Hungry US predator set to swallow up home of the Whopper Burger King

By Daily Mail ReporterLast updated at 11:51 AM on 2nd September 2010

Home of the Whopper Burger King looks set to be swallowed up by a hungry US predator, according to reports.
A small US buyout firm 3G Capital is said to be circling the fast-food chain, which has been struggling in the shadow of rival McDonald’s.
The familiar presence on the UK high street is currently owned by a Miami-based parent company, whose shares in New York soared 15% yesterday on the speculation.

Hard to swallow: Burger King has faced difficulties in the wake of the economic slowdown

Other reports have said British private equity firm 3i Burger King wanted to take Burger King from the spiritual home of the oversized hamburger, but 3i has denied it is interested.
The world’s second-largest burger chain has struggled in the wake of the credit crunch and has been consistently outperformed by McDonald’s. Burger King has seen its share price fall 13% over the last year, whereas McDonald’s shares have gained 17%. 
 

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Poundland’s expansion drive to create 2,000 new jobs

By Mail Online ReporterLast updated at 3:08 PM on 19th August 2010

Discount chain Poundland has unveiled plans to open at least 50 new stores, in a move that is expected to create up to 2,000 jobs.
The company, which has around three million customers per week, currently employs more than 7,500 people and has 263 stores across the UK.
Poundland reported an 81 per cent increase in operating profits to £21.5million for the year to March 28. It opened 56 stores during the period.

Growth: Poundland opened two more new stores in Dungannon and Peterborough on Thursday

The firm, which is based in Willenhall, West Midlands, said its ‘impressive growth’ would help it create it jobs as the UK still tries to recover from the economic slowdown. 
 

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Alan Greenspan is making UK weatherman Michael Fish look like a good forecaster

Even Michael Fish (a UK weather forecaster who famously told us there was no hurricane in the offing just hours before the Great Storm of 1987) gets it more right than the former Fed boss.
Mr Greenspan’s warnings over the weekend that the US economy may be heading for a double dip smacks not just of clambering aboard the bandwagon – he’s somewhat late in his observations - but comes just four months after he cheerfully announced that the odds of a double dip “have fallen very significantly” as a result of a shortage of inventories, which he insisted would produce a “self reinforcing cycle”.
Now he says we are in a pause in a modest recovery, “but a pause in a modest recovery feels like a quasi-recession”. I shouldn’t mock, for my own forecasting record is if anything even worse, but in March 2007, Mr Greenspan said there was only a one third chance of a recession, only to raise this to a greater than 50pc chance in May 2008.
Starting to get it right, then? Unfortunately he then spoilt this rare insight into the blindingly obvious by saying that prospects of a severe recession had receded markedly. As we know, the worst recession since the Great Depression followed soon afterwards.
In November 2006 he referred to the economic slowdown as “likely temporary”, and in June 2007 he said that China was a bubble and that a “dramatic contraction is coming”. For all his wisdom and experience, Mr Greenspan doesn’t seem to have learned the first lesson of forecasting – it’s a mug’s game.
Central bankers are required to take a view, but in fact they might do better simply to react to the world as it is than as they think it will become. Paying more attention to the present while he was at the Fed might have alerted Mr Greenspan to out of control credit and the need to reign it in. Throughout much of his time at the Fed he did the reverse.
Mr Greenspan’s all absorbing mission since then has been to defend his legacy, and to the extent that he admits to getting it wrong at all, to insist this was all a perfectly sensible approach to policy at the time.
He’s not alone. Most central bankers will still claim that accommodative monetary policy played little if any part in causing the crisis, or alternatively that they had no option but to adopt such a stance, for to do otherwise would have induced a recession.
Both Ben Bernanke, the present Fed chairman, and Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, argue that it was widening trade imbalances and associated capital flows which were the root cause.
A recent paper by the International Monetary Fund, “Central Banking Lessons from the Crisis”, is ambiguous in its conclusions. Citing recent research, it finds only limited evidence that overly accommodative interest rate policy fuelled the bubble in individual countries, but stronger evidence that the global climate of loose money did have a significant effect. In other words, this was not just about failures in banking supervision. Central bankers were part of the mischief.
Next week marks the third anniversary of the start of the credit crunch. Aside from Mr Greenspan’s propensity to get it wrong, what have we learnt from the dramatic events of the last three years?
The fashionable view is nothing at all. The banks generally survived – witness renewed buoyancy in profits announced by HSBC yesterday - and with some success, are now busy neutering the reform agenda. Trade imbalances are almost as bad as they were at the peak three years ago, and far from trying to reign in credit, policy is hell bent on re-stimulating it.
All these things are in part true and no doubt entirely reprehensible. Only last week, I wrote at length about the absence of progress in correcting trade imbalances. There is meanwhile a sense in which the bankers have “got away with it” and are already back to their old tricks. Yet the reality is that this absence of change is part of the price that has to be paid for avoiding a depression.
If banks hadn’t been rescued, there would have been a perhaps more satisfying process of Darwinian liquidation in finance, but it would also have destroyed savings and jobs on a profoundly more destabilising scale.
As it happens, quite a bit of the old banking system has indeed disappeared, and, to the chagrin of the policymakers who seem to want to return to the let-rip lending practices of the past, there have been significant behavioural changes in credit provision and trading practices.
In many cases there has also been a complete clearout of top management. Liquidity pools have been expanded and leverage reduced. Debt aversion may not be good for demand, but it is surely more healthy in the long term than the credit fuelled consumption of the last decade.
To impose stringent new capital controls on the banks now while balance sheets remain impaired would only further damage credit to the economy. It is right that there should be a prolonged transition period. The presiding policy objective should be to tighten in the boom and loosen in the bust. Central banks have learned that lesson at least.
The long-term reform agenda is certainly being compromised by national differences, populist irrelevance, divide and rule lobbying and excessive complexity, but let’s see where we end up before declaring that the bankers have won.
As for the economy, the chances of a significant double dip, in the US at least, have risen in recent weeks, and we know that return to full employment is going to be long and hard. On the other hand, growth is much better than anyone anticipated a year ago.
No change? In fact an awful lot has changed, though it may take time to become fully apparent. Perhaps regrettably, there is one thing that can be relied on to provide continuity in an uncertain world - Mr Greenspan’s guesswork.
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Sainsbury boosted as Qatari bid rumours resurface

