London Report: Lower crude prices pull FTSE down but Morrison’s gets lift September 9, 2014 BRITAIN’S top shares yesterday inched lower on Tuesday as energy stocks weakened and investors bet on whether Scotland would vote to leave the United Kingdom in the 18 September referendum. But stocks showed little reaction to comments by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, who suggested the bank might start to raise interest rates next [...]
Merlin gets set for stock market rollercoaster October 20, 2013 ALTON Towers owner Merlin Entertainments is closing in on plans to launch its long-awaited stock market debut after the roaring success of the Royal Mail float and temporary fixing of the US debt ceiling cleared its path to a listing. Merlin, which is co-owned by private equity titans Blackstone and CVC Capital Partners, is due [...]
Investors scramble for Royal Mail shares October 8, 2013 ROYAL Mail last night shut the order book on its historic £3.3bn privatisation, with the postal service’s 497-year stint as a public body set to end when it joins the London Stock Exchange on Friday. Unprecedented demand has seen hundreds of thousands of retail investors scrambling for shares in the massively oversubscribed state sell-off, the biggest [...]
Inside Track: Independent analysts don’t always say what you want October 10, 2013 FOR several months now I have been arguing that an understanding of the new issues market would be enhanced by the presence of independent analysts, writing research about companies coming to market ahead of the first day’s trading. Most of the recent London flotations have gone ahead with no research from any bank that is [...]
Privatised Royal Mail floats at 330p as any wanting more than £10,000 of stock get turned away October 10, 2013 Allocation details for the biggest privatisation since the 1980s have been released. Royal Mail shares have sold at 330p. All members of the public who applied will get £750 of shares, but anyone who applied for over £10,000 will get nothing. 67 per cent of shares will go to institutions (as opposed to the 70 [...]
Chinese ABP in London move September 16, 2013 ROYAL Albert Dock developer ABP has given London a massive vote of confidence by announcing it will locate its global headquarters in the capital. ABP chairman Xu Weiping announced the news at a London-Asia business forum at City Hall yesterday and said the headquarters will have 100 staff and be at the heart of more [...]
London Report: Banking stocks stop FTSE index edging ahead November 12, 2013 FINANCIAL stocks kept a lid on the FTSE 100 yesterday after Goldman Sachs downgraded Royal Bank of Scotland. While the FTSE 100 closed little changed, banks and insurers combined to take 6.1 points off the index, handing back most of the gains they made in the previous session. Partly state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland fell [...]
Rating agency puts Royal Mail above its rivals September 22, 2013 ROYAL Mail has been given a better financial health rating than any other post or parcels companies in the world, boding well for the government’s planned flotation of the postal service in the coming weeks. Independent US rating company Rapid Ratings said that Royal Mail had “changed dramatically” in the past two years, ranking it [...]
London Report: FTSE rises as Ukraine-Russia fears subside August 18, 2014 THE FTSE 100 yesterday climbed on the back of investor relief that a feared escalation in the Ukraine crisis had failed to materialise. Tensions spiked on Friday when Ukraine said it had partially destroyed an armoured column that had crossed the border from Russia, triggering a sell-off in global shares. But Moscow made no threat [...]
Running your personal best time through the rainforest April 13, 2014 The day after the London Marathon, Kasmira Jefford tells us where to head for the next race IT IS is not yet eight in the morning but already the heat and humidity is cloying as I run down the long, red-earth road that skirts the south side of the Angkor Wat temple in Siem Reap, [...]