What the other papers say this morning – 24 April 2014 April 23, 2014 FINANCIAL TIMES Deutsche Bank under pressure Deutsche Bank is facing pressure from investors to raise capital amid fears the bank is still not robust enough to cope with a tougher regulatory environment and a slump in global debt markets. Insiders at Germany’s largest lender are understood to accept as a real threat that the European [...]
Bottom Line: London just needs to wait a bit for lift-off February 18, 2014 ON ONE level and after a superficial look at developments, it might seem as if London is in danger of missing out on the impending flood of new issues that are about to hit the financial markets. Yesterday’s flurry of statements revealed that ISS, the giant services group, is floating in Copenhagen; King.com has chosen [...]
Q and A: High growth segment February 23, 2014 Q What’s the High Growth Segment? A It’s an attempt by the London Stock Exchange to keep British technology firms in the country, rather than waving off the UK’s next answer to Google as it takes the well-trodden path to the Nasdaq or NYSE once it becomes big enough to list. Q What makes it [...]
Inside Track: In Barclays we trust: Retail investors rely on bank for new issues March 20, 2014 @hellierd There’s a page on the Barclays website that directs customers to the joys of investing in new issues and flotations. It is headlined: “Access investments before they become available on the market.” The trouble is that unless Barclays itself is working on one of the current crop of share issues, it is highly likely [...]
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 [...]
Charismatic chief executives could be bad for firms October 29, 2014 Compelling as they may be, strong leaders can lack humility. I am soft, I am lovable, but what I really want to do is reach in, rip out their hearts and eat them before they die.” Not the words of a general before battle, but Lehman Brothers’s last chairman and chief executive Dick Fuld, [...]
Princess Diana’s wedding dress designer Elizabeth Emanuel talks Catch-22s and Richard Branson November 23, 2014 You'd be hard pressed to get one up on Elizabeth Emanuel when it comes to heydays – and the fashion designer hasn’t just had one. At the age of 28, she designed the wedding dress of Lady Diana Spencer – a day she wouldn’t trade for the world, she says. And ten years later, [...]
What the other papers say this morning – 23 January 2014 January 22, 2014 FINANCIAL TIMES Microsoft to shield users’ data Microsoft will allow foreign customers to have their personal data stored on servers outside the US, breaking ranks with other big technology groups that until now have shown a united front in response to the American surveillance scandal. Just Eat gears up for £900m IPO London’s start-up cluster [...]
Cream of the crop: Gu founder James Averdieck talks Australia and rural fantasy September 28, 2014 It's the kind of story you wouldn’t necessarily believe: someone cooked up the idea of a chocolatey pudding company while sitting in a coffee shop in Belgium, eating brioche. But for James Averdieck, founder of Gu, that’s exactly what happened. Back in 2003, he was a marketer for dairy company St Ivel, working in Belgium [...]
Thinking bigger: My Voucher Codes founder Mark Pearson talks Fern Britton and young tech entrepreneurs November 16, 2014 While we’re talking, it suddenly dawns on Mark Pearson that it’s his company’s eighth birthday. “It’s definitely around now,” he laughs, raising his empty plastic water cup in the air. In June of this year, Pearson sold My Voucher Codes, as part of his parent company Markco Media, to global mobile money technology provider [...]