By
Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:29 PM on 7th July 2010

Shares in Sainsbury’s leapt to a two-month high on Wednesday on the back of speculation that its Qatari investors were preparing a full-blown takeover. The UK’s third biggest grocer rose 4 per cent despite falls for the wider FTSE 100 amid market rumours that Qatar Holding, the investment arm of the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), is set to launch a bid.
In July 2007, QIA, which holds a 26 per cent stake in the retailer, made a £10.6billion takeover proposal for Sainsbury’s through its Delta Two investment vehicle.

Bid speculation: Takeover rumours sent Sainsbury’s share price up 4 per cent

Its approach foundered due to rising financing costs in the early
stages of the economic slowdown and a failure to reach a deal with
the trustees of the firm’s pension fund.QIA’s move came after a bid attempt by private equity firm CVC which also failed because of opposition from the trustees.
Any new bid would also need to have the backing of the Sainsbury family, which holds about 15 per cent of the group.

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Britain’s debt set to be higher than that of Greece

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By Edmund Conway and James Kirkup

Published: 7:30AM GMT 19 Feb 2010

In surprise news which sent the pound sliding, official figures showed that
the Government borrowed £4.3 billion last month.

It was the first time since 1993 that the public finances had gone into the
red in January – a month in which tax revenues usually push the Exchequer
into the black.

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Reed Elsevier to make fresh disposals as profits slide

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By Rachel Cooper and Rowena Mason

Published: 7:27PM GMT 18 Feb 2010





Reed Elsevier

Erik Engstrom, Reed’s new chief executive, warned that the first half of 2010
would also be challenging, because companies are cutting back on
subscriptions to magazines and information services.

“The performance of most of our subscription businesses tends to lag
economic recovery,” he said. “In marketing and advertising the
rate of decline should start to slow down, but we are going to carry on
restructuring and looking at disposals.”

Full-year pre-tax profits at the publisher sank 29pc to £435m from £617m the
previous year. Overall sales at Reed rose 14pc to £6.07bn on foreign
currency benefits, but advertising revenues fell by 21pc.

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Job cuts at Nokia Siemens and Johnson & Johnson show the economy is still ill

Thousands of job losses at huge global companies were announced yesterday, offering further evidence that the economic slowdown is far from over.
Johnson & Johnson, the consumer goods and healthcare giant, said that it would cut up to 7 per cent of its 117,000 employees worldwide, meaning that as many as 8,190 people could lose their jobs.
Nokia Siemens Networks (NSW), the joint venture between Nokia and Siemens, the telecommunications groups, is set to shed up to 5,700 jobs from its workforce. Rajeev Suri, its new chief executive, is trying to reinvigorate the operation by cutting €500 million (£448 million) from its cost base.
NSW said that it wanted to trim up to 9 per cent of its 64,000-strong workforce and expected to complete the cost-saving plan by 2011. Mr Suri replaced Simon Beresford-Wylie, the Nokia veteran, at the beginning of October.

