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Richemont chairman Johann Rupert to take ‘grey gap year’ from September

Posted by sysadmin | Posted on 16-05-2013

Billionaire 62-year-old to take 12 months off from Cartier and Montblanc luxury goods group

Richemont’s chairman and founder Johann Rupert is to take a year off from September, leaving management of the world’s second-largest luxury goods group in the hands of a recently named joint chief executive team.

The deputy chairman, Yves-Andre Istel, will chair meetings of the board of directors in Rupert’s absence while Bernard Fornas and Richard Lepeu, who took over as co-CEOs in April, and the chief finance officer, Gary Saage, will manage the day-to-day business, Rupert said in a statement on Thursday.

Richemont, where the 62-year-old South African has been calling the shots ever since he founded the company in 1988, has seen a series of management changes in recent months, which follows the announcement last November that Rupert would be giving up his role as chief executive to Fornas and Lepeu from April.

“After 25 years, I think I have the right to just take a break,” he told a conference call with reporters on Thursday, adding that he fully trusted those who will run the firm in his absence. Meanwhile Richemont said its sales growth accelerated to 12% in April from 9% in the full year to the end of March, despite a slowdown in Asia and continued uncertainty in the world economy.

However, it said that April’s growth should not necessarily be taken as an indication of the trend for the full year. The maker of Cartier watches and jewellery, which pre-released full-year results last month, said it viewed the future “with a degree of optimism” and proposed a substantial hike in its dividend to one Swiss franc per share, up from 0.55 francs a year ago.

“Current trading in April is very encouraging,” Exane BNP Paribas analyst Luca Solca said. The announcement regarding Rupert was less positive, he said. “But the company is in good hands.”

Richemont has been grappling with weak demand in the important Chinese market, where customers buy fewer expensive timepieces as gifts for business partners since the government started a broad-based anti-corruption campaign.

Growth in the important Asia-Pacific region, where Richemont generates 41% of group sales, slowed to 5% from 46% a year ago. Sales for the year rose 9% to €10.1bn and net profit rose 30% to €2bn.

Shares in the group, which were boosted by more than 12% following the pre-release of full-year results in April, trade at about 16.7 times estimated earnings for the next 12 months, in line with peer Swatch Group, but at a discount to its bigger rival LVMH at 17.7 times. Swatch Group has recently benefited from its larger exposure to lower-priced watches with brands such as Longines and Tissot brands that are still seeing double-digit growth rates in China.

guardian.co.uk

Cambodia: aftermath of fatal shoe factory collapse – video

Posted by sysadmin | Posted on 16-05-2013

Category : Business

Tags: asia pacific, cambodia, collapse, factory, guardian.co.uk, kampong, news, shoe, speu, thursday, workers

Workers clear rubble following the collapse of a shoe factory in Kampong Speu, Cambodia, on Thursday

Spate of recent shock departures by 50-something CEOs

Posted by admin | Posted on 16-05-2013

Category : Business

Tags: birthday, companies, executive, features, financial, gilbert, guardian, pressure, publicised, retirement planning

While the rising financial rewards of running a modern multinational have been well publicised, executive recruiters say the pressures of the job have also been ratcheted up

On approaching his 60th birthday this year, long-serving Tullow Oil boss Aidan Heavey told staff he felt “like two 30-year-olds”. A handful of recent shock departures by 50-something chief executives at European blue chip companies – none of them under any obvious pressure to quit – suggest some of his peers either lack that vigour, or want to channel it elsewhere.

Peter Voser is giving up one of the world’s most challenging chief executive roles at Royal Dutch Shell next year, before his 55th birthday, in pursuit of a “lifestyle change”. Swiss engineering group ABB’s 55-year-old boss Joe Hogan is also going, for “private reasons”. Pierre-Olivier Beckers, 53, is walking out on Belgian retailer Delhaize, and Paul Walsh, 57, is waving goodbye to drinks multinational Diageo. All four are about average European CEO age.

While the rising financial rewards of running a modern multinational have been well publicised, executive recruiters say the pressures of the job have also been ratcheted up in recent years, and not just because of the tough economic times.

“The reality is it’s gruelling. It’s really tough, and there comes a point where you don’t want to do it any more,” said Ian Butcher, who headhunts board-level and senior executives for MWM Consulting.

“The quarterly reporting, the governance, the regulatory aspects, it just becomes very wearing – the level of scrutiny, the pace at which things are moving, the short-term nature of how people look at any given situation. Even over the past five years these things have made CEO a tougher position to hold, and the travel that people have to undertake in these jobs – it’s just something they run out of steam on.”

Some recent early retirees, while still well short of traditional retirement age, also got to the top spot early. “They’re still in their early fifties, with energy and a desire to do something, but they want to do something different, something quite significantly different sometimes,” says Butcher.

Voser fits that bill. He has no plans to collect well-paid chairmanships and non-executive directorships, as many ex-CEOs have done in the past.

Former Tesco chief Sir Terry Leahy has also resisted that gravy train since he left two years ago.

As for the early starters, executive search industry professionals point at people like Andrew Witty, the CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, who took on the job aged 44 in 2008 and would have to stay in harness for another decade to reach 60 in the role.

