GM pulls off record float November 18, 2010 GENERAL MOTORS closed 3.6 per cent higher yesterday after pulling off the biggest IPO in US history. The stock closed at $34.19, up from its float price of $33 a share. Frantic trading throughout the day saw more than 100m shares change hands, out of the total of 478m placed, while financial advisers struggled to [...]
Barclays to boost new business March 21, 2010 BARCLAYS, the UK’s second-largest bank, is today launching a campaign to boost renewed optimism in the business world, offering £500,000 to the country’s most promising entrepreneurs in conjunction with Ariadne Capital boss and City A.M. columnist Julie Meyer. The “Take One Small Step” competition will award an equal share of £500,000 in cash to each [...]
Betfair float values company at £1.4bn October 22, 2010 Betfair has priced its initial public offering at 1,300 pence per share – valuing the company at £1.4bn Betfair, the world’s largest bettingwebsite, said it had sold 16.2m shares in the offering, excluding an overallotment option, or 15.2 per cent of the company. It had offered the shares at 1,100-1,400 pence. The company has more [...]
Murray sees off Soderling November 21, 2010 BRITISH No1 Andy Murray is off and running at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in London after downing Sweden’s Robin Soderling in straight sets. A bumper crowd of 17,500 were treated to a near faultless display from the 23-year-old, who took just an hour and 20 minutes to vanquish this season’s beaten French Open [...]
Look closer to home to play the emerging markets’ story December 15, 2010 EMERGING markets have been one of the most popular trades of 2010. If it wasn’t concerns about the outlook for developed markets and the desire for higher returns further afield, it was Fed-fuelled liquidity that was driving flows towards the developing economies. The case for investing in equities rather than bonds is becoming stronger by [...]
Q&A BIS FUNDING December 9, 2010 Q. Does the Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) have programs that help entrepreneurs? What are they? A.BIS has several programs that can give extra funding to entrepreneurs. Chief among them are the Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) and the Enterprise Capital Funds (ECF). EFGs are bank loans intended for small and medium sized enterprises [...]
A Qatari takes on Wall St October 20, 2010 KAPITOIL BY TEDDY WAYNE Duckworth, £8.99 IT’S 1 October, 1999 and Karim, a genius computer progammer from Doha, is landing in New York. He’s been brought to help a company called Schrub Equities protect itself from the Y2K bug – New York’s biggest security concern at the time. The opening of this first novel by [...]
How to avoid the dog funds November 11, 2010 AN ASTONISHING £13bn is languishing in so-called dog funds, which persistently fail to deliver returns for investors, according to BestInvest’s biannual Spot the Dog report published earlier this week. Spot the Dog branded Jupiter as the worst performing investment house in terms of the value of assets in dog funds. Also among the main culprits [...]
Are Manchester United really about to become Qatar’s latest high-profile buy? December 19, 2010 WHEN Manchester United visited Qatar in January it was touted as a sunshine break, a chance for their title-chasing players to escape from the freezing conditions gripping England at the start of the year. But it also prompted whispers that the country’s most famous club were sounding out appetite to invest in United, or even [...]
Are Manchester United really about to become Qatar’s latest high-profile buy? December 19, 2010 WHEN Manchester United visited Qatar in January it was touted as a sunshine break, a chance for their title-chasing players to escape from the freezing conditions gripping England at the start of the year. But it also prompted whispers that the country’s most famous club were sounding out appetite to invest in United, or even [...]