It now has 14

It now has 14.2 per cent.The rest of the market was made to look a little foolish by New York. Mr Arnault is against the alliance and favours a three-way link involving the GrandMet and Guinness wine and spirit operations and Moet Hennessy.LVMH has 14 per cent of Guinness At one time it had 24 per cent In January the French group sold around 7 per cent at 414p. There is speculation it intends to take its shareholding to 15 per cent.Idea is to put pressure on the proposed GrandMet/Guinness deal to form GMG Brands. It is thought the vast majority came from Mercury Asset Management.The staggering pounds 790m raid lifts LVMH’s stake to 6.29 per cent. The sudden buying enthusiasm took Seaq recorded turnover to approaching 13.5 million.Mr Arnault’s LVMH luxury goods group, which runs the Moet Hennessy Champagne and Cognac group with Guinness as a minority shareholder, seems to have acquired 126 million GrandMet shares, most at 630p. Bernard Arnault enlivened a deadly dull stock market.

The French tycoon’s tea-time swoop on Grand Metropolitan sent turnover bubbling over 1 billion shares and pushed the nation’s three leading spirit groups sharply higher. GrandMet jumped 17.5p to 603.5p and its would-be partner, Guinness, 15p to 605p.
But it was Allied Domecq, the Beefeater gin and Teacher’s whisky group which would be a casualty of any GrandMet/Guinness deal, which stole the show.As the market closed there was a sudden rush to buy and Allied, which had been bumping along near its all-time low, enjoyed the distinction of heading the blue-chip leader board with a 13.5p gain to 428p.The sudden interest in struggling Allied prompted suggestions it could be dragged into the GrandMet/Guinness imbroglio or may have attracted the attention of Seagram, the Canadian group which would be hit by the creation of a new and powerful spirit giant.There was also talk of Allied linking with other spirits group such as Pernod Ricard of France or the unquoted Bacardi rum business.In early trading Allied shares were friendless, off 7p. The European Commission said it had cleared Siebe to acquire the UK’s APV by way of a public offer. Market overlaps were limited to automatic ordering systems for industry and did not raise competition worries, the commission said.. Ushers of Trowbridge, the brewing and pub group which floated in March, is urging the Government to re-examine duty rates on beer. The company, which yesterday announced a first-half maiden dividend of 0.6p, wants the rates to be brought into line with Europe..

Pre-tax profits at Caledonia Investment rose to pounds 75.7m (pounds 40.2m), helped by the inclusion of the group’s 25 per cent share in the profits of Close Brothers for a full year. Otherwise its investment in Sterling Industries and Ivory & Sime made welcome improvements.. The company recorded a 29 per cent jump in turnover from its nine central London residential sales offices.. British cable and satellite television company Flextech has agreed to sell its entire 23 per cent stake in AIM-quoted HIT Entertainment. Flextech said it would realise pounds 7.5m from the sale compared to an initial investment of pounds 625,000 in 1990.”HIT is no longer a strategic shareholding for Flextech and we are taking this opportunity to realise a significant return on our original investment,” the company said.
Flextech’s statement came after HIT said it would raise about pounds 8.1m net through a two-for-seven rights issue at a price of 270p per share It plans to seek a full listing on the Stock Exchange.. If the takeover goes through, it will bring a windfall of pounds 4.7m to the joint chairmen, Ian Homersham and George Pope, who brought the business to the Unlisted Securities Market at 144p a share in 1987 and have committed the near-40 per cent stake they control to the bid.
Mr Homersham stands to net around pounds 3m.

Wood’s shares fell 0.5p to 145.5p yesterday, having risen 15p the day before.However, the 145p-a-share cash offer does not represent much of an advance on the original listing price, even though shareholders will be entitled to retain a second interim dividend of 2.5p a share declared yesterday.The announcement came alongside news of a bounce in pre-tax profits from pounds 729,000 to pounds 1.64m for Wood in the year to April. Hambro Countrywide, the UK’s largest estate agency, yesterday made its second foray into the London property market in three months, agreeing an pounds 11.9m bid for John D Wood, the Mayfair-based estate agents. Teaming up with Wellworth, which had traded throughout the Troubles, meant Safeway would retain political balance, said Simon Laffin, finance director.The joint venture, into which each party is putting pounds 10m of equity capital, will buy the nine stores for IRpounds 67.4m (pounds 61.8m) and spend around pounds 5m on each store to add petrol stations and general refurbishment. The resulting average cost of under pounds 11m a store compared with more than pounds 16m to build one on the mainland, Mr Laffin said.The Irish group has sold the remaining 21 Wellworth stores to Musgrave, a private company, in an IRpounds 67m deal.. Safeway plans to use the bridgehead established in the north to expand southwards.Safeway said it had been working on the Irish plans for the past seven months. Safeway Stores (Ireland), the equally-owned joint venture, will buy nine of Fitzwilton’s food stores trading under the Wellworth name, the leading chain in Northern Ireland, and lease another six while developing four outlets.
The move will catapult Safeway into number two position in the province behind Tesco, which has 34 stores following a deal to buy Associated British Foods’ outlets earlier this year. The final redemption yield was set at 7.961 per cent after the price was set at pounds 99.075 per pounds 100 nominal of stock..

Safeway, the food retailing group, is following its mainland rivals J Sainsbury and Tesco across the Irish Sea by teaming up with Tony O’Reilly’s Fitzwilton group in an IRpounds 77m (pounds 74m) deal to establish 19 stores in Northern Ireland. It is due to the economy and as long as it remains strong so will our markets”, he said.Separately, Thistle Hotels announced it was raising pounds 60m of 77/8 per cent debenture stock maturing in 2022 to replace existing borrowings. “Those margins are the best in the middle market sector and we are happy to retain that level,” he added.He remained optimistic about the outlook for the industry, countering any suggestion that the buoyant UK hotel market might be reaching the peak of a cycle.”The current strength is totally to do with the strength of the UK economy There is no such thing as a hotel cycle. The company is in the process of further reducing borrowings by selling six of its smaller hotels, with one sale already completed since the year end.Mr Jarvis said they had delivered exactly what they had undertook to do in the flotation prospectus – “increase turnover, improve margin, deliver substantially increased profits and, through acquisitions and capital investment, build an even stronger portfolio for the future.”Mr Jarvis said the health clubs were one factor in the improvement in group operating margins from 32 to 33.5 per cent last year. Gearing fell from 177 per cent to 40 per cent over the 12 months. Turnover grew 16 per cent to pounds 118m, while earnings per share were up from 10.7p to 13.7p.The group is paying a final dividend of 2p, making a total of 3p for the nine-month period covered since the flotation or an annual total of 4p on a pro forma basis.