Why Britain’s grocers are so weak and foreign investors spot a bargain opportunity in our supermarket shares ALEX BRUMMER Established grocers are weak because of the discounters Lidl and Aldi As they established a foothold in the UK, the native supermarkets had to fight back on price This battle has taken a terrible toll on … Read more
ALEX BRUMMER: Morrisons is a farmer, landowner, fishing company and a food producer, all of which could be damaged by private-equity ownership By Alex Brummer for the Daily Mail Published: 16:50 EDT, 30 July 2021 | Updated: 17:09 EDT, 30 July 2021 Softbank and Koch dynasty-backed Fortress has informed the stock market that it expects … Read more
Hopes of a giant step forward on climate change at the Cornwall G7 proved optimistic. US politics has a nasty habit of getting in the way, as it has over setting a new global minimum tax of 15 per cent. Among specific proposals to cut collective carbon emissions in half by 2030 was a pledge … Read more
Liz Truss’s effort to sign a free trade deal with Sydney has met blowback from the agricultural lobby. Free trade is the ultimate objective and avoidable friction is occurring.
Often on Monday mornings, listeners to Radio 4’s flagship Today show wake to the withering comments of David Cumming, chief investment officer of insurer Aviva, which has £334million of funds under management. In his latest intervention, the investment panjandrum turned his fire on Emma Walmsley, warning that the ‘jury is still out’ on the Glaxosmithkline … Read more
Private equity pioneers KKR, the original ‘Barbarians at the Gate,’ want stakeholders to believe they are doing them a huge favour by offering £2billion for British infrastructure giant John Laing. As with so many recent private equity deals for FTSE 250 companies, the premium to the current share price of 33 per cent looks generous. … Read more
The creation of two chief operating jobs at Marks & Spencer for Katie Bickerstaffe and Stuart Machin, and a strategic role for finance director Eoin Tonge, inevitably will excite speculation that succession planning has begun. Against a background of a fading and different presence for department stores on the High Street, chief executive Steve Rowe … Read more
ALEX BRUMMER: By leaving private equity and overseas buyers the chance to do their worst behind closed doors, investors wash hands of responsibility The UK’s corporate landscape is littered with the victims of debt-fuelled private equity predators The objective is rarely honourable – it is to break-up the enterprises and sell them on piece by … Read more
ALEX BRUMMER: What is remarkable about Greensill-Gupta scandal is how little attention was paid by Cameron and regulators to warnings flashing red By Alex Brummer for the Daily Mail Published: 21:50 BST, 14 May 2021 | Updated: 22:14 BST, 14 May 2021 Anyone tuning into David Cameron’s less than riveting testimony before the Treasury Select … Read more
ALEX BRUMMER: What is remarkable about Greensill-Gupta scandal is how little attention was paid by Cameron and regulators to warnings flashing red By Alex Brummer for the Daily Mail Published: 21:50 BST, 14 May 2021 | Updated: 22:14 BST, 14 May 2021 Anyone tuning into David Cameron’s less than riveting testimony before the Treasury Select … Read more