Patisserie Valerie raises £36m in an effort to stave off collapse as finance director is arrested. Stricken cafe chain Patisserie Holdings (CAKE) raised £15.7m from institutional investors yesterday as it battled to stave off collapse after its finance director was arrested by police on suspicion of fraud. Luke Johnson, the Aim-listed company’s executive chairman and largest shareholder, declared “we have rescued the business” after he personally came up with £20m in loans. “The money will flow into the business in the coming days,” he told the Press Association. “I spent 12 years involved with this business, we’ve employed 2,800 staff and rescuing it has essentially saved those jobs and I believe it has a strong future,” he said.
Blackrock wins chunk of Lloyd’s contract pulled from Standard Life Aberdeen. Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) has handed the world’s biggest fund manager a £30bn investment contract after axing its deal with Standard Life Aberdeen (SLA). The bank has picked BlackRock to manage a large slice of its Scottish Widows assets, leaving fund houses to fight for the remaining portion of its £109bn contract. The world’s biggest banks and money managers have been jostling for a chunk of the mandate ever since Lloyd’s said it was pulling the contract from Standard Life Aberdeen earlier this year. Aberdeen began managing assets for Lloyds’ Scottish Widows in 2014, but Lloyds had the right to axe the deal if the company joined forces with a competitor, as it did with Standard Life in an £11bn tie-up last year.
Money pours into Man Group and Ashmore funds despite emerging market crisis. Shares in Man Group (EMG) and Ashmore Group (ASHM) rose on Friday after it emerged that investors pumped money into the two group’s funds over the third quarter. Investors poured almost $2bn (£1.5bn) into fund manager Ashmore over the three months to September 30 despite turmoil in emerging markets such as Turkey and Argentina. Turkey’s central bank was forced to raise rates to help rescue the crisis-hit lira last month after the currency plummeted over the summer.
RBS pays out modest first dividend since financial crisis ahead of 10-year bail-out anniversary. Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) has paid out its first dividend since the financial crisis, on the eve of the 10-year anniversary of its bail-out by taxpayers. The lender paid 2p per share to shareholders, equating to a £240m windfall. The Treasury – which still owns 62% of the bank – will receive around £150m of the payment. RBS chief executive Ross McEwan hailed the modest interim payout as an “important milestone” for the bank, which was brought to its knees by reckless expansion and global market turmoil a decade ago.
British American Tobacco (BATS), Imperial Brands (IMB) – Tobacco shares went up in smoke yesterday after US regulators reignited fears of a crackdown on nicotine levels in cigarettes to help smokers to stub out the habit. London’s cigarette sellers were rattled last year when the US Food and Drugs Administration outlined a radical plan to reduce nicotine to non-addictive levels in tobacco products. On Thursday the FDA hosted a presentation highlighting research that discovered that cutting nicotine by as much as 96% would improve public health. The FDA’s presentation, which included a disclaimer insisting that the findings did not represent the regulator’s stance, indicated that the FDA is “committed to building a body of evidence to support its nicotine reduction agenda”, Morgan Stanley warned.
Barratt Developments (BDEV) led a faltering rebound on the FTSE 100 after Credit Suisse told clients that the firm will be able to pay out dividends to shareholders even in the event of a no-deal Brexit. With housebuilders’ fortunes tied to the UK economy, share prices in the sector have been hit by heightened Brexit uncertainty. But the bank argued in a gushing “outperform” note that Britain’s largest housebuilder will have “ample head-room” to hand out bumper returns to shareholders “even when applying 2008-09 market downturn conditions” to its forecasts.
ASOS (ASC) shares rallied away from their lowest level since 2016 after Credit Suisse handed the e-tailer an upgrade to “neutral” ahead of its full-year results next week. It argued that online clothing platforms, such as Asos, will remain “significantly more attractive to brands than Amazon”.
Man Group (EMG) gave up early gains despite investors pouring $400m (£304m) of new money into the world’s largest listed hedge fund in the third quarter. Its assets under management rose to a record $114bn but it tumbled 5.1p to 140.4p.
Scottish Mortgage Inv Trust (SMT) surged 26.6p to 481p as US tech stocks started to stage a recovery after bearing the brunt of the global stocks sell-off. Top holding Amazon rallied as much as 5.2% in intraday trade.
Questor: investors are overreacting to Labour’s policies – and that means National Grid (NG.) is a bargain
