Below are the key afternoon headlines from today’s papers, featuring the Financial Times, The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail & more - see the full Press section here.
Ted Baker (TED) shares sink after staff petition against ‘forced hugs’ culture. Shares in Ted Baker have plunged more than 13% after staff called for an end to the “forced hugging” and alleged inappropriate behaviour of the group’s founder Ray Kelvin. A petition set up by staff, which had 2,496 signatures at the time of writing, demanded that Mr Kelvin’s forced hugging policy comes to an end and accused the chief executive of inappropriate behaviour. “The owner regularly makes sexual innuendos at staff, he stroke people’s necks, he took off his shirt on one occasion and talked about his sex life,” read the claim. It also alleged that he has asked female staff to sit on his knee, cuddle him, or let him massage their ears. Pursuing the issue through HR had been “hopelessly ineffective”, the employee behind the campaign said
Glaxo sells Horlicks business to Unilever in £3.1bn deal. GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has struck a deal to offload its consumer nutrition business to Unilever (ULVR) in a deal worth £3.1 billion. Britain’s biggest pharmaceuticals group has sold Horlicks and other brands in a cash-and-shares deal which involves the merger of a Glaxo subsidiary in India with a big Unilever business. The deal covers Glaxo’s nutrition business in more than 20 markets, most of them in Asia, and excludes Horlicks in the UK, which Glaxo previously offloaded to Aimia Foods in Merseyside. Glaxo put the assets up for sale in March alongside a $13 billion acquisition of the remaining stake in its wider consumer joint venture with Novartis.
McColl’s shares slumped by nearly a quarter this morning after the convenience store retailer said profits would be lower than expected due to disruption caused by the collapse of supplier Palmer & Harvey. McColl’s Retail Group (MCLS) , which has more than 1,600 convenience stores and newsagents around the UK, said full-year profit would be about £35million, instead of £44million as it previously expected. The profit warning sent shares in the small cap firm falling 24 per cent to 90.27p in morning trading.
Construction firm Kier Group (KIE) shares tried to rise like Tyson Fury from the canvas on Monday after a price crash on Friday. The beleaguered company, a big contractor for Crossrail and HS2, saw its shares plunge by a third on Friday afternoon after it went cap in hand to shareholders for £264 million to fix the balance sheet and slash debts. Some shareholders thought the sell-off had been overdone, triggering an initial 8% bounce in the stock from 510p to 551p. However, Kier failed to stay on its feet like the Gypsy King and fell back 25.5p to 483p. Six banks will share a £14 million fee pot for the fundraise so at least someone’s happy.
A faller today was plastics maker RPC Group (RPC) , which makes everything from washing-up bottles to HP Sauce containers and is in the midst of an attempted takeover. Expectations of a high-stakes bidding war between deep-pocketed US private equity behemoths Bain Capital and Apollo Global Management fell after Bain dropped out of the race. That leaves Apollo, led by art-collecting billionaire Leon Black (owner of one Edvard Munch’s The Scream paintings) in one-on-one talks with the group.
The quarterly FTSE 100 reshuffle is tomorrow and one contender for the blue-chip index is under-the-radar British engineering group Spirax-Sarco Engineering (SPX) , which today offloaded a business it had owned for 30 years. HygroMatik, based in Hamburg, has been under its wing since 1988 but Spirax decided to let it go when Italian firm Carel came knocking with £52 million. The stock rose 315p to 6450p.
Shock as Stobart Group Ltd. (STOB) slashes dividend by two thirds. Investors in logistics firm Stobart were left wincing on Monday after the board unexpectedly slashed the dividend by two thirds. The Southend Airport owner, fresh from a High Court battle with former chief executive Andrew Tinkler, delivered the bad news after a review of its balance sheet which began in October. The shares were down 14p, or 7%, at 183.6p as the company said “prudent financial discipline” meant it would pay a 1.5p divi in the final quarter, down from 4.5p in previous quarters. Stobart, which has been linked to a bid for struggling regional airline Flybe Group (FLYB) , has been funding the dividend via the disposal of property assets as well as cutting its stake in the Eddie Stobart haulage business.
