Finance

Publicis Groupe CEO Maurice Levy is showing his strategy again as the marcoms group has just bought Chinese healthcare specialist Dreams Communication, owner of Beijing Dreams Advertising and Beijing Dreams Zhiyang Communications. The agency will be rolled into the Publicis ...

What a difference a few months makes, at media buyer Aegis anyway. Back in March CEO Jerry Buhlmann had to announce that 2010’s profits had been hammered down to £68m, largely due to a stonking £37m bad debt from a ...

It’s not signed as we write but Microsoft is likely to agree to pay £8bn today to buy loss-making phone and video company Skype (the price includes nearly $700m of debt). Oddly enough $8bn is roughly the amount Microsoft is ...

WPP is teaming up with Aon, one of the world’s biggest insurance brokers, and Zurich Financial Services to offer insurance policies worth up to $100m for companies seeking to restore damaged reputations. The policies will have an annual premium of ...

Millward Brown’s Brandz survey tries to combine image and financial performance for its rankings so Apple has surged 84 per cent over the past year to knock Google off the top spot with a brand valuation of $153bn (its market ...

In the UK we think of News Corporation as being the Sun and News of the World and 39 per cent of BSkyB. But arguably its biggest business is the Fox film studio. And its profits just out show that ...

The only commercial doubt over Facebook was the challenge of converting its humungous global numbers – 500m users and rising – into cash. But now researcher eMarketer says that its ad revenue will hit $4.05bn this year (very precise), up ...

Of course the second is only relevant if the first, selling the outdoor business, doesn’t happen. CBS CEO Les Moonves said last night that he hadn’t yet had a call from French outdoor giant JC Decaux wanting to buy the ...

And not before time for these over-priced, over-packaged confections comprising remarkably little chocolate. It’s tough on UK chocolate independent Thorntons of course, whose task in keeping its end up in the UK High Street against the likes of Kraft/Cadbury and ...