The Business Matrix: Friday 18 April 2014

 

Thursday 17 April 2014 23:51 BST
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Fabergé owner raises $15m

Gemfields, the emerald miner and owner of jewellery brand Fabergé, has secured $15m in working capital from its shareholder Pallinghurst. Pallinghurst supplied a 12-month loan to help fund Gemfields’ mining, gem auctions and expansion of Fabergé, which is currently hosting the ‘Fabergé Easter at Harrods’ exhibition.

Drax to get grant for carbon project

Drax is likely to receive a €300m (£247m) grant from the European Commission for a carbon capture and storage project after Britain this week told the Commission it would back the scheme. Drax’s White Rose project could become Europe’s first CCS plant and advance a technology essential to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.

Sony sells 7m PlayStation 4s

Sony said it has sold more than seven million PlayStation 4 games consoles since launching it a little over four months ago, double the sales of the PlayStation 3 over the same period. The company said it was struggling to keep up with demand, and added it has also sold 20.5 million digital and retail copies of PlayStation 4 software.

Discovery exits Channel 5 bid

Discovery Communications, the US telecoms giant behind Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel, has dropped out of the bidding to buy Richard Desmond’s Channel 5. Mr Desmond, who also owns the Daily Express and Daily Star, hopes the TV station he bought for £103.5m in 2010 could raise as much as £700m.

Pearson hires top City woman

Pearson, the education and publishing group, has appointed one of the most influential women in the City to its board. Elizabeth Corley, chief executive of Allianz Global Investors, will join as a non-executive director in May. She has been named most influential woman in asset management twice.

Barclays in jobs shake-up

Barclays has shaken up its investment bank and promoted co-head of securities Eric Felder to become head of markets. Joe McGrath and Richard Taylor will become co-heads of banking and all three will report to Eric Bommensath and Tom King, the joint chief executives of corporate and investment banking.

Roberto Cavalli set to sell stake

The Italian designer Roberto Cavalli is in talks to sell a majority stake in his fashion house to the London-based buyout firm Permira in a £370m deal, according to Reuters. A sale could be sealed in weeks after the designer, 73, dropped his reluctance to ceding control.

BP man fined over insider trading

A former 20-year veteran of BP, who oversaw the company’s clean-up efforts from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, will pay more than $224,000 to settle civil charges alleging he used non-public information about the disaster to commit insider-trading, US regulators said.

Warning over interest rates

Wage growth is picking up and interest rates will not remain at their record low of 0.5 per cent indefinitely, the Bank of England policy-maker Martin Weale warned yesterday. He added that any rate rises would be “relatively gradual”.

Barnes & Noble shares slide

Shares in the bookseller Barnes & Noble dropped as much as 10 per cent in New York yesterday as it founder and chairman Leonard Riggio, cut his stake in the company to 20 per cent by selling shares worth about $64m (£38m).

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