Mirror owner warns over Brexit as it makes £200m writedown. Reach, which also owns Daily Express and Daily Star, reports £120m pre-tax loss for 2018. Reach Plc (RCH), the publisher of the Daily Mirror and Daily Express, has warned about the impact of Brexit on advertising, as it made a £200m writedown on its newspaper business that pushed it into the red for 2018. The company, formerly known as Trinity Mirror, posted a pretax loss of £120m last year after writing down the value of its goodwill, publishing rights, titles and buildings, against a profit of £82m in 2017. Excluding the writedown, it made a profit of £142m. Total revenues increased by 16.2% to £723.9m following the acquisition of the Brexit-supporting Express and Star titles from Richard Desmond last year.
Bullring owner targets £900m-plus sell-off as retail crisis bites. Hammerson (HMSO) has been hit by collapse of chains including House of Fraser. Hammerson, which owns shopping centres including Birmingham’s Bullring and London’s Brent Cross, is in talks to sell off more than £900m of property after being hit by the crisis in Britain’s retail sector. The FTSE 250-listed firm said it was in active discussions to offload more than £900m of assets, far exceeding its £500m target for 2019. Last year it sold off £570m of property, with the average price 7% below the book value in December 2017. Hammerson is under pressure from an activist investor, the US hedge fund Elliott Advisors, which owns a 5% stake in the company, to speed up disposals, after a 9.3% decline in its property values in 2018
Metro Bank needs to win back City’s trust after loans blunder. Despite profits surge, analysts likely to focus on error when bank reports on Wednesday. Metro Bank (MTRO) sees itself as an industry agitator, having burst on to the UK banking scene in 2010 with an eccentric American founder, dog-friendly branches and a flamboyant celebration of high street expansion that distinguished the lender from cost-cutting rivals. The bank – which calls its customers “fans”– has steadily expanded its network of “stores” and rallied enthusiasm for new openings with street parties and staff conga lines that have fostered a reputation for having a cult-like workforce. It has also dodged shareholder rebellions over multimillion pound payments to the architecture business of Shirley Hill, the wife of founder turned chairman Vernon Hill, and brushed off concerns about the circumstances of his departure from the US lender Commerce Bancorp.
Doorstep lender Provident Financial receives £1.3bn takeover bid. Move by smaller rival Non-Standard Finance has backing of key shareholder. Provident Financial (PFG), the doorstep lender that charges interest rates of 535%, has received a surprise £1.3bn takeover bid from a smaller rival led by its former chief executive. The unsolicited bid for the “Provvy” from Non-Standard Finance (NSF), run by John van Kuffeler, has the backing of the key shareholder Neil Woodford and others who own more than 50% of the company’s shares. Provident Financial has 800,000 doorstep borrowers – with loan payments collected weekly from their homes – and another 1.7 million holders of its Vanquis credit card that charges up to 69.9% interest. Despite the high APRs, Provident Financial is yet to recover from a botched attempt to overhaul its 130-year-old business model by cutting staff numbers and ramping up its use of technology. Its shares plunged by two-thirds on one day in 2017 and last year it reported a £123m loss.
Interserve lenders line up EY as administrator if shareholder talks fail. Outsourcing firm is at centre of standoff over the terms of a financial restructuring plan. Lenders to the outsourcing firm Interserve (IRV) have lined up EY to manage its administration if they cannot reach agreement with shareholders on the terms of a financial restructuring plan. The emergence of EY as a potential administrator came as the largest shareholder in the company submitted new proposals, including a £75m rights issue, as a counter-offer to the solution put forward by lenders, which it called “an obscenity”. The debt-laden business is at the centre of a tense standoff between lenders and key shareholders that will determine the future of the company, which employs 45,000 people in the UK.
