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...“The company is a high-class act with a deserved equity capital market following because there is a more than reasonable chance that it will beat its guidance,” said Clive Black, a retail analyst at Shore...
...Boss Simon Wolfson expects there will be more brands Next can hoover up. The mid-market names that struggle tend to offer “one look”, says PwC’s Kien Tan....
...Wolfson believes that giving customers more choice will prevent them from defecting to competitors....
...Other institutions such as Radley College and the Wolfson Foundation are investors....
...At the same time, the rally in sales has been accompanied by sharp efficiency gains that have accrued to its equity value. This is no mean feat in the fickle world of fashion....
...“Our view is that we don’t know,” says its long-serving chief executive Lord Simon Wolfson....
...The top rung is labelled “triple-A” and the bottom rung is known as “equity”....
...Wolfson Microelectronics was picked off by a US competitor for about £300mn in 2014, the same year that Qualcomm scooped up Cambridge Silicon Radio for $2.4bn....
...We do not own Next currently, but I never miss Wolfson’s commentary....
...And of course there was Debenhams, the plaything of private equity. It collapsed in late 2020, around the same time as Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia empire....
...Next chief executive Lord Simon Wolfson said he was “excited to see what can be achieved through the combination of Joules’ exceptional product, marketing and brand-building skills with Next’s Total Platform...
...The reduction in asset allocation from defined benefit schemes into UK equities, at just 3 per cent of assets, is described as “de-risking”. Really? That went well....
...The fund fired the managers who were heavily overweight equities and hired Goldman Sachs....
...But Wolfson and his team ultimately rejected the plan. “If you only took historical data, it looked pretty robust,” said Wolfson....
...He established the European subsidiary of the US bank Manufacturers Hanover, and made a fortune again when he sold his equity stake and turned his attention to politics....
...Annual sales had already risen to more than £1bn by the time private equity group Clayton, Dubilier and Rice — now the owners of supermarket Wm Morrison — became shareholders in 2012....
...“The key is to recognise skills shortages rapidly and respond to them vigorously,” Wolfson added....
...Less than half an hour after trading began, the private equity group was worth £3.6bn....
...Lord Wolfson sold 150,000 shares on November 12, leaving the chief executive with 1.25m shares, a stake in the company of just under 1 per cent....
...The UK boasts a number of prominent companies in the field, including Arm, which chipmaker Nvidia acquired last year, CSR and Wolfson Micro....
...That’s a problem given that most equity investors seem to prefer growth stocks to anything hinting at value....
...The FTSE 100 group will make a £33m equity investment, acquiring shares from majority investor Warburg Pincus and the group’s founding Reiss family in proportion to their existing holdings....
...The London markets once had a thriving listed chip sector but companies such as Arm Holdings, Imagination Technologies, Wolfson Microelectronics and CSR were all sold to trade rivals or financial buyers....
...When private equity does the arithmetic. Retailer Next revealed this week that it had paid £33m for a 25 per cent equity stake in Reiss, an upmarket peer....
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