Finance

Back in November US ratings agency Standard & Poor’s sent a note to online subscribers saying it planned to lower the credit rating of France from its much-prized AAA – only it didn’t. A not very chastened S&P described it ...

Well this should be fun: Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld has decided to hitch her star to the new Cadbury-based snacks business when Kraft Foods splits into two companies next year. North American V-P Tony Vernon will boss the boring old ...

Which shouldn’t surprise anyone really – let’s just hope Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy bear the ad industry in mind when they meet for the umpteenth time today to try to sort out a eurozone fix. Publicis Groupe-owned ZenithOptimedia produces ...

Jeremy Ellis, marketing director of TUI Travel (pictured), must be feeling pretty pleased with himself. Not only has he emerged, after 20 years in the wings, as the new brand-meister of Thomson Holidays and First Choice. He has also managed ...

Back in 2008 Microsoft bid $33 a share for Yahoo (about twice its current worth) but the bid fell fell through because (a) Yahoo founder Jerry Yang held out for even more money or (b) Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (pictured) ...

After years of lobbying India is finally going to relax its rules on foreign retailers, allowing overseas supermarket giants like Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Tesco to own up to 51 per cent of operations in India and ‘single-brand’ retailers (supermarkets are ...

Media Square boasts on its website that it’s the fifth-biggest marcoms company in the UK, but that doesn’t make it very big or successful. The company, chaired by industry veteran Roger Parry (pictured), seems to lurch from one crisis to ...

This is a funny one: Guardian newspaper owner Guardian News & Media is trying hard to expand in the US but, in the process, is trying to sell ContentNext Media, publisher of the PaidContent and mocoNews tech sites, both of ...

Did you know that the height of a woman’s heels is a reliable indicator of economic prosperity? Neither did I. I’d heard of champagne sales, the availability of London taxi cabs, the length of skirts. I’d even devised my own ...