BGN Entrepreneur

Insolvencies and corporate failures among the UK retailers is expected to increase to the level at the end of 2008, when financial crisis start to break down the economy of the nation, by the time of Christmas this year.
According to the restructuring advisers and accountants, spike in UK retail failure will be expected due to banks’ declining to roll over loans for another year.

Citigroup is going to harvest a profit of $4.1bn from the sale of EMI, with Vivendi’s Universal Music agreeing to pay $1.9bn for the company’s recorded music business and a Sony-led consortium offering an amount of $2.2bn for the publishing unit.
Universal will $1.9bn for EMI’s recorded music business or seven times the EBITA, witnesses Citigroup recoup more of its investment in the British music group than originally expected. The deal brings the industry’s most celebrated record labels together under one roof to Island Records, Mercury as well as Polydor. Then, the enlarged Universal Music group will take up about 33% of all music sales across the world.
However, Universal announced plans to sell off £500m of EMI’s non-core assets in order to lower the cost of the deal and smooth its path past regulators. The company also announced that the disposals would lead to an EBITA loss of about €25m-€35m in 2011.

The biggest US futures exchange operator–CME Group, have scrambled to recover its damage from its failure of broker-dealer MF Global via offering $300m to help customers get back their money.
The bankruptcy trustee–MF Global’s bankruptcy filing during last week and the discovery of an almost $600m hole in its customer accounts left thousands of account holders unable to access cash that they use to backstop futures trading positions. The shortfall threatens the integrity of futures markets. And it has also spurred calls for stricter regulations.

The energy supplier–Centrica, who owns British Gas, is now expanding the range of its services in the US with the acquisition of an Illinois-based company that issues warranties against home appliance breakdowns.
The deal comes almost a year and a half after Direct Energy announced the $183m purchase of Clockwork Home Services. Currently, it is being carried out by Centrica’s North American electricity and gas supply business–Direct Energy.

Intel and Toyota are getting behind the wheel together to conduct a research on next-generation in-car infotainment systems.
At the current stage, everything still sounds quite vague and executives could not provide any particular date for when an Intel Atom microprocessor might power a Toyota car at the media briefing.
However, the deal represents a big-name partnership for Intel in an industry it still views as a new market for Atom and where it needs such breakthroughs.

Net income of the Europe’s largest insurer by market capitalisation–Allianz, dropped by 80% in the third quarter as it suffered from the influence of the financial crisis on its bond investments and corporate holdings.
According to German group, it is announced that it suffered losses of €2.6bn in its investment during the period, which hit the operating result of its life and health insurance segment, while leading to other non-operating losses across its businesses. Allianz also indicated that the non-operating writedowns include €198m of further writedowns on the group’s holdings of Greek sovereign debt, which are now written down to below 39% of face value.

As the recession has led to increased distressed real estate, the world’s largest restaurant chain by revenues–McDonald’s is looking to capitalize on the depressed commercial property market and buy more of the land and buildings where it runs its business.
According to chief financial officer of McDonald’s–Peter Bensen, it was announced that the company has been shifting away from its previous strategy of leasing properties to new strategy of owning the properties.