ChainTek becomes latest firm to join AIM after it raises £7.5m August 19, 2012 CHINESE logistics group ChainTek joins the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) this morning after a £7.5m fundraising, in a sign of resilience in London’s junior stock exchange. Joint brokers Liberum Capital and ZAI Corporate Finance placed almost 5m new shares, giving the firm a market capitalisation of around £87.5m. ChainTek aims to use the proceeds to [...]
Swann leaves WH Smith with a vision but no visionary October 11, 2012 UNDER its list of principal risks and uncertainties, yesterday’s WH Smith preliminary results included “reliance on key personnel”. The market agreed: despite a 10 per cent increase in profit before tax and a full-year dividend up 20 per cent, shares dropped sharply on the accompanying news that long-serving chief executive Kate Swann will step down [...]
British Land acquires mall July 31, 2012 BRITISH LAND yesterday said it has bought a 50 per cent share in the Eden Walk shopping centre in Kingston-upon-Thames for £41.5m. The firm bought the stake in the 1960s mall from the Universities Superannuation Scheme, its partner on Whiteley Shopping Centre in South Hampshire, which is due to open next year. The pair plan [...]
Give someone Opportunity this Christmas November 14, 2012 BEATRICE and her family are among the many that were helped by the money raised from the appeal last year. Full Name: Beatrice Boaten Gender: Female Age: 60 City, Country: Kumasi, Ghana Children: five aged 18 to 34 Husband: David, age 72 What type of business do you operate? I own a three acre cocoa [...]
A car you’ll be able to tell from Adam November 13, 2012 I’M STANDING in a hotel car park outside Lisbon and my head hurts. Forty different versions of Vauxhall’s new lifestyle city car, called Adam, are laid out in front of me and I’m not sure I particularly like the look of any of them. This, I suspect, is entirely the point – Vauxhall’s diminutive new [...]
City Moves | Who’s switching Jobs September 25, 2012 Kleinwort Benson The private bank has appointed Jason Turner to the position of executive private banker in its private wealth management team. He joins from UBS Wealth Management, where he was a client adviser. Turner has over 14 years’ experience in the industry, and has also worked as a financial adviser with Bank of Scotland [...]
Visit Malaysia for the birds, the bees and the leeches October 7, 2012 MY HERO swoops down in the nick of time. I’m perched atop a bare rock, too petrified to move when she flies to my rescue. Barely seven inches tall, the blue-winged pitta flits to the ground and within moments, her beak is filled with what look like needle-thin worms. I’ve never been happier to see [...]
M&A in Europe crashes to hit a ten-year low September 20, 2012 EUROPEAN merger and acquisition activity crashed to a 10-year low in the third quarter of the year, as dealmaking across the world fell to its slowest level since the depths of the financial crisis, figures out today show. M&A in Europe has totalled $84.2bn (£52bn) so far in the three months to the end of [...]
ADVISERS June 19, 2012 RICHARD GIRLING CENTERVIEW PARTNERS WALGREENS’ purchase of Alliance Boots involved two very different firms: Goldman Sachs and Centerview Partners. On this side of the Atlantic it represents an impressive coup for Centerview’s Richard Girling, a sector specialist who holds an MA in biochemistry from Oxford University. He helped set up Merrill Lynch’s European healthcare business in the [...]
Utah: America’s secret scenic wonderland October 1, 2012 Touching down at Las Vegas airport at 9pm, we made a classic mistake. Predicting we’d be fine to drive the two-hour journey to our hotel after a refreshing Diet Coke and a few rounds of Blackjack at the Mandalay Bay, we didn’t expect to find ourselves deliriously sleep-deprived, jetlagged to the max and sans sat-nav, journeying [...]