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Mike Coupe has beaten this week as a result of the bankruptcy of his grand scheme to merge J Sainsbury with Asda. Trading results are the usual mix of "business performance" and "statutory reporting," which allowed it to describe a 30% decline in after-tax profits as a 7.8% increase in "underlying earnings". before taxes ".
The magic word here is "underlying", it is not necessary to oppose any lie, which allows to abandon all kinds of unpleasant costs. Among the Sainsbury's employees are the £ 46 million wasted at the merger. Mr Cup rejected this proposal in the £ 12 billion deal, but that equals one-fifth of the dividends paid last year, or the margin earned by the company out of 2, 3 billion pounds of sales.
Investment bankers regularly complain that if no agreement is reached, they enslaved themselves and got nothing. Sainsbury's bill belies this statement. The money has been paid to bankers, lawyers and advisers, and it seems uncomfortable that another example of the City's ability to tax trade. Rather than meeting the needs of customers, major financial players impose their informal tariff on their users.
This is most noticeable in fundraising exercises (see below), but the Sainsbury experience is a symptom of the extent to which power has shifted from financial market users to those who provide capital. Until then it was found that it was difficult to see what was the tail and what was the dog, but as the staff (mostly poorly paid) Sainsbury supermarkets try to generate sales to pay the fees, he can not doubt many.
Sirius: bad news conveyor
A conveyor of several kilometers is a real engineering. It must be rigid enough not to stretch so that one end is in place before the start of the other, but flexible enough to pbad over the return rollers. at each end. The largest mining project in England has a 23 km underground conveyor belt, or cascade of conveyors, to transport bulk fertilizer in the Yorkshire heath.
It's a wonderful fantasy, brought to life by Sirius Minerals and his boss Chris Fraser. This week, it unveiled a $ 3.8 billion complex financing proposed by JPMorgan to bother the mine tunnel and, perhaps, to start real production.
This is a remarkable achievement. Banks such as JPMorgan are coldly commercial. Even taking into account the costs (£ 16m for a net amount of £ 311m) and the opportunity to profitably negotiate different categories of debt, sign swaps or options and generally exploit the complexity, it is a first-rate endorsement. Unfortunately, it also means more suffering for star-studded Sirius shareholders. At 16.8p, the price is at its lowest for three years and new shares are issued at 15p.
There are parallels here with the Channel Tunnel Project. Boredom was supposed to be the hardest part, but in the end it was comfortably done. The difficult part proved to be the commissioning of the line, where the costs were running out, requiring a rescue plan for Eurotunnel. A conveyor is hardly comparable to a pbadenger service, but 23 miles underground, what could go wrong?
Retirement is simply not simple
He's laughing, right? Rodney Cook left without notice this week as leader of the Just group. He said that he was ready to plan his retirement, rather spiritual since the slogan of the company he was running was: "We help people to have a better life, later on" .
Mr. Cook's life will be better thanks to old incentives and six months salary, a gift from a grateful board, or what will be left after the CFO leaves in October. It's unlikely that it's a burden to the state, but it's not as rich as it was. The latest accounts (for 2017) indicate that it owns 2.9 million shares, or 64% of the price practiced by Permira five years ago.
Always, the chin. In March, he put another annus horribilis behind him, telling us that he "remained confident". Last month alone, he was awarded a series of new stock options, which will lapse. Now at age 62, he is planning his retirement. Not with you, okay?
A complete list of Neil Collins' financial interests is available at www.ft.com/collinsportfolio.
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