A round-up to today's other stories in brief
Hedge fund acquires 3.5% of Greencore
US hedge fund Millgate Capital has bought a 3.5 per cent stake in Irish food group Greencore.
In a statement to the stock market yesterday, Greencore said Millgate had bought 6.9 million shares, equal to 3.5 per cent, of the issued share capital.
Bank of Ireland Nominees yesterday said its stake in Greencore had fallen to 24 per cent. In December it had 27 per cent.
Interbloem group is liquidated
The final two companies in Interbloem group, the wholesale flower and plant group that until recently supplied Tesco, were yesterday put into voluntary liquidation.
At a meeting at Dublin's Mount Herbert Hotel, Interbloem Holdings and transport group Frank M. Reilly went into liquidation without any objections from the group's creditors. Interbloem Flower Packing and Interbloem Ltd. were liquidated earlier this month.
The latest accounts for the year to the end of December 2004 show that Interbloem Holdings and Interbloem Flower Packing had shareholders' funds of €698,984 combined, while Interbloem Ltd and Frank M. Reilly had equity shareholders' deficits of €862,565. Together all four entities' trade creditors were owed more than €1.7 million.
Morgan Stanley income up $1.64bn
Morgan Stanley yesterday provided further evidence of the very favourable market conditions for investment banks by reporting a 17 per cent increase in net income to $1.64 billion (€1.35 billion) for its first quarter to February.
Revenues rose by 24 per cent to a record $8.5 billion, driven largely by its trading businesses. Morgan Stanley's main institutional securities businesses grew revenues by 36 per cent to $5.5 billion in the first quarter. - (Financial Times Service)
GM offers early severance deals
General Motors offered early retirement and severance packages yesterday to all of its 113,000 US blue-collar workers as part of a deal to reduce labour costs at the loss-making carmaker and at Delphi, the bankrupt Michigan-based parts supplier.
Tens of thousands of workers are expected to accept the offers, which include buy-outs of up to $140,000 (€116,000) each.
The agreement between the companies and the United Auto Workers union is part of a drive by GM to reduce its workforce in line with plant closures.
Delphi is also seeking to bring down its labour costs as part of a restructuring involving factory sales and closures. - (Financial Times Service)
