Law and business: commercial news round-up 05.12.14
updated on 05 December 2014
When the weather closes in, and all you want to do is hunker down, what better way to spend those long, dark winter days and nights than boning up on your commercial awareness? And this way, you don’t even need to move off the sofa, as you read our handy weekly round-up of stories:
- The shareholders are revolting; in the sense that when a massive bonus was proposed as a welcome present for the new chief exec of oil and gas giant BG, they strongly protested and it was revised down from a £12 million-worth of shares upfront to a measly £10.6 million (over five years).
- No surprise really, but the Co-op Bank is likely to fail the Bank of England’s annual assessment, as it faces up to losses of £76 million in the first half of 2014 and having had to raise £1.9 billion capital over the past 18 months.
- Best buddies; insurance big guy Aviva has agreed to buy pensions company Friends Life for £5.6 billion. The deal has been recommended by both companies to their respective shareholders.
- George Osborne announced brutal cuts to public spending in the government’s Autumn Statement, and was on the defensive when the Institute for Fiscal Responsibility condemned the cuts, saying that they would reduce the role of the state to a point where it would have "changed beyond recognition".
- Your parents were right, broccoli really is good for you, as the drug company working on a broccoli-derived cancer drug floats on the London Stock Exchange to raise £20 million.
- All hail the modern taxi company – Uber is valued at $40 billion after its latest funding round.
Be sure to check the News section every Friday afternoon for this weekly commercial news round-up. Follow @LawCareersNetUK and @CityLawLIVE on Twitter for instant business news updates.
