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ASOS fire halts operations

A major fire at ASOS's Barnsley distribution centre late on Friday night (20/6/2014) has caused it to suspend operations. At the time of writing (the Sunday morning following)  their retail web site was still not available to shoppers with a message saying the company had "pressed pause on the ASOS web site".  It also suggested they expected to be back in operation in the next day or so. It is believed that the fire might have been the result of arson. ...

Berkeley Group and Housebuilders

Berkeley Group issued their preliminary results this morning (18/6/2014). For those holding housebuilders shares (like this writer), they are worth commenting on perhaps as investors in such companies seem to be getting twitchy. With Mr Carney hinting that interest rates may rise sooner than expected, house price inflation powering ahead while general inflation remains low, and politicians criticising the Government "Help to Buy" scheme, one can understand why the share prices of many builders have fallen back from their peak. For example ...

Magna Carta and Bank Nationalisations

There was an interesting letter in the Financial Times on Saturday (14/6/2014) from Prof. Tim Congdon.  As a former Northern  Rock shareholder he pointed out that the latest results from Northern Rock Asset Management (the "bad" part of the bank that was left after the good part was sold off to Virgin) showed underlying profits of £1.16bn. So it has achieved profits of almost £3bn in the last 39 months and is likely to generate a few more billion before the ...

ASOS – when everyone wants out

This morning (5/6/2014) ASOS issued a trading statement before the market opened. It wasn't all bad in that total retail sales at constant currencies rose by 33% in the last quarter - and there are not many businesses that are growing at that rate. However,  EBIT margin guidance was reduced from circa 6.5% to 4.5% for the current financial year due to increased promotional activity and the relatively higher proportion of European sales. US and ROW sales growth was perhaps seen ...

AstraZeneca and Pfizer merger definitely off

Pfizer have conceded defeat in their proposed offer for AstraZeneca (AZN). Ian Read, the Chief Executive of Pfizer, said it was a "missed opportunity" for both the UK and for AZN shareholders. He also said we could have had the worlds largest pharmaceutical company domiciled in the UK which would have been good for science and manufacturing in this country. He surely has a point there. In addition he complained about the Takeover Panel rules as contributing to thwarting the deal, but ...