Branston Pickle Is Gobbled Up By Japan

Iconic British brand Branston Pickle brand is being sold to a Japanese firm in a deal worth £92.5m.

The proposed sale to Mizkan also includes other Branston products such as ketchup, relish, salad cream and mayonnaise.

Premier Foods, which also owns Hovis, Mr Kipling and Bisto, said the sale would result in around 350 people who work at its Bury St Edmunds factory in Suffolk transferring to Mizkan.

The deal is due to complete early next year.

Mizkan, which recently acquired Premier's vinegar brand Sarson's and pickles business Haywards, already has operations at Burntwood in Staffordshire and is a major supplier of rice vinegar in the UK.

Branston is named after the village near Burton-on-Trent in Staffordshire where Crosse & Blackwell first produced it in 1922.

It sells an estimated 28 million jars a year of the pickled relish, which is made to a secret recipe.

Premier acquired the Branston business as part of its acquisition of certain Crosse & Blackwell operations from Nestle in 2002.

The disposal means debt-laden Premier will have raised £370m from the sale of a number of non-core brands, including Robertson's marmalade and Gale's honey.

It is also well ahead of its target of £330m by June 2014.

Sky's City Editor Mark Kleinman learned last week that Premier had drafted in Goldman Sachs to sound out buyers for its Hovis bread division.

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Gulf Of Mexico Spill Costs BP More Than $38bn

The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster has cost BP more than $38bn (£23.7bn) to date, the company has said, as it promised to raise its dividend.

The energy firm said its third quarter results included a charge of $59m (£36.8m) related to the Deepwater Horizon disaster - which includes over $7m (£4.3m) paid out to individuals and businesses in legal claims.

This takes the total cost of the 2010 oil spill to the company to $38.1bn (£23.7bn).

But BP raised its quarterly dividend by 12.5% - its second hike in less than a year - after its results exceeded expectations.

Its replacement cost profit - which does not include the effects oil price movements - dropped to $4.69bn (£2.92bn) in the third quarter, compared with $5.27bn (£3.28bn) in the same period last year.

This slide in profits came as production of oil and gas fell 3% to 2.26 million barrels of oil a day.

But its oil refining business delivered a record profit because of higher fuel prices in the US and Europe.

"BP's performance and the strong progress we are making in transforming the company give us the confidence to increase distributions to our shareholders," the company's chief executive Bob Dudley said.

"We are on track with our strategy to 2014 and are laying the right foundations for sustainable growth during the coming decade."

BP's shares rose 5% following the announcement.

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Apple Sheds Two Top Execs In Shake-Up

Apple has overhauled its management team and announced that two top executives are to leave the company.

John Browett, the head of retail, is out after just six months in the job and Scott Forstall, the long-serving head of its iPhone software development operations, will go in the new year.

The US firm did not say why either man was leaving but both have presided over blunders in recent months.

Mr Browett, the former head of Dixons, slashed staffing hours in Apple shops in a move that was later reversed by the company and acknowledged as a mistake.

And Mr Forstall's division launched a software update in September that replaced Google Maps with Apple's first mapping application.

The software was immediately attacked for being full of inaccuracies and much harder to use, prompting boss Tim Cook to apologise.

The surprise announcement about the departures was made on Monday, at the height of superstorm Sandy which is battering parts of the east coast of North America.

John Browett had been in charge of Apple stores

In a press release, Apple said the changes would "encourage even more collaboration between the company's world-class hardware, software and services teams".

The statement did not thank either Mr Forstall or Mr Browett.

Mr Forstall, a protege of the late Steve Jobs, joined the firm in 1997 when the company bought Jobs' NeXT start-up. Apple credits him as being one of the original architects of Mac OS X.

His responsibilities are being divided between other Apple veterans and he will work as an advisor to Mr Cook until he leaves.

A replacement is being recruited to replace Mr Browett, who had taken over store operations when Ron Johnson - who helped create the concept shops - left.

