Business in brief: Mulberry | Encounter Oil | McCarthy & Stone | VW

Published on 11/06/2012 00:00

LUXURIOUS handbag brand Mulberry is expected to reveal this week that its upmarket clientele have shrugged off the recession to help boost the company’s profits by 50 per cent to £40 million on sales of £175m in the year to 31 March.

Along with the results, new chief executive Bruno Guillon will say on Thursday that the firm will keep its foot on the expansion pedal overseas. It opened stores in Seoul, Tokyo and New York in the past year.

Pastures new for oil exploration team

A successful North Sea oil exploration team has set up a new company, Encounter Oil, just months after it sold its previous firm, Encore Oil, to FTSE 250-listed Premier Oil for £221 million.

The firm has been established by Alan Booth, former chief executive of Encore, and four other directors, who found the Catcher field in 2010. Encounter Oil will focus on the central and northern North Sea.

McCarthy & Stone loses top executive

The chief executive who led the £900 million restructuring of retirement home builder McCarthy & Stone has left the group three years after lenders took control of the firm.

Staff were told of Howard Phillips’s departure on Friday.

Ayrshire tycoon Sir Tom Hunter was part of a group that took the firm private in 2006 for £1.1 billion – Hunter’s equity was wiped out as the company struggled in the credit crunch.

Bank watchdog may get extra powers

Britain’s banking regulator could reportedly be handed powers to enforce government recommendations on how the country’s largest banks should ring-fence their retail from their investment banking operations.

Chancellor George Osborne is expected to use a speech on Thursday to say prescriptive regulation is not the best way to improve banks’ safety as he hands powers to the Prudential Regulation Authority.

VW looks to double production in China

German car maker Volkswagen plans to nearly double its production in China in the next few years, according to a management board member who was recently appointed to head the group’s operations in the country.

Jochem Heizmann told German weekly magazine Focus: “By 2018 we will raise our production capacity in the country to four million vehicles.”