Business news in brief: EasyJet| Faroe| Punch| Penguin and Random House

Figures from budget airline EasyJet show it kept a tight lid on costs this winter, allowing it to keep its losses within the expected range even as adverse weather stunted its growth plans.
By The Newsroom
Published 6th Apr 2013, 01:00 BST

The group suffered a higher-than-anticipated level of cancellations but growth in revenue per seat was better than expected at 8.5 per cent and its winter loss should be between £60 million and £65m, despite a foreign exchange charge.

North Uist test well yields varied result

Aberdeen-based driller Faroe Petroleum has reported mixed initial results from a west of Shetland test well.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Faroe, which has only a small stake in the North Uist prospect being explored by BP, said preliminary results indicated “varying reservoir quality” and the commercial potential has yet to be evaluated.

Drilling encountered gas condensate in sandstone reservoirs in the target section.

Pubs group Punch slumps into the red

Pubs operator Punch Taverns slumped into the red yesterday as it counted the cost of recent bad weather and the impact of servicing its £2.4 billion debt mountain.

The firm, which has almost 4,400 leasehold pubs, made a £16.7 million loss for the 28 weeks to the start of March, although it insisted that the performance was in line with expectations. It made profits of £30.2m a year earlier.

Book mega–merger given green light

The proposed merger of Penguin and Random House, which will create the world’s largest book publisher, has been given the green light by the EU’s competition watchdog.

The deal will bring classics like George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and the recent phenomenon Fifty Shades of Grey under one umbrella. Penguin Random House will control about a quarter of the global book market.

Gyllenhammar ups stake in biogas firm

Swedish investor Peter Gyllenhammar has increased his stake in TEG Group, the Aim-quoted technology firm that operates an “anaerobic digestion” plant in Perth, which uses bacteria to break down food waste to produce gas.

Gyllenhammar bought a further 400,000 shares to take his stake to 15,430,604 or 8.2 per cent. Meanwhile, TEG non-executive director Douglas Benjafield sold 53,483 shares.