Apple has more than 360 shops but they only make up 12% of overall sales. They are seen as ambassadors of the brand and therefore have a strong emphasis on customer service.

At the time of Mr Browett's appointment, commentators wondered what an executive from a traditional retail operation would bring to the company.

His move to cut staffing appears to have been motivated by a desire to improve profits but Apple divisions do not have their own profit-and-loss accounts and are supposed to support the company as a whole.

Carolina Milanesi, smartphones analyst for Gartner, told the Guardian: "I did question if Browett coming from Dixon was the right pick.

"Apple needs to learn how to deal with more customers in the stores but the need to retain the high level of care is something that a chain like Dixons does not do very well."

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Strike-Hit Mining Firm Plans $800m Rights Issue

South African miner Lonmin has said it plans to raise $800m (£498.6m) in a rights issue after violent strikes hit output.

The world's third-largest platinum miner said production slumped by over 45% in the last three months after a long period of unrest, and warned it would miss its output target for this year.

New shares could be issued, the company warned, adding that it had extended its debt facilities to help it avoid a possible covenant breach next year.

"With the standby underwriting and amended debt facilities signed we have taken two decisive steps on our way to delivering that and we are confident about our financial security," company chairman Roger Phillimore said in a statement.

In August, police killed 34 striking miners at Lonmin's Marikana mine, which sparked protests and further industrial action across the country.

Staff have since returned to work and Lonmin says the ramp-up in production is going better than expected.

But elsewhere the South African mining industry continues to battle the worst industrial action it has seen for decades.

Officers have fired rubber bullets in clashes with miners from Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) - as around 1,000 workers defied an ultimatum to return to work.

Police spokesman Dennis Adriao said "police used tear gas, stun grenades as well as rubber bullets" to disperse the strikers.

Thousands of workers from Amplats - the world's largest platinum producer - were sacked earlier this month for taking part in an illegal strike, but were told they could get their jobs back if they returned to work on Tuesday morning.

The workers said they would not go back until their pay demands were met.

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Ocado Customers Compensated After Failure

Online grocer Ocado has apologised to customers and promised compensation after a systems outage forced it to cancel thousands of deliveries.

The company blamed an "operational failure" at a warehouse but could not say exactly how many people were affected.

A spokeswoman said: "An operational issue at our warehouse has caused us to cancel a number of orders.

"All customers whose order has been cancelled will have, or will soon receive, a phone call from Ocado customer service at which point they will be able to re-schedule their order.

"We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused."

The problem affected orders placed on Monday 29 October.

Ocado said later the fault had been repaired and service had "returned to normal".

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Eurozone Crisis: Spain's GDP Shrinks By 0.3%

Spain's economy has continued to shrink, according to official figures, as the government's harsh austerity measures take their toll.

The country's GDP contracted by 0.3% between July and September, slightly better than the 0.4% drop of the previous quarter, the country's National Statistics Institute said.

It marks the fifth straight quarter of contraction and follows a fall in domestic demand.

But on an annual basis, the economy shrank by 1.6% - the sharpest annual decline since the end of 2009.

The eurozone's fourth largest economy has been badly hit by the region's ongoing debt crisis, and saw its 10-year bond yields hit unsustainable highs in the summer.

These costs have since eased but the latest economic data is likely to put more pressure on Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

He has so far resisted requesting a sovereign bailout - which would be accompanied by strict economic conditions and international supervision - by announcing his own drastic cuts.

The government has outlined spending cuts and tax hikes worth over 60bn euros (£48.3bn) to the end of 2014, in an attempt to cut the budget deficit in line with EU guidelines.

The measures include a VAT hike, introduced at the beginning of September, which pushed up consumer prices and hit retail sales, which fell at the sharpest pace on record in response.

Spain, which has a 25% unemployment rate, has already secured a rescue loan of up to 100bn euros (£80.6bn) for its banks.

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UBS 'Rogue Trader': We Were Pushed to Limit

Alleged rogue trader Kweku Adoboli who is accused of gambling away £1.4bn has given jurors his account of how the losses unfolded.

