Woes aid Whitbread September 5, 2008 Whitbread, Britain’s biggest hotel and restaurants operator, yesterday emerged as a rare winner in the consumer slowdown, revealing a boost in sales in the first half of this year. Whitbread’s Premier Inn budget hotel chain accounts for about 70 per cent of total profits. Premier Inn had total sales up 17.9 per cent and like-for-like [...]
Britannia hit by bad debts on mortgages August 14, 2008 Mutual building society Britannia yesterday posted a 40 per cent drop in interim profits, after the cost of bad debts hammered its mortgage book. Britannia said the percentage of its home loans that were three or more months in arrears rose by just over 1.7 per cent in the first six months of the year [...]
More firms on brink of bankruptcy July 21, 2008 The number of companies in Britain that are facing bankruptcy rose 685 per cent in the last year, new figures have revealed. Some 4,258 firms faced “critical problems” – defined as being embroiled in some kind of insolvency related legal action – in the second quarter of 2008, compared with just 542 in the same [...]
Jon Moulton: why making money is my hobby as well as my profession September 5, 2008 The City’s most outspoken private equity chief talks to Katie Hope about the credit crunch At a time when most of the financial services sector is in despair over how bad the economic crisis is, Jon Moulton can barely contain his glee. He estimates the credit crunch will go on for “at least two years” [...]
Public Sector must try harder to please consumer July 15, 2008 Public services have been having a bad time recently, with data disks going missing, concerns about MRSA in hospitals and intense dissatisfaction with the move to fortnightly bin collections by many local authorities. It’s hardly surprising then that only one in five people in the UK believe public services are generally well run. Most of [...]
London and New York need each other July 21, 2008 Much fuss is made about the “lead” or “lag” that London shows vis-ą-vis New York in the financial and business sector. Whenever studies such as the Global Financial Centres Index report is published, many commentators pore over the tables to see by what degree London or New York is ahead. This misses the point: more [...]
Barratt close to securing debt deal July 10, 2008 Housebuilder Barratt Developments is today expected to reveal it has managed to renegotiate a refinancing package with its bankers. Barratt, which has £1.7bn debt and a market capitalisation of just £140m, has been negotiating with lenders to extend repayment of £400m debt due in April , as well as agree changes to its debt covenants [...]
Games fans lift HMV fortunes July 2, 2008 HMV, the UK’s leading music retailer, reported yesterday a 25 per cent jump in pre-tax profits. The company told investors its recovery is on track after the first year of its three-year turnaround plan. Strong video game sales helped pre-tax profits soar to £56.6m, up from £45.2m in 2007. Games and technology sales rose 7 [...]
Falling share prices set to fuel activism July 2, 2008 A wave of shareholder activism is expected to hit companies in the coming months as falling share prices galvanise shareholders into action. Tim Stocks, a leading city lawyer at law firm Taylor Wessing, told City A.M. he was already instructing on several activist shareholder cases and expected the numbers to increase rapidly. Stocks, who said [...]
The CFA is a mark of talent and also trust July 30, 2008 In these troubled times, employers want people who know the basics, says Nitin Mehta In recent years, a host of new products have been launched which promise to help professionals working in the investment industry. Often, these qualifications have been accompanied by hype and hope and not a lot else. In the current conditions, many [...]