News

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

Booker posts strong first quarter sales, stock rises

July 8, 2009

CASH-and-carry group Booker yesterday posted a 7.8 per cent increase in underlying first-quarter sales, stronger than it anticipated less than two months ago, and said profit was in line with its expectations. Booker, which runs over 170 branches supplying grocers and caterers as well as schools and prisons, said total sales in the 12 weeks to [...]
Google plans to launch an operating system to rival Microsoft Windows

July 8, 2009

GOOGLE yesterday revealed plans to attack Microsoft’s core business by taking on the software giant’s market-leading Windows operating system. The Californian internet firm announced the plans just nine months after launching internet browser Chrome, a product which also pitched its tents onMicrosoft’s turf by competing with Internet Explorer. Google said the operating system would initially [...]
JJB Sports claims Mike Ashley’s tale of events on controversial loan is false

July 8, 2009

TROUBLED JJB Sports yesterday claimed that Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley’s version of events regarding a loan payment to Sir David Jones were “false.” In an escalating row between the two sportswear retailers, Ashley’s team of lawyers, Mishcon de Reya, were yesterday understood to be working flat-out on a denial of JJB Sports’s statement to the [...]
Reed Elsevier sells part of RBI

July 8, 2009

Reed Elsevier has agreed to sell a small part of the RBI trade-magazines unit – whose sale it scrapped last year – to entrepreneur Clive Jacobs for an undisclosed sum. The travel-publishing division comprises Travel Weekly, Travolution, Gazetteers.com and associated online services and events, and accounts for about 1 per cent of RBI’s revenues, which were £1.244bn [...]
Invista’s NAV plunges down

July 8, 2009

Invista Foundation Property Trust suffered a 59 per cent drop in its net asset value in the year to 31 March. The property income trust saw its net asset value (NAV) drop from 108p to 44p a share. Its portfolio, which is valued at £305.5m, slightly underperformed.
Pepsi fizzes with Q2 success

July 8, 2009

Pepsi Bottling, the soda distributor that rejected a takeover offer by PepsiCo, beat analysts expectations yesterday in its second-quarter profits. Excluding restructuring costs and a tax gain, profit totaled 78 cents a share in the 12 weeks ended June 13. Analysts anticipated 73 cents.
Audi drives hopes for auto sector

July 8, 2009

Audi offered a ray of hope to the ailingcar industry yesterday when it announced sales last month increased for the first time this year. Higher demand in China and Germany, where Audi’s A3 compact model profited from a state-sponsored scrapping incentive, spurred a 1.3 per cent year-on-year rise in June to 91,200 cars.
Slump in UK buyout deals

July 8, 2009

THE FIRST half of 2009 was one of the worst periods in recent history for UK mergers & acquisitions (M&A) because the debt needed to fund the deals has dried up, according to research from Mergermarket. The number of completed deals in the UK was down 66.4 per cent on the same period last year, [...]
We need to find the next generation of chairmen

July 8, 2009

THE news that Carl-Henric Svanberg, a Swede, is to chair BP highlights the increasingly international nature of UK plc. But it also raises the interesting question of where the next generation of chairmen and women for Britain’s blue-chip quoted companies will come from. Talk to any City headhunter and they will tell you more and [...]
CITY MOVES WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS

July 8, 2009

Collins StewartThe investment banking group has appointed Simon Whittley as an intermediary sales manager to its wealth management division. Whittley will be responsible for increasing referral business from law firms, accountants, independent financial advisers and trust companies. He previously worked at Credit Suisse Private Bank, Arbuthnot Latham Investment Management and Close Wealth Management. HSBCAndrew Keen has [...]