Next ups profit forecast despite volatile trading July 30, 2013 NEXT warned yesterday that British shoppers are becoming more “spontaneous”, making sales more vulnerable to short-term events such as a change in the weather or a bank holiday. In a graph released alongside its half-year results, the retailer highlighted huge swings in weekly spend, with total sales down by as much as £10m in weeks [...]
Letters to the editor – 25/07 – Train squeeze, Best of Twitter July 24, 2013 Train squeeze [Re: Commuter crush: Seven out of 10 most overcrowded trains in Britain go to London, yesterday] Unfortunately there is no silver bullet that will solve this situation. Lengthening trains, platforms, and building new infrastructure can help, but will only go so far. The government should start incentivising home working. They could introduce measures like three-day-a-week [...]
The man who went from hotdogs to thinkpods September 22, 2013 Regus founder Mark Dixon tells Michael Bow why serviced offices are at the cutting edge of technology SITTING behind a boardroom table in an office on Berkeley Square in Mayfair, Mark Dixon, founder and chief executive of serviced office company Regus, is sipping from a Pret A Manger paper cup. With his round tortoiseshell spectacles [...]
Pension deficits cost investors November 28, 2012 MARKS and Spencer has done an impressive job of cleaning up its pension deficit, knocking off £1bn over the last three years. It has now agreed a ten-year plan to deal with the remaining £290m. That saw a bump in the share price, which some attribute to the greater attractiveness of Marks and Spencer as [...]
Inflation and poor returns turn screws on defined benefit plans November 25, 2012 FIRMS with defined benefit (DB) pension schemes are still struggling to get their funding holes under control, research out today claims. Low investment returns coupled with heightened inflation has left FTSE 350 firms falling even further behind the funding requirements of their DB programmes. PwC’s pension support tracker has stood at 74 out of 100 [...]
Investors expect end-of-year rally for FTSE despite Eurozone worries December 10, 2012 BRITAIN’S benchmark share index rose to its highest closing level in nearly nine months yesterday, with many traders betting that worries over Italy would fail to halt a traditional year-end equities rally. The FTSE 100 closed up 0.1 per cent, or 7.23 points higher, at 5,921.63 points – its highest close since finishing at 5,961.11 [...]
What the other papers say this morning January 7, 2013 FINANCIAL TIMES Terra Firma plans to sell Odeon chain Terra Firma, the private equity fund founded by Guy Hands, is planning to sell assets this year that are likely to include Odeon & UCI group, the European cinema chain, which could raise more than £1bn. The plan is a bid to return cash to backers. [...]
FTSE touches three week highs on back of Rio pledge and US hopes November 29, 2012 BRITAIN’S FTSE 100 scaled three-week highs yesterday, cheered by promises of spending cuts at miner Rio Tinto and by growing hopes of achieving a US budget deal to avoid recession in the world’s biggest economy. The US ‘fiscal cliff’ of some $600bn in spending cuts and tax hikes that is otherwise due to come into [...]
Profile: Lord Mervyn Davies November 19, 2012 LORD Mervyn Davies had a short tenure as a minister of state, but since Gordon Brown was voted out of Downing Street, he has had plenty to do. Baron Davies of Abersoch, to give the former chief executive of Standard Chartered his full title, is also a senior non-executive director at international drinks giant Diageo, [...]
The figures reveal exactly what the big in Big Four really means September 16, 2012 RECORD revenues ought to be nothing but a good thing, but in PwC’s case it will also underline existing concerns, in the context of the Competition Commission [CC] taking an interest in whether the Big Four are too dominant in the audit marketplace. An appreciation of why can be seen in survey results published by [...]