Investing
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Co-op Bank, Primark, Heathrow…
Co-op filled balance sheet hole with £1bn Bank of England loan; Primark links with ASOS to sell clothes online; Heathrow ‘too expensive and overcrowded’.
According to The Times, the Co-operative Bank filled a big hole in its balance sheet with £900m of cheap funding from the Bank of England in March through its Funding for Lending Scheme. “The same month it decided to stop offering corporate loans to new customers in recognition of the scale of the problems it faced,” the paper says.
The Independent says that AB Foods’s Primark division has finally taken its products online after launching on the ASOS website yesterday.
“Tensions in South Africa’s mines flared after a union official was shot dead and 1,000 workers were dismissed after a wildcat strike, highlighting the strife facing companies in the sector and alarming investors ahead of an important round of industry wage talks,” writes the Financial Times. The paper says that the official was among two Lonmin employees shot yesterday close to its Marikana platinum mine.
The International Air Transport Association named Heathrow as one of its “biggest airport problems”, saying that it is too expensive and prone to disruption, The Times reports.
The new chief executive officer (CEO) of N Brown, Angela Spindler, could earn nearly £4.0m over the next three years after receiving a “golden hello” from the home shopping firm for jumping ship from The Original Factory Shop, writes The Independent.
The Telegraph cites a report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which says that although there are “encouraging signs of recovery” in the global jobs market, employment rates are not forecast to rise to pre-crisis levels for another four years. The ILO estimates that over 200m people globally will be without a job by 2015.
Tech giant Apple went on trial yesterday over accusations by the US Department of Justice of conspiring with publishers to raise the price of ebooks, though CEO Tim Cook has insisted that the group would not settle, writes The Guardian.
The Scotsman writes that UK retail chain Topshop, owned by Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia, is to launch its flagship store in Hong Kong this week, getting its first glimpse of the Chinese market.
