There are rekindled talks about whether Qinetiq QQ.L which has performed poorly since its partial privatisation, might be better off as part of a bigger company. BIDDERS EYEING QINETIQ WHERE GOVERNMENT STILL HAS THE KEY Some three-quarters of its sales are generated online. The company, which is seeking to raise about ten million pounds, enjoyed strong sales growth, from under one million pounds in 2000 to 54 million pounds last year. The new rules would cover some 60 large industrial sites in England, Wales and Scotland, mainly chemical plants and refineries that are considered especially hazardous.Įxpansys, a Manchester-based online wireless technology retailer, is joining Aim this month as part of moves to strengthen its balance sheet and position itself to better exploit the opportunities thrown up by consolidation in the industry. Until now all the costs of the necessary plant improvements have fallen on the operators themselves. DEVELOPERS MAY FACE SAFETY COSTS ON NEW BUILDINGSĭevelopers could find themselves paying for extra safety measures such as improved maintenance or more sophisticated instrumentation following government proposals, to be unveiled today, which would require developers siting new buildings close to hazardous industrial installations to finance some of the extra costs involved in making plants safe. The study also said the sector was riding the wave of buoyant market activity such as the 509 billion pound worth of mergers and acquisitions in the first quarter of 2007. Fund managers were the most optimistic respondents.

FINANCIAL SERVICES BUOYED BY OVERSEAS DEMANDĪ study by the employers’ body CBI has found that surging demand from overseas clients has helped to give the financial services sector a strong start to the year, with 39 percent of financial services firm surveyed saying that business volumes were above normal in the three months to March while only four percent said they were below. Paul Kenny, secretary general of the GMB union however said the FT finding did not invalidate the union’s own experience of job losses in the hands of private equity in the mature sectors of the economy like AA and Birds Eye. The study in fact found that the companies have added 36,000 jobs to the 141,000 staff they employed when they were bought, up 25 percent. An FT analysis of these deals, said by Dealogic to be worth more than 31 billion pounds, found that contrary to the common trade union complaint that private equities destroy jobs, many more jobs have been added in the 30 deals studied during the intervening years than were lost. Given the time it usually takes the regulator to approve any pricing changes, this would mean that zonal pricing will now be introduced at the earliest in April 2008.īUY-OUT STUDY DEFIES JOB-CUTTING REPUTATIONĪ study of some of the 30 private equity deals concluded during 20 has pooh-poohed the notion that private equity groups are destroyers of jobs and asset strippers. However in February it made a fresh zonal pricing application to Postcomm, the postal regulator. Royal Mail originally applied in July last year to make the changes and envisaged introducing the zonal pricing from April this year. Proposals by the Royal Mail GBPO.UL to make some of its business mail prices more competitive could face a delay of up to two years after the postal operator abandoned its original timetable to cut some key delivery rates of bulk mail to 'dense drop zones' - often city centres - while increasing them for London and other areas. ROYAL MAIL FACES DELAY TO BULK MAIL REFORMS

The publication of Soca’s first annual report has been delayed. Sir Stephen said the number of suspicious transaction reports received by Soca from the financial sector had increased over the past year from 195,000 to 213,000. Sir Stephen Lander, chairman of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) said a growing partnership between the private sector and the agency was helping to improve the efficiency of the government’s money laundering controls. CRIME AGENCY CHIEF VALUES PARTNERSHIP IN MONEY LAUNDERING FIGHT

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