Punch Taverns has ended talks with Mitchells & Butler (M&B) over a possible takeover.  Punch did leave the door open slightly last month as it hinted that it would be interested in acquiring M&B in a joint bid with another interested party. (more…)

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is to ask its shareholders for around £10bn of extra funds by way of a rights issue. The capital will be used to firm up its balance sheet / capital position as the difficulty to borrow money through the wholesale markets remain. (more…)

112 construction companies have been accused by The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) of acting as a cartel and fixing bids for contracts. The winning bidder would then give a ‘back hander’ to losing bidders which would effectively be paid by the customer through having to pay an inflated price for the works. (more…)

Tesco, The UK’s largest retailer, has seen profits increase by 11.8% to £2.846bn. Despite the credit crunch and downturn in retail, Tesco surprised analysts with these results, causing their shares to rise over 5.5% this morning. (more…)

Brent Crude ended the week at $108.75 a barrel which was just below its intra-day trading high of $109.98 on Thursday. The highs come as global economic concerns persist and investors turn to oil as a shelter from the volatility in stocks.

US light crude ended the week at $110.14, whilst up on the day is a little way down from its record high of $112.21 seen on Wednesday.

Cadbury Schweppes has reported strong sales growth of 7% for the first quarter of the year. This despite falling market share in the UK following a decision not to aggresively price goods for the Easter market. Easter being early this year also played its part. (more…)

British Airways has announced that it will delay moving its long haul flights to Terminal 5 until 5th June, over one month later than the original date of 30th April. The move comes after the opening debacle last month that saw hundreds of flights cancelled and thousands of bags lost. (more…)