Date: Tuesday 24 Jan 2006
LONDON (ShareCast) - Standard Life Investments has become the first big investor in Vodafone to criticise publicly the telecom group’s global strategy, reports the FT.
The fund management group, Vodafone’s 9th largest shareholder, is pressing the telecom company to sell off its 45% holding in Verizon Wireless, the fast-growing US network operator
Cantor Fitzgerald is preparing a stock market float of BGC Partners, its London-based brokerage business, in a move expected to lead to a merger with Espeed, the Nasdaq-quoted broker, to create a company worth between $500m and $1bn, says the Telegraph.
The management of Lambert Howarth, one of Marks & Spencer's biggest suppliers, is facing a shareholder revolt after it sold large chunks of shares just seven weeks before issuing a profit warning.
Shareholders are angry because the warning came less than two months after chief executive Garry Hogarth sold £3.06m-worth of shares - or three-quarters of his holding - into a tender offer that returned £10m to shareholders.
A top manager of Deutsche Bank's London operations is named on police wire taps purporting to record his presence with Italian tycoons now facing criminal probes over a series of takeover deals that have rocked Italy
Michele Faissola, Deutsche Bank's head of global rates, is described in surveillance transcripts attending two meetings in Sardinia in July 2005, the Telegraph says.
Ford Motor Company responded yesterday to years of slumping market share and financial losses by announcing it will slash its manufacturing capacity in North America by up to 26% and lose 30,000 jobs over the next six years, the Independent writes.
The chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, Rob Hayward, called for a total smoking ban yesterday, arguing that an exemption for members' clubs would seriously damage the pub trade and lead to pub closures, the Independent says.
Only 13 people have so far been compensated by the government’s £400m scheme for workers who have been denied their pensions, nearly two years after the project was announced, the Times says.
At least 15,000 of the estimated 85,000 workers who saw their retirement savings disappear when their companies went bust are eligible for immediate compensation from the Financial Assistance Scheme.
Deal-making bosses are deluding themselves about the success of their acquisitions, KPMG said yesterday.
A survey by the accountancy firm found that, while nine out of ten company directors judged their purchases a success, only three out of ten actually created value for shareholders, the Times writes.
Saudi Arabia was yesterday forced to pledge an increase in the supply of crude as threats to production around the globe pushed the price of oil to within three dollars of the all-time high reached after Hurricane Katrina last August, the Guardian reports.
Irish customers of mobile phone operator O2 continue to get the biggest bills of the company’s 27 million subscribers, says the Irish Examiner
Dublin-based medical technology group Alltracel plans to raise about £1.1 million (€1.6 million) through the sale of 10 million new shares to fund additional research into its cardiovascular health trials, reports the Irish Times.
Elan shares rose 3.22 per cent following the news yesterday that a US committee is to review the company's suspended multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri, according to the Irish Times
