Day: October 3, 2016

    SVG unveils 'white knight' talks with Goldman Sachs SVG Capital has confirmed it is in talks with several rival suitors including Goldman Sachs about a possible takeover, in a move that it hopes could fend off a hostile bid from the American investment house HarbourVest. The FTSE 250-listed private equity specialist, which rejected HarbourVest’s £1bn proposal last month, has been searching for a “white knight” bidder that could make a better offer. SVG said it has begun “detailed discussions” with Goldman Sachs alongside the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, while also speaking to another unnamed company that is seeking a partner to make a joint bid. A third party, also unnamed, “may be interested in considering an offer”, SVG said. The firm plans to update its share...

    Boris Johnson mistakenly called Africa a country instead of a continent as he spoke at the Tory conference today. The Foreign Secretary misspoke as he suggested to Conservative Party members that increases in life expectancy in African countries such as Ethiopia could largely be attributed to UK foreign aid spending. He said: For all its difficulties, life expectancy in Africa has risen astonishingly as that country has entered the global economic system. In 2000, the average Ethiopian lived to only 47 - it is now 64 and climbing; in Zambia the increase has been from 44 years to 60 years. Boris Johnson calls Africa a country in slip-up at Conservative conference "In 1990, 37% of the world's population lived in poverty that is now down to only 9.6% today. I think we, with o...

    Senior Tories have warned against a hard and harsh Brexit after Theresa May revealed Article 50 would be triggered by March next year. Commons Education Committee chair Neil Carmichael and former minister Anna Soubry both stressed the importance of the single market and warned a “hard Brexit” - with the UK outside the free trade zone - would damage the economy. Hours after the PM finally announced her timetable for exiting the EU, Carmichael told pro-Europe Tories the country must avoid a damaging Brexit “at all costs”. “We would be unwise to challenge the democratic view but we would be reckless if we did not challenge some of the consequences of a hard or harsh Brexit,” he told members of the Conservative Group for Europe. “Because we have got to understand that if it is...