A-Z of the Sunday business news

13 April 2012

THIS Is Money reads the Sunday papers so you don't have to. Here is this week's run-down of who is making the headlines on the City pages:

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

Debenhams

Debenhams is paying £1m a week to CVC and Texas Pacific Group to persuade them to continue working on a possible joint bid for the department store group.

Nicola Horlick

The star investment manager dubbed Superwoman is to quit her lifetime career managing funds and step down as chief executive of SG Asset Management, the group she co-founded in 1998.

BAE Systems

BAE is threatening to sack 470 highly skilled employees in Brough, having rejected an offer from the Government to buy a scaled-down version of its Hawk trainer jets.

Milk

Investigators from the Office of Fair Trading are probing an alleged milk cartel and have raided dairies operated by Express Dairies, Arla Foods and the Co-op as part of their inquiry.

Chelsea

A probe into the business affairs of Patrick Murrin, a close associate of Ken Bates, the chairman of Chelsea Village, lay behind last week's decision by the Financial Services Authority to inquire into the ownership of shares in the football company.

Centrica

Centrica, Britain's biggest household energy supplier, is preparing to sell Goldfish, its loss-making financial services arm.

Telewest

Telewest shareholders will be left with only 1.5% of the company following a deal hammered out by bondholders owed £3.5 billion by the UK cable group.

Pearson

The media group that owns the Financial Times and Penguin Books is close to agreeing a deal to process and mark SAT exams for more than 3.5 million American high school students as part of new education contracts worth more than £100m.

Parallel Media

The Financial Services Authority is to investigate the Aim-listed sports management company, which admitted last week it could not find all the necessary 'accounting information' to produce annual audited accounts.

Cordiant

Nahed Ojjeh, the Syrian-born billionairess at the centre of the Cordiant takeover saga, is being probed by officials from the Department of Trade and Industry for a possible infringement of UK company law.

OBSERVER

Abbey National

Abbey National will this week disclose a massive drop in half-time profits after taking a near £600m hit for sour corporate loans.

BA

British Airways will this week put a bill of up to £50m on the two-day wild-cat strikes over swipe cards that plunged its Heathrow operations into chaos.

JP Morgan

JP Morgan is being sued for £2m by a 'supergrass' who claims he is owed a reward for saving the investment bank from a £33m bond theft.

George Wimpey

Britain's biggest housebuilder will post a staggering 35% rise in pre-tax profits to about £116m this week.

SUNDAY TIMES

Nicola Horlick

The highest-profile fund manager in the City, has resigned as chief executive of SG Asset Management, the fund-management business.

MyTravel

The tour operator has put its American assets up for sale in a move that could raise more than £185m.

Cordiant

The man in charge of the failed attempt to stop the takeover of Cordiant by advertising agency WPP - Brian Myerson, co-founder of fund manager Active Value - has admitted it was a mistake to get involved, writes Andrew Porter.

Centrica

Centrica, the gas and electricity to banking conglomerate, will raise its dividend by 30% this year to about 5p.

INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

Virgin

Sir Richard Branson and T-Mobile are close to reaching an out-of-court settlement of their long-running dispute over Virgin Mobile, paving the way for a £1bn-plus flotation early next year.

Lloyds TSB

The bank is considering cutting its interim dividend by up to a third due to the need to pump cash into its troubled Scottish Widows life and pensions business.

THE BUSINESS

Tax

The British have suffered a dramatic collapse in their living standards thanks to Chancellor Gordon Brown's tax increases, government figures reveal.

Euro zone

A major economic policy shift towards increased spending and tax cuts is set to trigger a wave of privatisations to pay for soaring budget deficits.

ICI

The chemicals group will this week announce another round of job cuts - understood to be around 1,200 - in a bid to revive its operating performance. ICI employs 36,000 people.

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