The 32-year-old denies committing Britain's biggest ever fraud while working for Swiss bank UBS during the global financial crisis.

He said he "lost control in the maelstrom of the financial crisis."

He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of fraud and four counts of false accounting between October 2008 and last September relating to a so-called "umbrella" fund for off-book trades.

Southwark Crown Court heard the fund was doing well until he changed from a conservative "bearish" position to an aggressive "bullish" stance - under pressure from senior managers, Mr Adoboli said.

Describing the moment when he began to make serious losses as European markets crashed in July last year, he said: "The real problem was a result of the pressure to flip my position from short to long, this broke my control.

"I absolutely lost control, I was no longer in control of the decisions around the trades we were doing."

The court  has already heard how Adoboli worked for UBS's global synthetic equities division, buying and selling exchange traded funds (ETFs), which track different types of stocks, bonds or commodities such as metals.

He claims senior managers were fully aware of what he was doing and encouraged him to push the boundaries to make profits for the bank.

Yassine Bouhara, former co-head of equities at UBS, allegedly told Adoboli in an email: "You don't know what your limits are until you push the boundary so far that you receive a slap on the back of the wrist."

Answering questions by his defence barrister Paul Garlick QC, Ghanaian-born Adoboli said: "There were no secrets, there was no hiding, there was no holding back.

"We were told to go for it, we went for it. We were told to push the boundaries, so we pushed the boundaries. We were told you wouldn't know where the limit of the boundary was until you got a slap on the back of the wrist. We found that boundary, we found the edge, we fell off and I got arrested."

He also claimed that an alleged email to colleagues from a more senior trader, mocking his bearish position, contributed to his more aggressive approach.

"Everyone was laughing about it," he said.

Mr Garlick asked: "If you had remained bearish would any losses have followed from your trades?"

Adoboli replied: "If I had held on for one more day, just one more day, if I had just held on, those losses would never have happened."

The trial continues.

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Nuclear Power: Hitachi Buys Newbuild Project

Britain's nuclear expansion plans have been boosted after Japan's Hitachi signed a £700m deal that will enable the UK to start building the next generation of power plants.

The engineering giant is buying Horizon Nuclear Power, which has the rights to build reactors at Wylfa on Anglesey, North Wales, and Oldbury in Gloucestershire, from its German owners E.ON and RWE npower.

In what it described as the start of a 100-year commitment to the UK, Hitachi confirmed that it intends to progress Horizon's plans to build between two and three new nuclear plants at each site.

The facilities could be feeding electricity into the national grid in the first half of the 2020s and are expected to generate power equivalent to up to 14 million homes over 60 years.

Up to 6,000 jobs are expected to be created during construction at each site, with a further 1,000 permanent jobs at both locations once operational.

Hitachi has also signed supply chain deals with UK engineering firms Rolls-Royce and Babcock International and has pledged to establish a module assembly facility in the UK.

Some 1,000 jobs are expected to be created at Oldbury nuclear power station

The Horizon venture, which currently employs around 90 people, was set up in 2009 as part of the drive to meet the UK's carbon reduction goals.

But RWE and E.ON put the business up for sale in March after Germany's move to abandon nuclear power in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster.

Since then, doubts have grown about the private sector's commitment to the UK's nuclear programme.

Hitachi plans to employ its advanced boiling water technology, which is already in use in four reactors in Japan having been built to time and budget.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey told Sky News the investment was "a huge shot in the arm for the UK economy and a vote of confidence in UK energy policy".

The Cabinet minister dismissed any concerns over safety, insisting that Britain had the "toughest safety regulatory regime in the world".

He added that the technology Hitachi was proposing had "a very good track record" and it was different from the reactors used at Fukushima.

Prime Minister David Cameron said Hitachi's involvement represented a "decades-long, multibillion-pound vote of confidence in the UK".