Johnson & Johnson is the latest healthcare company to have decided to slash costs to negotiate the difficulties of funding research into new medicines. As patents on some of its biggest-selling drugs are close to expiring, it needs to find fresh treatments to fill the gap in revenues. However, bringing a new drug to market costs more than $1 billion (£609 million), with many failing in early stage clinical trials.
By 2011, Johnson & Johnson hopes to save $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion a year through the cuts, with an $800 mill-ion to $900 million cost reduction expected next year. It had already cut about 3 per cent of its workforce in July 2007.
William Weldon, chief executive of Johnson & Johnson, said: “This is what we need to do to ‘rightsize’ the company to make sure we have the resources to invest.”
NSW, which is split 50-50 between the Finnish and German companies, has struggled over the past year. A €908 million impairment charge relating to the unit pushed Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone maker, into the red in the third quarter. As its owners fight falling sales, they are anxious to cut its costs.
NSW has about 1,000 workers in Britain, where it runs Orange’s network, as well as T-Mobile and 3 UK’s infrastructure. It also owns Apertio, a customer-management platform provider, based in Bristol, which it bought for €140 million early last year.
It is hoped that Britain will not bear the brunt of the cuts as Mr Suri is keen to refocus the NSW business on its services operations — the main part of its UK business. The company also has large numbers of staff in China, India and Brazil, as well as in Finland and Germany.
NSW has increased its workforce since the merger was announced in 2006, when the combined company had 60,000 staff, despite saying at the time that it anticipated trimming up to 15 per cent of its workforce.
Nokia said last month that it expected the unit to lose “significant” market share this year. The company has suffered from competition from low-cost providers, most notably Huawei, the Chinese equipment vendor. Ericsson, its Swedish rival, has weathered the storm better over the past year, but it showed that it was not immune to the downturn in recording a 6 per cent decline in sales during the third quarter.
UPM-Kymmene, a Finnish company that is the world’s largest magazine paper maker, plans to lay off 870 workers and close four mills. Most of the job losses will be in the plywood and sawn timber sectors at its Finnish mills, where it laid off 1,200 workers temporarily this year in an attempt to save costs.
HSBC sheds 1,700 staff
? HSBC is slashing 1,700 back-office staff, taking job losses at the bank this year to 4,600 (Helen Power writes). HSBC — whose chief executive, Michael Geoghegan, has relocated from London to Hong Kong, suggesting its focus for growth is Asia — will close three credit-card processing centres in Southampton, Sheffield and Southend. Rob MacGregor, the national officer of Unite, the bank’s biggest union, said: “Unite views the loss of 1,700 staff as a fundamental mistake. The union does not believe this will do anything to improve the company’s future performance.”

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Aer Lingus underlines woes facing airlines with 600 job cuts

Published: 9:35AM BST 07 Oct 2009

The struggling
airline today announced a slew of measures designed to return the
airline to profit, including 676 job losses and pay cuts for those who earn
more than €35,000 (£32,000) a year.

The move by Aer Lingus comes a day after British
Airways announced plans to cut 1,700 jobs, impose a two-year pay
freeze and change working practices.

Facing the twin threats of the economic slowdown and rising oil prices, the
International Air Transport Association predicts the industry will rack up
losses of $11bn this year - the worst in its history.

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Gordon Brown says global Tobin tax to curb banks’ risky behaviour is ‘worth a look’

AFP

Published: 8:40AM BST 22 Sep 2009

But Mr Brown said greater cooperation between countries to stop excessive risk
taking was required before such a tax could be considered.

France has proposed introducing a tax to be levied on every financial
transaction, known as a Tobin Tax, with the billions of euros raised to be
used to support economic development.

Brown said such an idea was worth consideration, but global cooperation that
is “cemented” and “action that is successful against tax havens” were
required before taking any steps towards the measure.

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Recession ‘could force unemployment toll to 4m’

By
Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 8:53 AM on 31st July 2009

Unemployment could reach 3.8millon while national debt may soar to £2trillion, a think-tank has warned
The unemployment rate could hit almost 4million by the end of the recession - far worse than the post-war peak under Margaret Thatcher. A doomsday scenario by the Centre for Economics and Business Research think-tank says unemployment could rise to 3.8million from its current level of around 2.4million. At the same time national debt could soar to £2trillion. Labour taunted the Tories relentlessly during the 1980s when unemployment hit three million. But now the study by the CEBR and the Taxpayers’ Alliance shows that the worldwide economic slowdown combined with Labour’s handling of the economy could see even more people out of a job. The authors conclude: ‘The Treasury must come clean about the risks they are running with the future of the economy and the public finances.’ The CEBR looked at various scenarios on how the economy might develop in the coming years, including ‘pessimistic’ and ‘moderate’ scenarios. Treasury projections imply unemployment of 2.8million by 2011, but the CEBR’s pessimistic modelling finds that the number could reach 3.8million two years later. Even on the moderate scenario, it would be 3.2million. The CEBR’s report also found that public spending will have to be slashed if the Treasury is to meet its target that Government debt should begin to decline by 2017/18.

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