Category: Appliance Money

Centrica, the owner of British Gas, has agreed to buy 10pc of fuel cell company Ceres Power for £20m, sending Ceres’s shares soaring 30pc.

Ian Cheshire, the new chief executive of B&Q-owner Kingfisher, will restructure the company’s senior management team as part of his plan to improve performance at the struggling retailer. Mr Cheshire believes that Kingfisher, which has 780 stores in nine countries in Europe and Asia, is run t…

The drop in sales at John Lewis’s high street stores has been eased by the popularity of its internet business. The downturn in consumer confidence has finally arrived at John Lewis ““ until now one of the best and most consistent performers on the high street.

Washing-machine maker Wuxi Little Swan Co is looking to sell a 24-percent stake to large white goods companies, the company’s controlling shareholder said yesterday. Buyers must have registered capital of at least one billion yuan (US$139 million), or its equivalent in foreign currency, and three…

Washing machine producer Wuxi Little Swan Co Ltd (SZA 000418) said its largest shareholder, state-owned Wuxi Guolian Development Group Co Ltd, plans to sell its entire 24.01 pct stake in Little Swan via auction.

While many high street retailers are struggling to drum up sales from cautious consumers and showing signs of stress with pre-Christmas discounts and profit warnings, John Lewis last week rang up record weekly sales. The 26-store chain said yesterday it had raked in £96m in the seven days t…

The chief executive of the Kingfisher DIY group yesterday added his voice to those warning of a tough trading period ahead and said there would be little chance of an upturn in consumer confidence until it was clear that interest rates are heading down. “In the UK the outlook for consumption is a…

The Competition Commission said yesterday it wanted to lift price controls on business banking that it imposed in 2002, arguing the controls had succeeded in breaking up the dominance of the big four banks in accounts for small and medium-sized businesses. But the watchdog ran into severe critici…

Alliance Boots’ shareholders today voted through the £11.1bn takeover of the group by private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, but the meeting was overshadowed by worries about the £305m pension deficit.

The trustees of the Alliance Boots pension scheme believe the private equity bidders planning to take over the company are willing to wage a “war of attrition” in an attempt to pay as little as possible into the company’s pension funds.