Andrew Hill
Lombard: the SocGen phew-factor
The international confederacy of bankers is in full session – at Davos and across the world’s financial centres – expressing solidarity with Société Générale in the wake of the calamitous fraud.
Lombard – Time for a clearout in Acronym Alley
On a day when Merrill Lynch announced an $11.5bn writedown, many investment bankers would rather cover their eyes with their hands than be forced to drag more liabilities up from the graveyard of US subprime mortgages.
Lombard: FSA moves to sharpen up London’s image
Just as some upwardly mobile foreigners try to dress themselves like the British gentry, sourcing their wardrobe from Savile Row, so international companies have flocked to the UK in recent years seeking the elegant tailoring of a “London listing”.
Lombard: Burren and the missteps of M&A newcomers
Two previously untipped Indian companies step in at the last minute to trump a richly priced recommended offer from a well-endowed multinational that already owns nearly 25 per cent of the target. Stranger things have happened.
Lombard: the Rock’s extraordinary EGM
Northern Rock has hired an 11,000-seat arena for a special meeting of its shareholders next week. The queues for tickets are unlikely to be as long as those that built up outside the group’s branches last year,
Lombard: common sense prevails with Sky/ITV
All shareholders are equal, but some are more equal than others. That is one principle behind the Competition Commission’s recommendation that British Sky Broadcasting should cut its stake in ITV from 17.9 per cent to less than 7.5 per cent.
Lombard: slashing costs is first step at Abbey
When Jamie Dimon took the helm at Chicago’s Bank One in 2000 he found that the legacy of the bank’s acquisition binge included no fewer than seven different deposit computer systems that needed integrating.
Lombard: Carillion and McAlpine strike a balance
“Don’t try to catch a falling knife” is an old stock market axiom. But what if you want to catch it?
Take Carillion’s recommended offer for Alfred McAlpine, struck at a level lower than that agreed barely a month ago.
London and the Crock effect
“Business leaders call for less red tape” is one of those “dog bites man” stories that would not normally make the headlines. The surprise in the latest survey of bosses by the CBI, the British business association,
Lombard: Chinese should beware of making City mischief
Message to Xu Lejiang: telling the 21st Century Business Herald that you are considering a $200bn offer for Rio Tinto isn’t enough to get you to the negotiating table.
Mr Xu, chairman of Baosteel Group,
Lombard: Gambling on Rank’s destiny
Stanley Ho, the Macau casino mogul, has just paid $330,000 for a giant white truffle. Genting, the Malaysian gaming group, has spent £30m or £40m on a 10 per cent stake in Rank, the British casino and bingo company.
When a blend is best
Remarks this week by Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman about whether private equity firms or public markets hold investments the longest have reopened a debate that is sometimes reminiscent of the theological dispute about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.
Lombard: Schwarzman’s new reality
Stephen Schwarzman could hardly have found a friendlier forum for his first speech since Blackstone Group’s initial public offering than a conference hosted by the CBI, the British business lobby group.
Lombard: Talking your Crock book
Always be careful when hedge funds put their mouth where their money is. Philip Richards, chief executive of RAB Capital, and Jon Wood of SRM Capital, another hedge fund, are fighting the corner for fellow shareholders in Northern Rock,
Lombard: eastern influences at Standard Chartered
The ability to remain impervious to bid speculation is a job requirement for chief executives of Standard Chartered. Peter Sands, the current incumbent, has not had to demonstrate this talent as frequently as his predecessor Mervyn Davies,
Lombard: Takeover targets, beware the ‘unbashful bridegrooms’
New chief executives used to enjoy a relatively lengthy honeymoon period. These days, judging from the experience at BHP Billiton (for Rio Tinto), Carlsberg (going after Scottish & Newcastle) and Rio Tinto itself (which successfully bid for Alcan),
Lombard: Private equity investors should prepare for trouble
Golfers have a term for a shot that is well-struck, but still finishes out of bounds – a son-in-law. As a metaphor for disappointed expectations, one private equity partner thinks it is likely to be applied with increasing frequency in the coming months to buy-outs that go bad.
Lombard: Post mortem on the Rock underway
As an American in charge of a large network of British bank branches, Deanna Oppenheimer, chief executive of UK retail banking at Barclays, brings both the perspective of an outsider and the first-hand experience of an insider to the aftermath of last month’s run on Northern Rock,
Lombard: UK paint fans still shouting on Akzo deal
It is almost all over bar the shouting at ICI — but shouting there will be, before Akzo Nobel of the Netherlands gets its hands on British industry’s former bellwether. Since the agreed takeover of ICI was announced in mid-August,
Lombard: The martyrdom of St Mervyn was not in vain
The purists have loudly declared that the Bank of England’s U-turn on three-month loans was undesirable. Was it also unnecessary?
For all the interest in its auction of three-month money yesterday,
Lombard: Secrecy for the sake of secrecy is no defence
Efforts to persuade the UK’s private equity firms to adopt a voluntary code of practice are likely to gather pace over the next few weeks. Sir David Walker, the former regulator who is drawing up the guidelines,
Lombard: Swiss masterplan to take on the City
For a while now, those promoting London as a financial centre have warned that any increase in the regulatory or tax burden on UK-based firms might prompt an exodus of top people to more accommodating jurisdictions.
Lombard – Phoney war against private equity
Since critics of private equity last laid into the sector in July, the credit squeeze has given buy-out specialists much more serious issues to worry about than tax and transparency.
But private equity’s finest shouldn’t yet expect sympathy from the union leaders.
Lombard: Knight Vinke’s HSBC adverts set new standard
If nothing else, Knight Vinke Asset Management’s attempt to shake up HSBC shows that regulators’ concerns about the blurring of the line between activism (legal) and market manipulation (illegal) — or between an activist bandwagon and a potentially illicit concert party — are starting to bite.
Lombard: Costa’s jump
Ken Costa’s leap from UBS to Lazard is the kind of unexpected, high-profile job change that keeps the wheels of City of London gossip turning. As UBS chairman of investment banking for Europe, the Middle East and Africa,
Lombard: Is Virgin Media right to play hard to get?
Virgin Media has joined the line of companies delaying a transaction because of market volatility. Its euphemism of choice is that it has decided to “extend the process” of auctioning the cable group until debt markets stabilise.
Lombard: The awkward asymmetry of Walker’s PE code
The private equity sector has grown partly because of “the preference of talented executives to work in a business environment without many of the formal constraints of the listed sector”. So says Sir David Walker in his keenly awaited consultation document on disclosure and transparency in UK private equity.
Lombard: Trouble in stores for Merrill Lynch
Merrill Lynch has now been associated with three disappointments in UK retail – as one of four banks that brought Debenhams back to market last year, as the lead bank on sportswear chain Sports Direct’s IPO earlier this year,
Lombard: Why Branson might eschew the top Virgin dollar
Sir Richard Branson is tiresomely ubiquitous. The British entrepreneur has just popped up on the business council set up to advise the UK’s new prime minister, Gordon Brown. But except for those who fly regularly across the Atlantic with Virgin Atlantic or travel up and down the western half of Britain by rail on Virgin Trains,