New directors on board at Pearl as it heads for UK float February 18, 2010 FUND management and insurance group Pearl yesterday said it was pressing ahead with a London stock market flotation despite its well-publicised wrangle with bondholders. The company, which is being renamed as Phoenix, is not raising any new capital at the time of its listing. Shareholders Liberty Acquisitions and Hugh Osmond, the group’s founder, do not [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS March 7, 2010 Santander The Spanish banking group has appointed Damian McGann as head of business development in its corporate banking team. McGann has over 20 years of experience in the sector and joins from Lloyds Banking Group, where he previously headed up substantial businesses in the Midlands and Scotland. He will focus on a range of businesses, [...]
BARCLAYS HIRES CLINTON SPINNER PENN FOR POST-CRUNCH COUNSEL August 5, 2009 BARCLAYS has brought in the big guns. Actually, it’s just the one gun, but they don’t come much bigger – Mark Penn, the American political pollster-cum-public relations guru who numbers both the Clintons, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and Microsoft boss Bill Gates among his powerful clients. Penn is the worldwide chief executive of [...]
Merged and acquired firms do better than competitors January 18, 2010 FIRMS that carried out mergers and acquisitions last year outperformed the market by more than three percentage points, despite the commonly held view that buyouts often destroy value. According to professional-services firm Towers Watson and City University London’s Cass Business School, acquirers outperformed the MSCI World Index by an average 3.2 per cent in 2009, [...]
Man Group rises on bid talk February 17, 2010 SHARES in Man Group jumped 5.2 per cent yesterday as rumours of a takeover bid from American money manager BlackRock swirled through the City. The British hedge fund’s paper gained 11.8p to close at 239.6p, although analysts were sceptical about the prospects of an offer. BlackRock has pulled off large deals in the past, merging [...]
BoE suspends its QE policy February 4, 2010 BRITAIN yesterday looked set for its first interest rate hike since the crisis started after the Bank of England turned off the taps on its emergency £200bn quantitative easing programme. The Bank chose to suspend quantitative easing and kept interest rates at 0.5 per cent. The monetary policy committee (MPC) judged that the current stimulus [...]
Bank of America names global capital co-heads February 9, 2010 BANK of America Corp, the largest US bank by assets, yesterday said it appointed Alastair Borthwick and Lisa Carnoy as co-heads of its global capital markets business. The reshuffling of the unit, which was an earnings powerhouse for the bank as it battled losses in consumer-lending businesses last year, follows a shake-up of top management [...]
RBS opens talks for US Sempra February 16, 2010 ROYAL Bank of Scotland has begun discussions with potential buyers for the US parts of its Sempra Commodities business after JPMorgan paid $1.7bn (£1.1bn) for the European and Asian arms. JPMorgan yesterday signed a deal for RBS Sempra’s global oil and metal trading operations, plus its coal and gas capabilities on the continent and in [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS March 14, 2010 Coutts Private Office Rupert Allison has joined Coutts Private Office as senior client partner from after three years with HSBC private bank as a relationship manager/ director. At Coutts, Allison will advise high-net-worth individuals whose assets top £30m and will report to global head of Coutts private office, Duncan McIntyre. Allison also spent 15 years [...]
RUGBY UNION | In Brief February 2, 2010 Paterson gets nod for Les Bleus SCOTLAND’S record points scorer Chris Paterson has been recalled as one of six changes for his side’s Six Nations clash with France on Sunday. Paterson will win his 99th cap as a full-back replacement for the injured Rory Lamont, joining Glasgow centres Max Evans and Graeme Morrison in a [...]