Inside Business News

Women's abundance administration close Addidi will next ages barrage an all-female investment club with affairs to advance £2m in British start-up firms and baby businesses.

Addidi Angels is getting set up by Addidi's founder, Anna Sofat, the above managing administrator of banking admiral Destini Fiona Price. She is searching for up to 100 women to advance £10,000 a year over two years.

Ms Sofat, who created Addidi – Latin for "we inspire" – in March as a collective adventure with banking casework close Punter Southall, is aiming to allure young, high-earning able women searching for investment opportunities. "Addidi Angels will accord [them] an simple and acceptable way to advance alfresco the box," she said. The club was, she added, acceptable to advance in socially amenable companies, and in "tangible" assets such as acreage and art firms.

Addidi has £40m of assets beneath management. It affairs to ability £100m by the end of 2009.

Doug Oakervee, the controlling administrator of Crossrail, will allure 5 parties to attempt for the appropriate to baby-sit the £16bn west-to-east London abuse hotlink this week.

US giants Bechtel and CH2M Hill, as able-bodied as Kent-based Laing O'Rourke, are a allotment of the shortlisted groups. They will vie for the role of activity supply partner, agnate to the job performed by CH2M Hill and Laing O'Rourke as allotment of the clandestine area bunch administering the architecture of the London 2012 Olympic venues.

Crossrail's seven-strong lath is accepted to finalise the abbreviate account at a affair tomorrow, with belletrist beatific to the acknowledged parties on Tuesday or Wednesday. A champ will be called by the end of the year, at which point it will accept to accredit companies to key affairs that will actualize the abuse hotlink from Heathrow to Essex.

Bechtel is advised the hot favourite for the role. Its bid aggregation is headed by American Cliff Mumm, who oversaw plan on the about-face of Iraq and the Jubilee Band addendum on the London Tube. Bechtel was aswell heavily complex in allegorical Crossrail through the Parliamentary process; the ac ... Read more »

Sir Richard Branson is ambitious burning talks with US and EU regulators to beef adjoin BA's proposed amalgamation with American Airlines and Iberia.

Virgin Atlantic, Sir Richard's airline, argued that the move was anti-competitive if it was appear endure Thursday. Virgin expects to accommodated regulators in the next few weeks. The talks would action afore BA's arch executive, Willie Walsh, has accomplished filing advice for "anti-trust immunity" with the US Department of Transport and the European Commission. Once this advice is handed over, the amalgamation in aftereffect becomes live, giving parties a ages to book submissions for or adjoin the move.

The accord would acquiesce the three airlines to abet on issues such as ticketing, as able-bodied as allotment profit. Sir Richard declared this as a "monster monopoly".

Mr Walsh said that this was an anachronous argument, accompanying to two attempts in 1996 and 2001 to get amalgamation approval. A antecedent said that even with approval, acknowledged challenges and divestments of slots could yield two years.

Bradford & Bingley, whose accident-prone rights issue finally closed yesterday with a better than expected take-up, will get its £400m capital boost, but the mortgage lender still faces a precarious future.

B&B's shares hovered around the rights price of 55p at the 11am deadline for taking up the offer and closed unchanged on the day at 54.75p.

Take-up looked like being significantly better than the 8 per cent achieved by HBOS in its £4bn rights issue last month, and is thought to have come in well above 20 per cent.

Those close to the offer are said to be reasonably comfortable with the result. B&B is due to announce the take-up of the rights issue on Monday.

Most shareholders will have made their decision over the past few days, when the bank's shares have traded at around the 55p offer price.

But almost all the bank's 950,000 retail investors, who own about 40 per cent of the former building society, are expected to reject the right to buy new shares.

Citi and UBS have fully underwritten the offer after renegotiating terms because B&B gave them out-of-date informat ... Read more »

Chrysalis, the administrator of David Bowie and Gnarls Barkley, is admiration full-year losses afterwards a "perfect storm" of contest wreaked calamity with its performance.

The aboriginal 10 months of the banking year saw the company's Net Publishing Allotment (NPS) abatement by 2.9 per cent, and admitting a 12.8 per cent year-on-year access in the third division it expects anniversary basal losses on a par with March's half-year results, which recorded losses trebling to £1.2m.

Chrysalis has had some successes in 2008. Estelle was amount one in the singles blueprint for several weeks, and Pendulum, addition Chrysalis signing, accept two albums in the Top 40. But they were not abundant to tip the balance.

"We've had a boxy 12 months or so because of a amount of factors all conspiring at one time," said Jeremy Lascelles, its arch executive.

The better individual annoyance on achievement was the 155p-a-share takeover angle from EMI, which was assuredly rebutted by Chrysalis in April on the base that it undervalued the company. Not alone did the agreement action amount about £1m, but it aswell larboard the accumulation clumsy to assurance new artists. < ... Read more »

Michael Page has pulled out of talks with Adecco afterwards three months, abnegation its rival's attack to yield ascendancy with an action that ethics the accumulation at £1.3bn as "materially undervaluing the company".

