Creditors give Christmas deadline for INM bond November 1, 2009 Creditors have given Independent News & Media until 23 December to finalise plans on the payment of a bond originally due in May. After being granted several extensions to the deadline on the €200m (£179m) bond, INM last month agreed a deal with bondholders that could give them a 47 per cent stake in the [...]
Euro expected to stay painfully strong in run-up to Christmas November 10, 2009 AFTER only a few weeks of respite for European policymakers, the euro is once again edging back up to test the critical $1.50 level against the US dollar. So far, at least, momentum has been unable to carry the pair through this psychological resistance level for an extended period of time. Officials in the Eurozone [...]
Topps Tiles predicts upturn despite seeing profit dive in tough trading June 2, 2010 TOPPS Tiles yesterday posted a ten per cent fall in first-half adjusted pre-tax profit as consumers curbed spending amid the downturn and said it expected trading in the retail sector to remain tough. The company, which sells wood and tile flooring from 309 stores in Britain, said total revenue for the first seven weeks of [...]
Get ready for the gaming revolution August 18, 2010 YOUR City A.M. gadgets correspondent had a sneak preview of Xbox’s brand new Kinect sensor last week. The sensor, which will be on sale in November in time for Christmas, is an accessory to the new Xbox 360 that lets you play games just by moving your body – without a controller. As its makers [...]
Christmas retail sales will bounce back, says report November 3, 2009 BRITISH retail sales will rise 1.9 per cent over Christmas, bouncing back from last year’s decline, but below the increases of the previous nine years, according to research published yesterday. The Centre for Retail Research forecast retail sales would rise £832m to £44.7bn in the last six weeks of 2009. That compares with a £27m [...]
Aurum back in profit after restructuring May 23, 2010 LUXURY jeweller Aurum Holdings announced earnings of £10.5m yesterday, a jump of 27 per cent, after refinancing last November. The parent company of Goldsmiths, Watches of Switzerland and Mappin & Webb made a post-tax profit of £0.1m in the year to January 2010, against a loss of £19.4m the previous year. While overall sales were [...]
Aurum back in profit after restructuring May 23, 2010 LUXURY jeweller Aurum Holdings announced earnings of £10.5m yesterday, a jump of 27 per cent, after refinancing last November. The parent company of Goldsmiths, Watches of Switzerland and Mappin & Webb made a post-tax profit of £0.1m in the year to January 2010, against a loss of £19.4m the previous year. While overall sales were [...]
Farepak to pay customers back April 25, 2010 FAREPAK customers who lost money when the Christmas savings group went into administration will now receive 15p for every pound they lost. The group’s directors have agreed to pay up £4m from their own pockets in compensation to the 150,000 customers who subscribed to their savings scheme. The number marks a small portion of the [...]
Pressure from the bottom line will make firms female-friendly July 20, 2010 A COUPLE of weeks ago I was told a story about a law firm Christmas party. The senior partners took part in a game where pictures of their children were projected onto a screen, and they were asked to identify the cute faces. Presumably this was meant to show them to be rounded human beings, [...]
The airline boss with a hit list of 12 bid targets in his desk drawer September 13, 2010 It is clear that British Airways (BA) chief executive Willie Walsh always likes to keep his foot hard on the pedal. The Dublin-born airline boss is in the middle of a bitter 18-month dispute with his cabin crew, and only a few weeks ago received US and European regulatory clearance to pursue a transatlantic tie-up [...]