Briefs

Briefs

Last date extended

By our correspondent

KARACHI: The Sindh Revenue Board (SRB) has extended the last date for the payment and filing of sales tax on services statement, a notification issued on Thursday said. The provincial revenue authority extended the last date for depositing tax for the month of August up to September 20. As per the rules, the payment is due on 15th day of the following month. Similarly, the last date to file monthly statement for the month of August has been extended up to September 23. The cutoff date to file monthly statement is 18th of the following month.

 

McDonald’s gets final bids

HONG KONG: Fast-food giant McDonald´s Corp has received final bids from at least three groups for its China and Hong Kong outlets, with global private equity firms Carlyle Group and TPG Capital separately teaming up with Chinese partners for the business worth up to $3 billion, sources told Reuters.

Carlyle has joined with Chinese state conglomerate CITIC Group, while TPG has teamed up with mini-market operator Wumart Stores on their separate bids for the 20-year franchise, said the sources, who declined to be named.

Real estate firm Sanpower Group, which owns British department store House of Fraser, also made an offer for the assets, one of the sources said.

The company has previously said it was teaming up with Beijing Tourism Group. Based on the final bids, McDonald´s may end up working with the unlikeliest of franchise partners.

Both iron-ore to financial conglomerate CITIC and real estate to technology group Sanpower have little experience in the restaurant business. Illinois-based McDonald´s announced in March it was reorganising its Asian operations, bringing in partners as it switches to a less capital-intensive franchise model.

Reuters previously reported that the company had hired Morgan Stanley to run the sale of about 2,400 restaurants in China and Hong Kong. The CITIC-Carlyle team is seen as the front runner to win the auction, one of the sources said.

Carlyle and TPG have taken on only minority stakes in the bidding vehicles as McDonald´s has said it prefers long-term partners, whereas buyout firms typically cash out after a few years.

 

Informa to buy Penton for $1.56bln

LONDON: British business information group Informa Plc said it had agreed to buy U.S.-based information services company Penton, from private equity firms MidOcean Partners and Wasserstein & Co for 1.18 billion pounds ($1.56 billion) to expand in the United States.

The deal, part of Informa´s growth acceleration plan, would help the company generate nearly half of its annual pro-forma revenues from the U.S. Informa´s shares were up 2.95 percent at 714 pence at 0707 GMT on the London Stock Exchange.

The transaction will be funded by a combination of new debt and equity, including a fully underwritten rights issue to raise 715 million pounds, the company said. The acquisition, expected to close in November, would add to the company´s earnings in the first full financial year since completion, the company said.

  

Mitsubishi targets stake in Lawson

TOKYO: Japanese trading house Mitsubishi Corp on Thursday said it is considering raising its stake in convenience store operator Lawson Inc to make it a subsidiary, in a deal worth about 140 billion yen ($1.37 billion).

Lawson is trying to claw back market share in the Japanese market, after a merger between FamilyMart Co and Uny Group Holdings earlier this month knocked the Tokyo-based chain down from second- to third-biggest by number of stores.

Mitsubishi was planning to raise its stake in Lawson to just over 50 percent, a source with knowledge of the talks told Reuters. In separate statements, both companies said Mitsubishi was considering a takeover, but no decision had been made.

With a 33.4 percent stake as of earlier this year, Mitsubishi Corp, Japan´s largest conglomerate whose businesses range from steel processing to salmon farming, already is Lawson´s biggest share holder.

Increasing its stake to 50 percent would cost Mitsubishi about 140 billion yen based on Lawson´s current market value of around 792 billion yen, plus a premium. Lawson stood to gain from Mitsubishi Corp´s vast food processing and distribution businesses, the source said, as domestic convenience stores battle with larger supermarket chains to draw in a wider range of consumers, including elderly people.

 

Hot weather kept shoppers away

STOCKHOLM: Budget fashion retailer Hennes & Mauritz has reported a rise in sales in August that was little more than half of what analysts had expected, with the company saying unusually hot weather in key markets had kept shoppers away in the second half of the month.

The news cast some doubt over the extent of a recovery later this year which has been widely expected by analysts and flagged by Chief Executive Karl-Johan Persson after years of tightening margins and several quarters of profit falls.

H&M is the world´s second-biggest clothing retailer after Spain´s Inditex, the owner of Zara. The Swedish group, which has the bulk of its business in Europe, said local-currency sales in August, the last month of its fiscal third quarter, was up 7 percent from a year ago, well short of the 13 percent average forecast given by analysts in a Reuters poll.