Economics
Quantitative easing: The Bank of England’s first auction under quantitative easing was massively oversubscribed as institutions clamoured to acquire some of the newly created money. The Bank received bids to sell gilts worth £10.5 billion, five times more than its £2 billion limit.
Trade in goods: Exports fell by 5.5 per cent in January at a faster rate than the decline in imports, pushing the trade in goods gap to £7.7 billion. The total trade deficit for goods and services was £3.6 billion, from £3.2 billion.
German industrial orders: Official figures showed that German industrial orders fell by 8 per cent in January, from a downwardly revised 7.6 per cent in December. Domestic orders fell by 4.3 per cent, while foreign orders declined by 11.4 per cent.
Chinese trade surplus: Exports from China slid by 25.7 per cent in February, from a year earlier, while imports dropped by 24.1 per cent. The resulting trade surplus was $4.84 billion (£3.5 billion), a three-year low, against $39.1 billion in January and a record $40.1 billion in November, and was far short of market expectations of $27.3 billion.
Banking & finance
Novae: The insurance group has ended merger talks with Chaucer Holdings, its rival, saying it was not possible to structure a transaction that would be in the interests of its shareholders. Separately, Chaucer said it was in talks with other parties to buy the group, while noting Novae’s announcement.
Financial Services Authority: The City regulator blamed Gordon Brown for contributing to the economic crisis, coming close to accusing him of stoking the credit-fuelled housing boom.
JPMorgan Chase: Jamie Dimon, chief executive of the US investment bank, told the US Chamber of Commerce that there were modest signs of an economic recovery and called for a US risk authority to co-ordinate the country’s many financial regulators.
Freddie Mac: The US mortgage lender said it needs $30.8 billion (£22.2 billion) from the US Treasury to survive after reporting a fourth-quarter loss of $23.9 billion, nearly ten times that of a year ago.
Construction & property
Costain: The construction company reported a 17 per cent rise in full-year pre-tax profits to £23.1 million and hailed a record year-end order book, up 25 per cent at £2 billion, with £777 million of secured work for 2009.
Solar Integrated Technologies: The AIM-listed solar panel roofing group has been awarded two contracts to supply and install BIPV roofing systems at the US Naval Station in Guam and the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Arizona.
Savills: The estate agent reported full-year revenues of £568.5 million, from £650.5 million last time, and cut its dividend as it prepared for a challenging year.
Consumer goods
Robert Wiseman: The Scottish dairy group offset a cut to its Tesco supply contract by revealing that it expected full-year profits to exceed market hopes. At present the group supplies about 60 per cent of Tesco’s own-label milk, but the supermarket plans to lower this to about 50 per cent with a net reduction of 40 million litres.
Uniq: The Marks & Spencer food supplier reported an operating loss of £3.3 million after a “disappointing” year, not helped by rising food costs and an overreliance on premium ranges. Uniq said that it will look for buyers for its operations in Northern Europe and France so that it can focus on its domestic business.
Altadis: The tobacco company, a unit of Imperial Tobacco, said that it had reached an agreement with trade unions to reduce its workforce by 10 per cent in Spain.
Engineering
Toyota: The Japanese carmaker announced plans to cut production and wages by 10 per cent at its plants at Burnaston near Derby, where it employs 3,900 staff, and at Deeside in North Wales, where it employs 570 workers. Toyota said the programme would remain in place for a year.
Renishaw: The measuring equipment maker announced that it is cutting 500 jobs after experiencing an “unprecedented” slowdown in demand for its products in recent months. Most of Renishaw’s 1,500-strong UK workforce are based at four Gloucestershire sites.
FKI: Melrose, the investment group, reported full-year pre-tax profits of £75.4 million, up from £28.1 million in 2007, boosted by its purchase of FKI, the electrical engineering group based in Loughborough. It added that cash generation of £60 million during the year had exceeded expectations.
Continental: The German car parts maker said that it wants to cut nearly 2,000 jobs and close production at two high-cost European tyre manufacturing sites.
Health
GW Pharmaceuticals: Shares in the Wiltshire group rose by 49 per cent to 59p after it said that Sativex, its cannabis-based drug, had passed a key trial which has greatly improved its chances of gaining regulatory approval to be used as a multiple sclerosis treatment. It said it would file for approval in the second quarter.
Industrials
Severstal: Russia’s largest steelmaker said that it planned to cut up to 9,500 jobs in response to weak demand and would also make job cuts at its coal and iron-ore mines.
Leisure
Pantin Hotels: Administrators at MCR have closed down The Ellington hotel in Leeds and the nearby Floridita restaurant and bar after the collapse of City Retreats, the real estate company that owned the properties. Pantin is also thought to have scrapped plans to open a second hotel in Leeds, the Crispin.
Le Méridien Hotels: The five-star Le Méridien in Piccadilly, Central London, which is owned by Starman Hotels, a joint venture between Starwood Capital and Lehman Brothers, is close to being sold to an overseas property investor for an estimated £67 million.
