News

Your daily news update straight from the City PM newsroom in London

CITY MOVES WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS

September 1, 2009

Martin CurrieThe investment management firm has appointed Alastair Barrie as global head of hedge fund sales and Clayton Cheek, pictured, as US head of hedge fund sales. Barrie joins from RBS, where he was a director of institutional business. He has also worked as director of global hedge fund sales at Henderson. Clayton, who will [...]
Kalahari raises 20m in placing

September 1, 2009

Namibia-focused miner Kalahari Minerals said yesterday it had raised £20m through a share placing to satisfy its commitments towards a proposed A$91m (£46.9m) equity raising from Extract Resources, in which it holds a 40 per cent stake. Kalahari has issued 11.8m shares to new and existing shareholders at 170p a share. It added that it [...]
Majestic drops minimum purchase

September 1, 2009

Wine warehouse operator Majestic Wine said yesterday it had reduced its minimum in-store purchase to six bottles rather than twelve, after having been hit by lower levels of demand from consumers in the credit crunch. The Aim-listed firm saw its underlying profits fall by 22.5 per cent over the year to March to £12.7m. Majestic [...]
Guanabara ups EcoSecs offer

September 1, 2009

Guanabara Holdings said yesterday it had increased its cash offer for carbon offset company EcoSecurities from 77p to 90p a share, and extended the deadline for the bid until 18 September. Guanabara, set up by EcoSecurities’ co-founder and former president Pedro Moura Costa, said it had received acceptances representing about 23.53 per cent of EcoSecurities’ [...]
FRESH LEASE OF LIFE FOR EX-LLOYDS BANKING LAIR

September 1, 2009

HIP hip, hooray; there’s a new flash drinking hole in town. Actually, they don’t come much flasher than the new Green’s Restaurant and Oyster Bar, which is situated in the grand confines of the old Lloyds banking hall on Cornhill. Simon Parker Bowles, one-time brother-in-law to Camilla and the owner of the original Green’s of [...]
EBAY HANGS UP ON SKYPE IN $2BN DEAL

September 1, 2009

INTERNETauction giant eBay yesterday agreed to sell a majority stake in Skype, its free internet telephone business, to a group of private investors for $2bn (£1.23bn). The consortium, which is being led by USprivate equity firm Silver Lake, includes Andreessen Horowitz – a firm run by the Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen – and London-based private [...]
Insurers facing huge fundraising

September 1, 2009

INSURERS are worried that they will be forced to raise more than £50bn in fresh equity should new European rules on capital and reserve requirements come into force in 2012 as planned. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) wrote to chancellor Alistair Darling last month urging him to intervene over the proposals laid out in [...]
QE boosts UK money supply

September 1, 2009

QUANTITATIVE EASING is finally starting to boost Britain’s money supply, according to July data from the Bank of England yesterday. The Bank’s preferred measure of broad money supply – M4 excluding money holdings of intermediate other financial corporations – rose by 0.6 per cent in July. Even more encouraging was the three-month annual growth rate, [...]
Anti-bonus witch-hunt has gone too far

September 1, 2009

NONSENSEon stilts: that is the only way to describe the anti-bonus hysteria gripping governments worldwide. Gordon Brown weighed in to the cacophony again yesterday, though he has fortunately not gone as far as the French, who want to impose quantitative limits on payouts. The prime minister did float the possibility of limiting the share of [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING

September 1, 2009

FANANCIAL TIMES NATIONAL EXPRESS BID RETHINKThe Cosmen-CVC Capital Partners team bidding for National Express is looking for ways to make its offer more attractive after the rejection of a conditional all-cash 450p takeover proposal. Stagecoach, a rival transport group that had been in exclusive discussions with the Cosmen-led consortium about buying some of the assets [...]