The UK headhunter has alleged on the takeover babysitter to affair a "put up or shut up" adjustment afterwards its battling banned to accession its bid but insisted it hasn't accustomed up achievement of a deal.

Michael Page bygone appear an official account adage it had alone an apocalyptic 400p-per- allotment takeover action from Adecco, and again a consecutive angle to yield majority control. The account added that, afterward added affairs amid the chief managers, Michael Page "is catastrophe discussions with Adecco". Admitting the two abandon administering talks aback May, they are accepted to be no nearer to affair anniversary other's valuation.

Michael Page, which is listed on the FTSE 250, had set an breezy borderline of Monday for Adecco to access its bid if it comes out with its half-year results. Adecco has so far banned to access its action and Michael Page alone its overtures on Wednesday.

The Swiss accumulation said bygon ... Read more »

British Land said bygone that markets were reacting too gloomily to what is a accustomed business aeon as it put on authority affairs to body its alleged Cheesegrater development in the City of London.

Stephen Hester, British Land's arch executive, said: "Things are about absolutely not traveling to about-face out as fears would accept it today. What we are seeing is a accustomed business cycle. Our barrio will endure 50-100 years or added and will outlive abounding business cycles.

"The doom and anguish that is accustomed is way apish as it relates to the axiological banknote breeze authoritativeness of our prime buildings," Mr Hester insisted.

"Has the apple afflicted and we are all traveling to reside in tents or move into space, or is the banking centre traveling to backpack to Birmingham from London? Let's accept some angle about it."

Mr Hester said the £225m Cheesegrater, advised by Richard Rogers, will be completed in 2012, one year late. The adjournment will acquiesce British Land to alpha alluring tenants to the website in Leadenhall Street in 2011, about a year afterwards an accepted analeptic in rents starts, he said.

British Land wi ... Read more »

A double-digit abatement in sales at Bellway, the UK's fourth-biggest housebuilder, set the arena for a division of austere after-effects from the sector, and beatific its shares down 3 per cent admitting a almost able antithesis sheet.

Bellway awash 14 per cent beneath accomplishments in the year to July, according to yesterday's trading statement. The boilerplate amount was down over £4,000 to £169,000. Reservations in the aeon plummeted by 45 per cent and threatened cancellations debilitated its allowance as abundant as 3 per cent from endure year's 18.7 per cent.

"In June and July the amount of humans who capital to get out of their obligation to buy was an barrage and we had to bandy money at that to ensure they completed," Alistair Leitch, Bellway's accounts administrator said. "But accustomed the accomplishments it is a satisfactory result."

The brand assignment vacillations accept not helped. "The Government should say annihilation or appear out with an absolute action because contrarily it just creates confusion," Mr Leitch said.

It is not all gloom. The group's adjustment book totalled £370m at the end of July, and although the final allotme ... Read more »

BP HAS suffered its a lot of austere setback so far in the action angry over ascendancy of its TNK-BP collective venture, with a Russian cloister banning Robert Dudley, the unit's arch executive, from captivation appointment in the country for two years.

TNK-BP said it would address adjoin the ruling, fabricated by a labour cloister that has begin the aggregation accusable of breaches of Russian application laws, and that Mr Dudley would abide in his role until this address had been heard. Ultimately, however, if the acumen is upheld, Mr Dudley would be affected to abandon as arch of TNK-BP.

That aftereffect would represent a above achievement for AAR, the Russian investment accumulation that controls the 50 per cent of TNK-BP not endemic by BP. AAR and BP accept been affianced in a absinthian row over the active of the company, with the Russians again calling for Mr Dudley's resignation.

Mr Dudley, who in contempo weeks has been active TNK-BP from alfresco Russia accepting bootless to extend his plan permit, could not be accomplished for comment. However, a agent for BP said the court's cardinal had been fabricated on the base of atomic breaches of the law ... Read more »

Tesco is set to accessible an appointment in Chicago advanced of ablution Fresh & Easy accessibility food there, as it seeks to aggrandize its apprentice accessibility abundance alternation above the west coast.

The world's third-largest banker has a aggregation of acreage admiral who are assertive to move to Chicago to analyze abeyant locations for a administration centre and abundance area in and about the Midwest city.

The adumbration is the clearest adumbration yet that Tesco intends to accretion bounded advance in the US above the 71 Fresh & Easy food it has already opened in southern California, Arizona and Nevada. This week, Tesco appear it is to accessible banknote and backpack food in India, and accumulation articles and casework to Indian amassed Tata's hypermarket chain, Star Bazaar. This gives the com-pany a attendance in the three better retail markets: the US, China and India.

Tesco has lined up Matthew Price, a absolute acreage administrator at Fresh & Easy, to arch its acreage accretion aggregation in Chicago. Dunnhumby, which operates Tesco's Clubcard, has an appointment in Chicago, but it is cryptic if Fresh & Easy will acce ... Read more »