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Tuesday's news and tips

Created:

18 November 2008

Written by:

Tanya Malick

■ Self storage group Big Yellow have done away with the interim dividend after announcing a £54m loss in the first six months due to a huge write-down on the value of its property assets.

■ Premier Foods has cancelled the interim dividend and said it will only resume payments "when debt levels permit"

■ Platinum miner Lonmin has decided not to pay a final dividend because of continuing difficult conditions in metals markets and the current state of the credit market.

■ Middle East investors behind Barclays £7bn fund raising have responded to growing institutional unrest by offering a clawback for existing shareholders

■ Carphone Warehouse has confirmed plans to review its business with the possibility of splitting into its Talk Talk arm and its mobile phone business.

■ Housebuilder Barratt is expecting to take more write-offs on its land bank by the end of the year., saying that "conditions in the housing market are now as tough as anyone can remember" (IC COMMENT)

■ Industrial chain maker Renold saw profits rise for the half-year but said it tempers its outlook for the immediate future because of uncertain market conditions. (IC COMMENT)

Continues below...

■ George Davies, the man responsible for Per Una at Marks & Spencer, is to give up his role as part-time chairman of the retailer's upmarket clothing range.

■ Irish publisher Independent News & Media will axe about 90 jobs at its London-based newspapers Independent and Independent on Sunday in a bid to save more than £10m.

■ MediLink-Global UK, the electronic healthcard network service provider, raised £2.1m when it started trading on AIM this morning.

■ Engineering and construction firm Balfour Beatty has appointed Andrew McNaughton to the new role of Chief Operating Officer.

■ Easyjet founder and 26.9% shareholder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou refused to sign off this year's annual figures and called for a return to dividends. (IC COMMENT)

■ Satellite broadcaster BSkyB is to raise around $600m through a private placement of bonds to institutional investors.

■ Business information group UBM today vowed to continue with its "progressive dividend policy" adding that it is on track to deliver revenues and earnings per share in line with market consensus.

■ Profit tumbled 12.6% at pub owner Enterprise Inns during the year to 30 September as it struggled to deal with the smoking ban and deterioration in consumer spending and confidence.

■ Plumbers' merchant Wolseley said that trading in the UK and Nordic regions has continued to deteriorate, as expected, since its September trading statement.

■ Outsourcing specialist Capita remains confident of reporting results for the 2008 year in line with expectations and says it's set to perform well in 2009.

■ Can maker Rexam said it has been trading in line with expectations in the second half of the year.

■ Luxury fashion group Burberry reported a 3% increase in first half operating profit but warned that trading since the second half has been more difficult, particularly in the US.

■ Electronics group Laird warned that the accelerating global economic slowdown is severely impacting its electronics markets

■ Trading has been broadly in line with expectations at oil services group Wellstream during the second half of 2008, but it is more cautious for next year

■ Inter-dealer brokers ICAP toasted a record first half profit as it continued to benefit from the high volatility seen in the wholesale financial markets.

FOR A SUMMARY OF LATEST MOVEMENTS IN EQUITY, COMMODITY AND CURRENCY MARKETS, SEE FT.COM'S MARKETS PAGE.

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NEWSPAPER SHARE TIPS (18 NOVEMBER 2008)

Full round-up of newspaper share tips (sourced from Sharecast)

BANKING CRISIS:

Barclays' board is preparing to issue a "back us or sack us" ultimatum to its rebellious shareholders as part of a package of measures designed to quell their anger over the high cost of the bank's emergency fundraising.

The board – four executive directors and 13 non-executives – will put themselves up for re-election at next April's annual meeting in an unprecedented move for a blue-chip British bank, reports the Telegraph.

Meanwhile, the chances of a shareholder revolt against Barclays' £7.3bn capital-raising plan were kept alive today as Pirc, the corporate governance campaign group, urged its members to vote against the terms of the deal. Pirc, which last week indicated its opposition to the deal, said today that it was unhappy that the terms being offered by the high street bank would significantly dilute existing shareholders, reports the Times.

A fresh onslaught on offshore tax evasion is to be mounted by UK Revenue & Customs early next year when it targets customers of 25 building societies and foreign banks with British operations. The move follows the Revenue's success last year in forcing five British high street banks to disclose details of secret offshore accounts, reports the FT.

PRESS HEADLINES:

SVG Capital is in talks to scale back payments to Permira, its parent, as concerns grow that the private equity industry is facing a funding crisis. It is understood that SVG has asked Permira, a private equity firm that specialises in leveraged buyouts, to renegotiate contracts that oblige SVG to fund it for the next five years, reduce the payments or reschedule them over a longer period, reports the Times.

The government is to offer loans directly to small businesses as banks continue to withhold credit from them. Companies will be able to seek loans of up to £250,000 from Regional Development Agencies, which ministers think will have an important role as Britain falls into recession, writes the Times.

Rupert Murdoch tore into the "doom and gloomers" predicting the demise of newspapers yesterday, backing the industry to hit new heights this century, but admitted this involved "moving beyond dead trees". This comes at a time when media groups have come under severe pressure, closing titles and slashing jobs, in the wake of the global credit crunch, reports the Independent.

Yahoo! chief executive Jerry Yang is to step down from the role after failing to deliver a deal with either Microsoft or Google. Mr Yang, one of the company's founders who returned to the top job to help revive the search engine in June 2007, will return to his previous role directing Yahoo!'s global strategy. The decision by him to step down emerged following a Yahoo! board meeting on Monday, at which his fellow directors agreed to accept his resignation from the top job, reports the Telegraph.

Rents fell for the first time in five years between July and October as home-movers flooded the rental market with properties that they could not sell. According to a new survey, 12% more lettings agents said that rents had fallen rather than risen between August and October. That was a reversal from the previous three months, when nearly a third more agents said that rents were rising, figures from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) show, reports the Times.

Our press headlines summary is sourced from www.Sharecast.com