CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS March 12, 2012 Grainger Laure Duhot will be joining the UK’s largest listed residential property landlord in the new role of director of strategic capital markets. She will oversee Grainger’s evolving business strategy, with specific focus on the creation and management of new joint ventures, funds and strategic alliances. Duhot has worked extensively in investment banking and global [...]
FTSE buoyed by retailers as investors eye Budget March 21, 2012 THE FTSE 100 headed up in early trading as retailers regained some momentum while investors were turning their attention to the Chancellor’s budget speech. George Osborne is expected to rejig taxes while seeking to keep his austerity plan on track. However figures showing that that public sector net borrowing hit a record for February cast [...]
Taylor Wimpey restores dividend February 29, 2012 Housebuilder Taylor Wimpey said it had resumed paying a dividend as its tactic of focussing on margins rather than volume helped enable a swing back to profit. The company reported an underlying pretax profit of £90m in the 12 months to end-December, compared to a loss of 28 million pounds in 2010, on continuing operations [...]
Making things is not a soft option in the UK today March 26, 2012 IN THE last twenty years, I have watched the decline of British manufacturing, particularly in my own textile sector. While prices for food and luxury goods have risen steadily, high street clothing prices have become so cheap that UK manufacturers cannot be competitive in the mass market. According to the Working Futures report, which analyses [...]
THE TIPSTER March 19, 2012 THE management statement from Punch Taverns later today should allow investors to decide whether the glass is really half full or half empty for the pub chain. Last year saw a de-merger and a run of poor results, and the share price in the first quarter of 2012 hasn’t seen much movement at all – [...]
Tablet sales cannibalising desktop PCs March 5, 2012 TOMORROW’S Apple announcement could bring more bad news for the desktop computer market, with the Cupertino-based company expected to reveal the third generation iPad and trigger a tablet shopping frenzy. When the iPad 2 was launched this time last year, online marketplace eBay sold 5,000 more tablets in March than in February as iPad-hungry shoppers [...]
Persimmon to return £1.9bn to investors February 29, 2012 SHARES IN PERSIMMON soared to their highest in almost four years yesterday after the UK housebuilder unveiled plans to return £1.9bn in surplus cash to shareholders. Persimmon said it will pay investors a total of 620p per share through dividends over nine-and-a-half years starting in 2013, and will remain largely debt-free throughout the period. The [...]
Tokyo is vast, fast and very interesting May 27, 2012 IT was about 7AM and the sun from my windows was beginning to wake me up. With my room on the 35th floor of a tower in the business district of Tokyo, the view of the endless city was so intense that drawing my curtains – even while I slept – seemed a waste. I [...]
Fifty shades of blockbuster success June 7, 2012 BOOKS FIFTY SHADES OF GREY By EL James (Arrow) An urgent message reached me last week as I was heading to the airport for a Jubilee weekend trip to Israel: “Bring four copies of Fifty Shades of Grey pretty please.” It came from a 34 year old friend in Tel Aviv who, along with three [...]
Lawyers must plan carefully before packing their bags April 25, 2012 ASURVEY by Laurence Simons, the legal recruiters, recently found that 67 per cent of lawyers would consider relocating abroad as their next career move. Reasons included a tightened job market in London and a perception that practising law in emerging markets, in Dubai, in Russia or Australia would prove lucrative, both monetarily and for future [...]