Just spoken to Chris Coles of BDO about payouts from the Highbury ring-fenced fund. He's just had an updated application and he's busy chasing down one of the larger creditors to get some documents changed. But he hopes soon to have some paperwork put together for the lawyers. They'll take it to a court hearing and after that, things should move smoothly. Hopefully.
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3i - who I occasionally do some work for - has just bought up VNU's European business mags, including Computing and IT Week.
Worryingly, VNU also plans to cut 4,000 job. Good luck everyone.
I'm always surprised by economists and the things they come up with. If you've ever read Freakanomics, you'll be aware of the exciting trends they can uncover (abortion as the cause of reduced crime in the US, etc).
But they can also devise some extremely clever ways of encouraging certain behaviours and discouraging others. Take carbon trading: it's worth billions already and is encouraging industry to become greener using the motivation of large profits for those who are environmentally friendly. Carbon taxes, currently being argued about by all the main UK political parties, are a way of discouraging environmentally unfriendly behaviour.
The most clever green proposal I've seen is to discourage electricity suppliers from charging per kilowatt, but instead to provide a warm, well-lit house as a service, to be delivered in whatever way the supplier deems necessary:
“People aren't fussed about how much power they buy,” explains Philip Sellwood, chief executive of the trust. “If energy suppliers sold a service – a lit and heated house, rather than units of gas or electricity – then they would face incentives to provide it as efficiently as possible.” In theory, such companies would even pay to improve their customers' homes, cutting their own costs in the process. One is already operating in Woking, a green-minded town; another is planned to start in London.
See? That's clever.
In case you're owed money by Highbury - although let's face it, unless you're a preferential creditor, there's probably nothing coming for us because of all the debts the company owed to preferred creditors - I thought I'd give you an idea of how long it takes liquidators to decide how much money to dish out.
I've just received notice that the liquidators of a company that went bankrupt mid-2004, owing me £875 from an invoice I'd sent in May 2004, are about to pay out. I'll get 22.98p in the pound.
So that's just over two years to get paid a fifth of what I was owed. The wheels of financial justice move slowly, my friends.
Actually, the liquidator were going to pay out in August, but they got my address wrong and sent the cheque to the wrong address. I only found out because they've just sent me the “we're winding things up now” letter, which somehow made it through.
PS Anyone who did work for Highbury's “ringfenced fund” back in January should now have received a letter telling them what's happening. If you haven't yet received a letter, give BDO Stoy Hayward a call or else you won't stand a chance of getting paid.
Journalism.co.uk has more info on the Magicalia purchase of Encanta.
Buyout fund Endless has sold Encanta Media for £2.72 million. Surprise, surprise, it was quite a profitable deal for Endless.
Ooh. First Direct claims to be the first direct banking operation to go carbon neutral. Good on them.
Some of the stats seem a little interesting though:
"Conscious of the impact 3400 people have getting to and from work, three years ago it introduced the Green Travel Plan which includes:
- a car sharing database
- shuttle bus between Leeds Train Station and Stourton
- subsidised travel cards to encourage more people to use the buses and trains.
- The initiative has led to 150 fewer cars being brought to work each day and a staggering 98% increase in the number of people using public transport."
So the number of people using public transport has doubled, but of 3,400 people, only 150 fewer cars are being used?
Obviously, it's a bit tricky with that shuttle bus option added, since we don't know if that counts as public transport. But if there are 150 fewer cars being used, with say a generous 1.5 people per car, that means there are 225 fewer people travelling by cars. If they all go by public transport, that means that there were already 225 people (98% or so) going by public transport, taking the total up to... 450 people out of 3,400. If half went by shuttle bus instead of car or bus and the shuttle bus doesn't count as public transport, then there'll only be 225 travelling by public transport. And so on.
So by the looks of it, we have nearly 3,000 out of the 3,400 employees going by some form of transport that isn't publicly owned. Car-sharing, shuttle buses, etc are good things, but that's still an awful lot of people not using public transport. And the figures don't say how many employees First Direct has now, rather than three years ago.
I could ring up and ask, but as always, I'm feeling a bit lazy.
Remnant Media, which acquired various titles from Highbury through its subsidiary, SMD Publishing, is to float on alternative stock exchange AIM, according to The Guardian. For SMD watchers, there are a few interesting nuggets about the two companies' financial stability.
A US government report shows what we should all know: immigrants are a good thing, whether they're illegal or legal.
UPDATE: Greatreporter.com also has a piece about an official report explaining why migrants are a good thing for countries.
On St Patrick's Day, it's nice to see this article from Slate looking into the worldwide reach of faux-Irish pubs. Think Ireland: think pubs. That's a good, non-stereotypical message, isn't it?
