£30m rescue deal ignored by Patisserie Holdings (CAKE) bosses. Patisserie Valerie’s management snubbed a £30m deal that would have protected small investors, it has been revealed, as furious shareholders rounded on the company last night. Investment fund Crystal Amber was plotting a convertible debt deal to rescue the firm which would have meant investors would not have seen their stakes diluted by the emergency fund raise that offered up new shares at a huge discount. A top 15 investor said there are “so many questions to ask of management, board and auditors in terms of how was it not spotted much earlier”.
Shell’s greener future is a matter of survival. ‘We’re not an oil company,” says Ben van Beurden from across the table. It is an affable, but pointed intervention typical of the man leading the FTSE 100’s highest-valued business. “I don’t want to be facetious or pedantic,” he continues good-naturedly. “But we are a much broader and more sophisticated company than one that produces oil. We produce much more gas than we do oil, for a start.” For the boss of Royal Dutch Shell ‘B’ (RDSB), the distinction is one that rings at the heart of a personal mission to transform a company which for over a hundred years has fuelled the development of the modern world.
‘Disgraceful’ Capita (CPI) falling short on Army recruitment. MPs have branded Capita’s handling of a British Army recruitment contract a “national disgrace” and called on the outsourcer to hand the job back to the Government after figures showed it had hired just 7% of its annual target for non-commissioned soldiers in the first quarter of the year. The poor performance was revealed by the MoD’s Lieutenant General Sir Mark Poffley at a hearing of the defence select committee this week and would imply Capita is on track to hit just 28pc of its annual target for this year.
Shell to ‘turbocharge’ its clean energy drive. Royal Dutch Shell ‘B’ (RDSB) is preparing to “turbocharge” its bid to become a global leader in clean energy in the coming years as it seeks to overcome the “existential” challenge posed by climate change, boss Ben van Beurden has told The Sunday Telegraph. Mr van Beurden said that the FTSE 100 giant should be able to gauge by the early 2020s whether its recent moves into the clean electricity market will be stepped up. The energy giant has so far pledged to spend between $1bn and $2bn of its $25bn (£19bn) a year spending budget on technologies including electric car charging and renewable energy. “It is a highly charismatic part of our business, but it’s also very small,” Mr Van Beurden said. “I wouldn’t say that we have a deadline, because much of it will depend on how society wants to change, but I would imagine that the way things are going by the early 2020s we will know whether the hypothesis holds, and whether we therefore want to turbocharge this business. “The biggest calling card we have is scale. We can scale much faster than anyone else,” he added.
Questor: Ignore Carillion’s collapse – 3i Infrastructure (3IN) is a risk worth taking right now
