CITY TYPES SHOW THEY’RE GAME AS SHOOTING MAKES A COMEBACK February 22, 2010 WELL, well, well: how about this for a turn-up for the books? You know the good times are returning when the traditional City pastimes start making a comeback – eating and boozing at the swankiest of places, corporate jollies at the races, on the track or on the golf course, that kind of thing. So [...]
Bond issue buys Glazer time January 21, 2010 MANCHESTER United has managed to successfully price its dual tranche £500m bond at below 10 per cent, despite scepticism from some traditional high yield investors amid growing concerns about the level of the Premier football club’s debts. According to sources yesterday, United’s bank advisers were leaning towards pricing one tranche of the bond at 8.75 [...]
Manchester United faces paying top dollar to ensure £500m bond success January 13, 2010 MANCHESTER United may be forced to price its £500m bond at slightly more than a 10 per cent yield, according to one of the City’s high yield analysts. Jonathan Moore at Evolution Securities told City A.M. yesterday that very few of the City of London’s investors would warm to the deal due to its high [...]
Forget Cadbury, entrepreneurs will save UK January 25, 2010 OCCASIONALLY on a Friday night as I review the remains of the week, I wonder why I put myself through it. Last week, one of my portfolio companies nearly hit a wall, and I had to coach the existing investors through their panic to send through an emergency bridge round. Another one of our companies [...]
THE MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION: DO YOU SIT AT A ROUND TABLE? February 28, 2010 DESPITE suffering from something akin to man flu, I managed to speak (apparently sounding more like Barry White – in sound not size) at the annual convention of the Million Dollar Round Table at Kensington Town Hall last week This get together with representation from the main US branch is a gathering of professional financial [...]
EX-BANKER FOLLOWS HIS RUGBY DREAMS February 24, 2010 RUGBY-lovers in the City can be rightly proud that one of their own is putting his money where his mouth is in terms of promoting the game of Rugby Sevens around the world. Sevens – a speedier, shorter version of the traditional game – has recently enjoyed a bit of a boost from the announcement [...]
Defender of business says a hung parliament would be disastrous February 7, 2010 HE MIGHT have parted company with the CBI four years ago, but Lord Digby Jones is still one of the staunchest defenders of the private sector. When he gives me his business card at the opening of a Vodafone store in the City, it is emblazoned with a motto that sums up his philosophy: “Only [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING March 10, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES SHINSEI IN CAPITAL DRIVE AS MERGER FALTERS Shinsei, the Japanese bank, is preparing to raise about Y75bn ($830m) in fresh capital as a merger with a rival domestic lender once seen as a lifeline is in danger of collapse. Shinsei has concluded that a merger with Aozora, the Japanese bank part-owned by Cerberus [...]
CITY BROKER ISN’T JUST HORSING AROUND WITH NEW POLO VENTURE March 3, 2010 IT’S SET to be a good year for Daniel Fox-Davies, the jovial boss of City stockbroker Fox-Davies Capital. Foxy, you see, is a bit of a dark horse when it comes to his extra-curricular hobbies – along with running his oil and gas-focused brokerage, he spends much of his free time flying jets and helicopters, [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS February 11, 2010 HSBC The bank has appointed Chris Barrow as global head of sales for its recently-launched HSBC Prime Services business, targeted at hedge funds and institutional fund managers across Europe and Asia. Barrow joins from Nomura, where he was international head of sales for prime services, and has also worked as head of sales and marketing [...]