDP trend reversing in 2014. The rating cuts complete a review initiated after S&P [...]
Countrywide shares tumble as investors cash in £200m shares August 14, 2013 COUNTRYWIDE’S private equity backers Oaktree and Apollo sold £200m worth of shares in the estate agents yesterday, cashing in on the revival in the UK housing sector. The group saw shares fall 4.5 per cent last night following the share placing, which saw Oaktree and Apollo whittle down their shareholding in the company by [...]
City A.M. shadow MPC votes 8-1 against rise in QE July 31, 2013 ALLISTER HEATH | CITY A.M. “Given the expansion of GDP in the second quarter, there would be no benefit to extending QE or cutting rates. The MPC needs to privately work on a way to exit from our current monetary policy, which is now a net drag on the economy.” GRAEME LEACH | INSTITUTE OF [...]
Riverstone aims to raise £1.5bn in energy float September 24, 2013 PRIVATE equity firm Riverstone Holdings yesterday said it is planning to float a new energy investment vehicle, Riverstone Energy, on the London Stock Exchange, in an initial public offering to raise up to £1.5bn. Lord Browne, former boss of oil major BP, is a partner at Riverstone Holdings and will take a board seat at [...]
The Carlyle Group buys British packaging supplier Chesapeake July 4, 2013 GLOBAL asset manager The Carlyle Group yesterday announced that it has acquired UK-headquartered packaging supplier Chesapeake from private equity house Irving Place Capital and funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management. The deal value is understood to be near £500m, with debt already in place. Financing was provided by Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, UBS and Barclays. [...]
Inside Track: All bets on Ross McEwan as field of candidates for RBS narrows July 24, 2013 AND then there was one. The search for Stephen Hester’s successor as chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) was never going to be straightforward – George Osborne put paid to that prospect by engineering the current boss’s removal last month. So it was hardly surprising that Mark McCombe, the former HSBC executive who [...]