Archive for March, 2007

31 March, 2007 | No comments

ACE Aviation shareholders to get $603M worth of Aeroplan, Jazz

ACE Aviation Holdings is again swapping more of its shares for units of its spun-off subsidiaries.

The parent of Air Canada, ACE said Friday it will distribute about $603 million worth of units of Aeroplan Income Fund and Jazz Air Income Fund to its shareholders later this month.

ACE said holders of its Class A, Class B and preferred shares will get roughly 0.177 of an Aeroplan unit and 0.219 of a Jazz unit for each ACE share.

The latest distribution follows one in January in which ACE gave its shareholders about $856 million worth of Aeroplan units.

Back in October 2006, ACE shareholders approved the company’s plan to cut the capital of its shares by distributing up to $2 billion.

The Air Canada Pilots Association challenged the company’s plan in court, but lost its case.

On Friday, ACE’s Class B shares slipped 39 cents to close at $35.55. Jazz units were off four cents to end at $8.00, while Aeroplan units fell 12 cents to finish at $19.73.

31 March, 2007 | No comments

AFX TOP STORIES UK 0805 GMT

LONDON (AFX) - Here are the top stories on AFX News

Taylor Nelson Sofres buys US market research firm Retail Forward

LONDON (AFX) - Taylor Nelson Sofres PLC said it has bought US-based Retail Forward Inc to provide “significant added momentum” to the rapid expansion of its successful retail and shopper research business.

Retail Forward posted revenue of 8.4 mln usd in the year ended Dec 31, 2006, with gross assets of 2.8 mln usd on that date, the market information company said.

RTL says will not bid for Endemol, not looking at ITV

LONDON (AFX) - RTL said yesterday it will not bid for Endemol and is no longer looking at ITV, as it unveiled double-digit gains in earnings and handed back some of its spare cash as a special dividend, the Financial Times reported in its online edition.

The group, whose FremantleMedia content division produces American Idol and competes with Endemol and ITV Productions, would not participate in the auction started by Telefonica, Endemol’s majority owner, the FT cited Gerhard Zeiler, chief executive.

Marshalls FY pretax profit rises 9.7 pct to 41.7 mln stg

LONDON (AFX) - Landscape products supplier Marshalls PLC reported a 9.7 pct rise in pretax profit for the full year to 31 December 2006, slightly above market expectations.

The company highlighted its robust trading performance during the year in what it describes as a flat building materials market.

Pernod Ricard, Bacardi, Diageo eye Absolut vodka

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Three of the world’s top spirits makers — Pernod Ricard SA, Bacardi Ltd and Diageo PLC — have told the Swedish government they are interested in buying the state-owned liquor group that makes Absolut vodka, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

The center-right government presented plans last week to sell the V&S Vin & Sprit AB liquor group as part of wider privatization plans. V&S owns several brands of liquor and wine, with Absolut its biggest moneymaker.

BoE leaves key repo rate unchanged at 5.25 pct for second month running

LONDON (AFX) - The Bank of England has kept its key repo rate unchanged at 5.25 pct for the second month running.

The decision came as no surprise, though there were some jitters in the market following the surprise rate hike in January. Only 5 of the 30 economists polled by AFX News expect the Monetary Policy Committee to raise its key repo rate a quarter point from the current near six-year high of 5.25 pct.

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31 March, 2007 | No comments

BUSINESS BRIEFS

March 10, 2007 — Caremark

Delaware’s Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by Express Scripts of a lower court decision that cleared the way to a March 16 vote by Caremark shareholders on a merger with CVS Corp.

Google claim

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says to attract viewers, media compa nies have no choice but to put their TV shows and movies on video sites such as his compa ny’s YouTube. “The growth of YouTube, the growth of online, is so fundamental that these companies are going to be forced to work with and in the Internet,” Schmidt said.

Yahoo! drops

Yahoo! shares dropped the most in more than five months, $1.59, or 5.2 percent, to $29.12, after a report said AT&T Inc. may scale back its partner ship with the company on selling Internet service, cutting into its revenue. Yahoo!, owner of the most-visited U.S. Web site, gets $200 million to $250 million of revenue a year AT&T, which is in talks with the company to change their agree ment, the Wall Street Journal said, citing un identified people. Enron deal

Enron investors won final approval of a $72.5 million settlement re solving claims against Arthur Andersen LLP, the defunct energy trader’s former auditor. Shareholders claimed Andersen helped ex- Enron officials perpe trate frauds that cost them as much as $40 billion.

NYSE fees

NYSE Group will maintain the fees it charges brokers to trade on its Arca electronic system as rival Nasdaq Stock Market Inc. cuts prices for its biggest clients.