Mike Clancy, general secretary-designate of the Prospect union, said: "The Horizon venture is an important milestone in securing future low-carbon energy generation capacity within the UK and its importance to local and national economies cannot be overstated."

Gary Smith, national officer of the GMB union, added: "This is positive news. However, we should be under no illusions that there are still real concerns with UK energy policy."

Shadow energy secretary Caroline Flint said Hitachi's decision to buy Horizon was "welcome news" for the nuclear industry, and underscored how important it was that the Government's reforms of the electricity market provided certainty and confidence for other investors.

Tatsuro Ishizuka, vice president of Hitachi, told a news conference in London that the company would invest billions of pounds in UK nuclear operations, stressing that it has already built nuclear power plants safely, on time and on budget.

He said: "Our aim is to build safe nuclear power stations, on time and on budget, to provide long-term, affordable energy."

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New York Storm: Wall Street Looks To Reopen

New York stock markets look set to reopen on Wednesday, after Hurricane Sandy ripped through the East Coast.

Flooding in the financial district closed Wall Street for two days - the first time the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has been shut for two consecutive sessions since 1888.

But the capital's two major markets - the NYSE and Nasdaq - said they planned to open on Wednesday, although contingency plans were being tested as a back-up.

If implemented, these measures would see trades made via the electronic NYSE Arca system.

The storm also caused dozens of companies to postpone publishing financial results, and put back the release of some economic data.

The US futures markets have fallen overnight and HFS Research's Ralph Silva warned it is not just the US economy that will be affected.

The volume of trades in London has been very low, he said, adding: "if you want to sell shares in something, and there's no one to buy it, you shouldn't sell it."

"As a result we're seeing a slowdown in Britain as well," he said. "This could amount to hundreds of millions of pounds of economic value lost."

Joe Rundle, head of trading at ETX capital, agreed that volumes had been low.

"Everyone is sitting on the sidelines a little bit, and cautiously optimistic that Sandy hasn't caused too much damage in the US," he said.

"I expect volumes to back up tomorrow and back to business as usual."

It is too early to count the cost of the storm but there has been huge disruption across the US as Sandy battered homes and businesses.

More than 7.3 million buildings along the East Coast are without power, and a number of internet and mobile networks are down.

The storm has also grounded more than 15,000 flights globally, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware.

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UBS Cuts Thousands Of UK Jobs Amid Restructuring

UBS has confirmed it is cutting 10,000 jobs as it looks to drastically shrink its ailing investment bank which has a large presence in London.

Switzerland's biggest bank announced the plans as part of its third-quarter results which revealed a loss of 2.2 billion Swiss francs (£1.43bn) compared to a profit of 1.02 billion (£0.67bn) in the same period last year.

It said the result for the July-September period was damaged by a one-off charge of 3.1 billion Swiss francs (£2bn) linked to the restructuring of its investment banking division and a debt-related charge of 863 million (£574m).

Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti said the investment unit, which has been hit by a series of costly blunders in recent years, would "continue to be a significant global player in its core businesses" but there would be "a significant acceleration" in its transformation.

The move will see the lender and wealth manager focus on its private bank and a smaller investment bank, ditching much of the trading business that cost it $50bn (£30bn) in the financial crisis and which had been "rendered uneconomical by changes in regulation and market developments".

UBS wants to concentrate on its traditional strengths in advisory, research, equities, foreign exchange and precious metals.

Of the total job cuts, which represent 15% of the workforce, 2,500 positions would be lost in Switzerland while the rest would be felt in the UK and US.

A UBS source told Sky News there was currently no confirmed figure for UK losses but said it would be fair to assume it would be around two thousand.

Dozens of traders in the City were told to go home this morning.

Mr Ermotti said: "This decision has been a difficult one, particularly in a business such as ours that is all about its people.

"Some reductions will result from natural attrition and we will take whatever measures we can to mitigate the overall effect.

"Throughout the process we will ensure that our people will be supported and treated with care."

UBS shares were trading 6% higher in early trading in Zurich as investors welcomed the transformation plan.

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