Crest Nicholson home sales up June 27, 2012 CREST NICHOLSON, the housebuilder, said it saw the number of sale completions surge by 33 per cent in the first half of the year as the housing market showed signs of recovery. The company, which operates in the south east, south west and the midlands, returned to a profit of £16m in the six months [...]
Birds Eye sale set to be frozen as Permira hunts for growth June 25, 2012 PRIVATE equity house Permira could call a halt to the sale of frozen foods maker Iglo after deciding a €2.5bn (£2.01bn) joint bid from Blackstone and BC Partners had come in short. Permira is happy to retain and continue to grow Iglo, which it bought from Unilever in 2006 for €1.7bn before bolting on Findus [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING January 24, 2012 FINANCIAL TIMES WATCHDOG TO PROTECT IRRATIONAL INVESTORS Investors cannot be counted on to make rational choices so regulators need to “step into their footprints” and limit or ban the sale of potentially harmful products, the head of the UK’s new consumer protection watchdog said yesterday. In his first big interview since starting work last autumn, [...]
Taylor Wimpey predicts stable outlook for UK house market July 4, 2012 TAYLOR WIMPEY said yesterday the UK housing market remained “stable” despite wider uncertainty in the Eurozone and the global economy, as it continued to grow sales. In a first-half trading update, Britain’s second largest housebuilder said it sold 5,083 homes in the six months to 1 July, up from 4,707 the same time last year, [...]
London leads July drop-off in house prices July 15, 2012 House prices dived in July, after a double hit from bad weather and sporting distractions, according to Rightmove’s July House Price Index released today. The average property asking price was £242,097 in July, 1.7 per cent lower than the £246,235 recorded in June. However this average was still 2.3 per cent up on the year, [...]
Eurozone woes and bad assets hit Citi profits July 16, 2012 CITIGROUP profits fell again in the second quarter, its results revealed yesterday, as a loss on the sale of its stake in Turkish institution Akbank added to the headwinds it faces from the Eurozone crisis and a substantial drag from troubled assets left over from the financial crisis. Net income came in at $2.95bn (£1.85bn), [...]
Permira pulls plans for dividend recapitalisation for Iglo group July 10, 2012 PERMIRA has pulled the plug on its plans to refinance the debt of its Birds Eye food group Iglo which would have seen the buyout house take a hefty dividend, the private equity firm said yesterday. Permira had lined up a dividend recapitalisation with Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank just days after rejecting a €2.5bn [...]
Why Apple is playing the long-game with its Maps app September 26, 2012 An Apple user walks into a bar. Or a church. Or a field. He’s not really sure. Ha! A joke at Apple’s expense! That’s not something you hear every day. If you believe the hype, problems with Apple’s in-house Maps app could be the iPhone 5’s equivalent of the antenna troubles that dogged the launch [...]
Wall Street is waiting for technical signals as doubt remains over rally August 19, 2012 IN the absence of data or policy catalysts and with the S&P 500 near four-year highs, market participants are hoping technical indicators hold the clues on whether stocks will sell off into September following a slow-speed rally. The S&P 500 is a scant 0.06 per cent away from closing at highs last seen in the [...]
A snapshot view: The right time to say goodbye to a business July 29, 2012 ON HOLIDAY in India in 1995, I was very popular with the locals. Before flying from London, I had splashed out about £1,000 for one of the first digital cameras for the consumer market. Nowadays it would seem Stone Age. But back then it was a sensation whenever I used it. Locals jostled to get [...]