Several weeks ago Betaville copped an earful from a person close to Thomas Cook on a rare Sunday off for a piece I wrote in the Mail on Sunday's business section about the tour operator's restructuring. Below is the link:..
The City of London should be cranking back into fourth gear this week as the summer holidays come to an end. I guess, then, it isn't surprising that there were plenty of compelling tales in the Sunday newspaper business sections today...
There is a young financial hack in the London market who is fast distinguishing himself with some excellent journalism.
His name is William Turvill of the Mail on Sunday and rival business journalists from Financial News were on Twitter yesterday praising one a recent interview with Savvas Savouri, the blunt but amusing economist from Toscafund...
I see former colleague Mark, "the Kleinmanator", Kleinman of Sky News has just published a rather interesting piece about Interserve, a company I have written about recently on Betaville and in the Mail on Sunday's business section (below are the links).
https://www.betaville.co.uk/news/interserve-poised-to-be-put-on-the-block-sources/..
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, appreared to definitively rule out any potential re-nationalisation of BT Group in yesterday's The Sunday Times following reports from Yahoo Finance a couple of weeks ago that Labour was looking at the possibility of taking the telecoms giant back into public ownership.
Below is the link to Oliver Shah and John Collingridge's fascinating piece in yesterday's business sections:..
Mocado, Markado and Ocamark. These are just some of the monikers being used to describe the latest Marks & Spencer / Ocado joint venture tie-up.
Anyway, hat tip to the Evening Standard's Russell Lynch for smoking out the latest iteration of the deal with his scoop today in the paper about the impending transaction. Below is a link to Russell Lynch's piece in case you missed it:..
Once you get past the acres of Brexit coverage there were some decent business jackanories knocking about in the Sunday papers today.
One story that caught Betaville's eye was a tucked away on page 2 of the Mail on Sunday's business section about how Mike Ashley is planning to hire new PR "experts" to look after his "growing retail group". Below is a link to Neil Craven's article:..
Apologies for the lack of posts in the last few days. Betaville has been enjoying a few days of merrymaking and eating chocolate.
Anyway, on arriving back at my desk this morning I was presented with the news that Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and friends have sold some of their shareholdings in Gatwick airport to French firm Vinci for an estimated £2.9 billion...
Neil Craven, a colleague over at the Mail on Sunday's business section, landed a cracking tale this weekend about ailing department store Debenhams...
So, after a hiatus of several months Stefan Persson, the chairman of Hennes & Maurtiz, was today adding to this year's mammoth share purchase.
The Swedish billionaire squire - who owns vaste swathes of Britain's West Country - has this year spent almost $1 billion on buying shares in the company his father founded 71 years ago but today he added another 5.46 million shares to his shareholding, according to Bloomberg...
At first sight it would appear hacks over at Bloomberg followed my scoopette in this weekend's Mail on Sunday about the looming £10 billion Gatwick Airport sale. Below is a link to the Irish Independent's rip off yesterday's Bloomberg follow up, which is dated October 14th (yesterday):..
So, farewell Iain Dey, who until yesterday was the business editor of The Sunday Times, a newspaper Betaville regularly writes for.
Iain and Betaville first worked together back over a decade ago when The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph decided to merge their respective business reporting teams. Below is a scoop we broke together during that period:..
There weren't too many M&A scoops in the business sections this weekend but having worked for The Sunday Times, the Mail on Sunday and The Sunday Telegraph I know how some weeks it can be extremely tough digging out humdinger deal jackanories. They are a bit like buses - you wait for ages and then suddenly three come along in one go...