Blue-chip bosses as young as Witty are still rare, but over a quarter of Europe’s current crop have less than two years in the job, and more than half have less than four, according to data from executive search specialists BoardEx.

The BoardEx data, collected for Reuters from 238 companies in the main stock indexes of Germany, Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark, puts the median CEO age at 55. The longest serving of them is Martin Gilbert of the British fund Aberdeen Asset Management. Though younger, at 57, Gilbert pips the 28.3-year tenure of Tullow’s double 30-year-old Heavey, with 29.8 years at the helm.

There are 17 top European CEOs who have been in the job for less than six months, and the youngest of the 225 in the group for whom ages were available is Vitaly Nesis, 37, who runs Polymetal International, the London-listed Russian precious metals miner.

While the recent spate of quitters are looking for something else to do, there are still some who appear to want nothing but to stay.

In the BoardEx group there are four over 70, and the oldest by eight years is Albert Frère, CEO of Group Bruxelles Lambert. Perhaps some linger on for fear that the pension pot is still a little light. Frere will have put such qualms behind him long ago. At 87, he is Belgium’s richest man.

guardian.co.uk

UK Uncut loses legal challenge over Goldman Sachs tax deal with HMRC

Posted by sysadmin | Posted on 16-05-2013

Category : Business

Tags: chancellor, code, deal, goldman, government, hartnett, hmrc, legal, major, tax and spending, tough, uk news, uk uncut

While judge agreed the deal was ‘not a glorious episode in the history of the Revenue’, he ruled it was not unlawful

Campaign group UK Uncut Legal Action has lost its high court challenge over the legality of the “sweetheart” tax deal between HM Revenue and Customs and Goldman Sachs.

The judge agreed the deal was “not a glorious episode in the history of the Revenue” but ruled that it was not unlawful.

The court was told the 2010 deal, worth up to £20m, was allowed to proceed to avoid “major embarrassment” to the chancellor, George Osborne, and the tax authorities after the bank became “aggressive” and allegedly made threats.

UK Uncut asked Mr Justice Nicol, sitting in London, to declare that HMRC’s decision to let the deal go through was legally flawed and involved a breach of statutory duty.

Tax authority lawyers defended the settlement, saying it was among five big business deals declared “reasonable” by a 2012 report of the National Audit Office.

UK Uncut says it is wrong to allow rich companies to avoid paying millions in tax while the government imposes tough austerity measures on the poor, and ordinary taxpayers are pursued for every penny.

Martin Worthy, a director of UK Uncut Legal Action, said after the hearing that he was disappointed with the ruling. But he added: “This case has shown that the government’s tough talk on tax is just that – talk not substance.”

Dave Hartnett, then permanent secretary for tax, initially shook hands on the Goldman Sachs deal on 19 November 2010 following a long-running dispute over National Insurance contribution payments dating back to the 1990s.

Lawyers for UK Uncut put before the high court in London an email and a witness statement showing that Hartnett overruled legal advice, the HMRC’s own guidelines and its internal review board to ensure the deal went ahead.

Just over a week after the handshake, the Revenue’s high-risk corporate management board attempted to block the deal, just as the chancellor announced that the top 15 banks in the country had signed up to a new code of conduct related to tax.

An email from Hartnett on 7 December 2010 described how Goldman Sachs allegedly “went off the deep end” after the board decision and threatened to withdraw from the government’s code of practice, first published in December 2009.

The email warned: “The risks here are major embarrassment to the ChX [Chancellor of the Exchequer], HMRC, the LBS [the large business service of the HMRC], you and me, not least if GS withdraw from the code.”

The witness statement from Hartnett, who retired as head of tax last summer following strong criticism of the Goldman Sachs deal from the public accounts committee, said the bank withdrawing from the code “would have embarrassed the chancellor”.

Ingrid Simler QC, appearing for UK Uncut, argued that the deal breached HMRC’s statutory duties, and said an “aggressive” bank had been rewarded for several years of failing to pay tax it owed, causing “real disquiet among the taxpaying public”.

She said the exact amount lost to the Revenue was not known but was at least £5m to £10m, and the Commons public accounts committee had received evidence that it could be up to £20m.

James Eadie QC, appearing for HMRC, accused UK Uncut of taking legal action “to pursue politics by other means”.

HMRC said in a press statement: “Large business tax settlements are a vital part of how HMRC secures tax revenues for the country and without them Britain’s public finances would be seriously damaged.”

Anna Walker, campaigns director of UK Uncut Legal Action, said: “Obviously, while we are deeply disappointed that this deal has not been declared unlawful, the judge’s ruling that top HMRC officials played politics with major tax deals to protect Osborne’s reputation is a major victory in exposing the truth behind these secret deals.

“Despite not having won the case today, we still feel that this judgment has demonstrated that the government is making a political choice to cut legal aid, public services and the welfare system, rather than take action to make corporate giants … pay their fair share of tax.

“This case has exposed the lengths the government will go to to look tough on tax avoidance and has been vital in holding the government to account for its shameful actions.”

guardian.co.uk