31 March, 2007 | No comments

Ladbrokes hedges its 888 bet

LEISURE The bookmaker Ladbrokes is working on a deal to acquire the assets of 888.com, the online gaming company, that would leave 888 as an independent company, insulating Ladbrokes from the risks of US anti-gambling law. The novel deal would be worth about 440 million. Ladbrokes confirmed that talks were taking place but said that there was no certainty of a deal. Ladbrokes shares closed at a high of 449p on Friday.

31 March, 2007 | No comments

My Home: Osman Yousefzada, fashion designer

Born in the UK to Afghani parents, Osman Yousefzada went into banking after graduating from Cambridge in 1997. Two years ago, he left the City to study fashion design at Central Saint Martins. His clothes, which he’ll be showing at London Fashion Week (11 to 16 February) are now worn by Kate Moss and Thandie Newton. He lives in a house in Earls Court, west London.

This house was a complete fashion tragedy when I first moved in. Chintz was everywhere: chintzy carpets, chintzy wallpaper, chintzy curtains - it was disgusting. The first thing we did was rip up the carpets and paint the wooden floors black. It is now a blank canvas: no curtains, no carpets, and a lot of plants, some of which are 10 years old. We had to paint over the wallpaper, it was so bad.

It’s a wonderful space, and it’s great to have so much room. We have two living rooms - one upstairs and one down. But the price you have to pay for all this space at a reasonable cost is that there are no major mod cons. There is no central heating; we just have some old electric fires, so it can be very cold sometimes. You have to go to sleep wearing a lot of jerseys and hats, even once you’re in bed.

Getting hot water can also take a very long time, but, ecologically, it is a better place to live than somewhere blasting out heat. I’m not too bothered by the lack of luxury. I’ve had my share of it and I would rather live in a central location in a bit of space than out in the suburbs where you feel cut off from everything.

I grew up in Birmingham and moved to London when I was 18. I never imagined that my career in fashion would take off and expand so far and so quickly as it did. I always thought that maybe I would just have a small shop in Brick Lane selling a few dresses.

When I worked in the City, I was desperate to leave the Alpha-male environment it fosters. I was always going to evening classes and sketching under my desk. There were many perks, but the long-term effect of doing a job that I hated so much would have manifested itself in a far more serious condition if I hadn’t stopped when I did and obeyed my calling to fashion. I was under a lot of pressure from my family to follow a traditional career, but now they have come to terms with my choice.

A lot of other fashion designers have come from more traditional backgrounds: Dior studied political science, Armani medicine, and Pucci was an Olympic skier. I’m not some dilettante who just decided, “Oh, I think I’ll be a fashion designer now.” It was in my genes.

I always felt like an outsider, coming from Afghanistan, but in a different way I came to love London for its great sense of cultural variety and history. A lot of my furniture comes from my home in Afghanistan, or from auctions. You could go to Ikea and get a whole load of things cheaper, but for about the same price you can buy some really elegant furniture that looks beautiful, will last for ever and arrives ready-made.

One of my favourite pieces of furniture is an Edwardian parlour tea-set suite, which I got from Lots Road. It cost around 200. It’s in the upstairs sitting room and sits opposite a Danish drinks cabinet from the 1950s. I’m an avid tea drinker and have a lot of special tea pots from Afghanistan and Morocco. One of my luxuries is buying unusual tea. I especially like the Algerian coffee shop on Old Compton Street. I take a lot of photographs when I travel and I have a series of black-and-white pictures from Zanzibar that I took and framed and have put on the stairs. Also, I have maps and some pictures of trees.

I have a lot of books. I read everything from Hobbes to Anaпs Nin. Most of my fashion books are at my studio in Marble Arch, but this flat houses all my travel books and other reading material. Music is another of my great loves. At the moment, I am listening to a lot of different music for my show, The Cult especially. I also like The Smiths and Kraftwerk and the chanting music of Gregorian monks.

The location of my home here is another fantastic plus point. It’s only about 10 minutes’ walk from the V&A, which I go to a lot for research. One of my collections was based completely on an Afghani carpet that is in the hallway downstairs. I have the most amazing original gramophone that I picked up for a song in Delhi. The only problem is that you have to change the needle every time you put on a new record, so I do have an iPod as well.

There are a lot of things that I have just found in the street, like the mirror that sits above the collection of leather-bound encyclopedias in the upstairs sitting room. They were the first encyclopedias to have pictures in, which I managed to find for 30 from Brick Lane market.

I have travelled a lot to Asia, Vietnam, Thailand, Korea, predominantly for work, and also to Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam and Marrakech, and I have brought back many things from my travels. A beautiful glass chandelier from India hangs in the living room.

One of the oldest things I have in my flat is my goldfish, which I got when I was working as an usher at the Albery Theatre in St Martin’s Lane. Amazingly, he is not dead yet and that was was more than 15 years ago.

http://www.osmanyousefzada.com

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