NEWS IN BRIEF
2001-02-21
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UPMARKET insurer St James's Place Capital is moving into wealth management. Chairman Sir Mark Weinberg, 69, says its specialism in wealthy clients will help it beat similar ventures by High Street banks. Mortgage bank the Halifax took a 60pc stake last year. The group has delayed the launch of its own bank by four months. Underlying profits rose by 33pc to GBP 79.5m with new business rates up 42pc. Profit-takers sent the shares down 221/2p to 424p but they are still 14pc up this year.
VENTURE capital giant 3i continued its overseas expansion with a GBP 580 million joint bid for Atle, a Swedish private equity firm. 3i, which recently opened a Stockholm office, is tabling the bid with Swedish venture capitalist Ratos.
CABLE & Wireless is in talks with Pacific Century CyberWorks about selling half its 15pc stake, worth GBP 1.3bn, in the Hong Kong company.
ENTENMANN'S cakes and Thomas' English muffins are the latest victims of Unilever's spring clean of its brands. The mayonnaise to soap powder giant has sold Bestfoods Baking Company for GBP 1.25bn (US$ 1.8bn). The buyer is Canadian food company George Weston
NATIONAL Express has sold East Midlands and Bournemouth airports for GBP 241m to Manchester Airport. NE is shedding the UK airports, which it bought for GBP 34m, to focus on bus and rail. It will use the cash to repay debt.
car dealer Pendragon says trading picked up in December and January after a year of misery for UK dealers. Annual sales fell 22pc to GBP 1.4bn and underlying pre-tax profits fell GBP 3.2m to GBP 12.1m.
TELECITY, the Internet 'hotelier' that floated at 774p last June, grew sales fourfold to GBP 14m last year. Pretax losses widened from to GBP 12.7m. Demand for space from internet companies is strong, it says. Its shares fell 27p to 580p.
LABOUR peer Lord Alli is to be a part-time director at Aim-listed Tornado (down 9p to 841/2p), a developer of systems for downloading music over the Internet.
IN New York the market was closed due to a public holiday.
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