Finance

United Business Media, the trade publisher and owner of PR Newswire has agreed to buy US-based Canon Communications, a similar company, for $287m. Canon has a big trade show business alongside its magazines and UBM says it is particularly attracted ...

It’s hardly surprising that BP has taken a powder in the brand stakes following the Deepwater Horizon disaster but Interbrand’s new list of the top 100 brands which shows it dropping off the radar entirely won’t make BP marketers any ...

Engine CEO Peter Scott has earned a deserved reputation for shrewd business dealing over the past thirty years but his announcement today that Engine Group, the mini-marcoms company based on ad agency WCRS (he was one of the original names ...

Further research on the subject of paywalls casts another gloomy perspective on News International’s bold paywall experiment. According to Ben Evans of Enders Analysis, a newspaper paywall subscriber is worth between 25 to 33 per cent of a buyer of ...

Easyjet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou is making another attempt to build a worthwhile brand extension to his Easy brand with the launch of easyGym, a cut-price chain of gyms in the UK. With everyone predicting real pain for the economy ...

Havas, fifth in the marcoms holding company stakes, produced a strong profit surge in the first half of 2010 on the back of a rebound in North America where it has been been engaged in some heavy restructuring. The French-owned ...

Aegis shareholder Vincent Bollore, whose Havas empire owns 29.9 per cent of the media buying and research firm, is no doubt pleased to see Aegis revenues (up 4.4 per cent in the half year to June) and post tax profits ...

Publicis Groupe boss Maurice Levy seems to have decided that Brazil is where the action is and he’s expected to snap up another agency there, Talent, for around $200m and add it to his recent acquisition of digital agency AG2. ...

UK adland seems awash with money at the moment with Chime Communications, the advertising to PR empire ruled by Mrs Thatcher’s favourite adman Lord Bell, turning in half year profits of £12.3m up from £8.9m (itself a good performance in ...