Merlin Entertainments: The theme park and attractions operator is to launch a £13.5 million rollercoaster ride at Thorpe Park, Surrey, which will feature a 100ft freefall drop.
Media
Johnston Press: The regional newspaper group, which owns The Scotsman and the Yorkshire Post, said that advertising revenues were down by nearly 36 per cent this year, compared with 2008 levels, and confirmed that further jobs will go as it looks to cut more costs.
ITV: The Government has ruled that product placement will not be allowed in home-made television programmes, despite the collapse in advertising, to the dismay of the commercial broadcaster.
Chime Communication: The PR and marketing agency reported that its full-year pre-tax profits had risen by 19 per cent to £16.3 million, but said the outlook for 2009 was “uncertain”.
Sesame Workshop: The American production company behindSesame Street, the long-running children’s television show, is to make a fifth of its staff redundant, saying it was the result of the “unprecedented challenges” in the economic environment.
Natural resources
Cairn Energy: The Scottish FTSE 100 oil explorer said that it has raised £116 million by selling new shares to provide financial flexibility as the credit markets remain challenging. It added that it had sold new shares representing about 5 per cent of the company’s existing issued shares.
Tullow Oil: The London-listed exploration group said that successful drilling around Lake Albert in Uganda had shown resources of at least 600 million barrels, enough to support the construction of an export pipeline across Kenya to the Indian Ocean. It also reported a quadrupling of full-year net profits during 2008, thanks to asset sales.
Retailing
John Lewis: The department store group reported that its full-year pre-tax profits had fallen by nearly 20 per cent to £407 million and announced a 13 per cent annual bonus to staff, less than the 20 per cent bonus awarded last time. Separately, Waitrose, its supermarket division, reported like-for-like growth of 0.4 per cent in the year to January 31 and said that its share of the grocery market had slipped to 3.5 per cent, from 3.6 per cent, in the 12 weeks to February 21.
Neiman Marcus: The American luxury goods retailer, based in Dallas, has reported a net loss during the 13 weeks to January 31 of $509.2 million (£369.3 million), compared with a $44.3 million net profit over the same shopping period in 2008, as sales dropped by more than 20 per cent to just above $1 billion.
Support Services
Interserve: The support services and engineering company, based in Berkshire, reported a 16 per cent rise in full-year pre-tax profits to £85.2 million, ahead of City expectations, and cheered investors as it looked forward to “robust” UK markets. It added that healthy workloads in the public sector and regulated industries such as utilities would offset a “challenging and uncertain” private sector.
BPP: The London-listed education company, which trains accountants for PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young, reported a 6 per cent rise in full-year pre-tax profits with strong revenue growth in all its divisions.
Correction: It was not the printing group Polestar that breached its banking covenants in December as we reported (Business, March 9), but Incisive Media. We apologise for the error.
Technology
Google: The US internet search engine said that it has started targeting its users with advertisements based on their online history, tracking users who visit sites that show Google advertising.
National Semiconductor: The US computer chip maker said that it will cut about 1,725 jobs, with 850 positions worldwide disappearing immediately in its product, marketing, manufacturing and support businesses. It has about 6,500 employees.
Apple: The US computer group has unveiled a minuscule iPod Shuffle that takes up about half as much space as the previous version even as it doubles music storage space to 4 gigabytes.
Telecoms
Tiscali: The troubled Italian broadband provider has secured a new lifeline after its banks agreed to suspend loan repayments and help the group to restructure its finances. It announced that its creditors, led by JPMorgan, had agreed to suspend payments on loans, including the €11 million (£10 million) owed this week.
BT: The telecoms group has announced that it has frozen the pay of its 100,000-strong British workforce. Its share price has fallen by more than 70 per cent during the past year to 71.4p, amid investor concern about a collapse in group profits and the company’s rapidly expanding pension fund deficit.
Transport
Manchester airport: Unite, the trade union, is balloting its members working at Manchester airport for industrial action in a dispute over restructuring which has resulted in job reductions, pay cuts and the introduction of a new shift pattern. Unite said industrial action would see passenger services seriously disrupted during the Easter holidays.
Aer Lingus: The Irish flag carrier reported a full-year pre-tax loss of €120 million (£111 million), compared with a profit of €125 million last time, and added that revenues would fall, after a 5 per cent rise to €1.3 billion last year. It also indicated ticket prices would come down by 10 per cent.
Utilities
EDF: Investigators from the European Commission have raided the offices of the utility in Paris, seeking evidence of price-fixing in the French electricity market. A Commission spokesman said it was suspected that EDF was engaged in activity that abused its dominant position in the market.
International Power: The London-listed electricity generator reported a 16 per cent rise in full-year profits and boosted its dividend by a fifth, but said that its 2009 profits could be hit by lower energy prices.
Centrica: Fresh questions have emerged over the £3.1 billion plan by Centrica, the owner of British Gas, to buy a stake in Britain’s nuclear industry, amid growing signs that the company’s talks with EDF, the UK nuclear generator’s new owner, are set to continue into the spring.
