Billionaire Backs UK Music Dotcom Shazam

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecoms magnate who has become the world's richest man, is investing tens of millions of pounds in Shazam, the British digital music company.

Sky News can reveal that Mr Slim, whose net worth is estimated at $73bn (£49bn), is injecting $40m (£26.8m) through his wireless group, America Movil.

The investment will see America Movil, which is the biggest mobile network in Mexico, become a significant minority shareholder in Shazam, which uses sophisticated technology to help users identify music and then proceed to buy the track with a single click.

The deal represents a coming-of-age for Shazam, which has in the past struggled to convince many in the technology industry that it can make a sustained move into profitability.

America Movil has more than 262 million wireless subscribers across Latin America, one of the world's fastest-growing regions for mobile services.

The exact size of Mr Slim's stake in Shazam is unclear although people familiar with the deal said his investment valued the technology company at broadly the same sum as its most recent fundraising round in 2011.

That would reflect investors' caution over the valuations being attached to even the most well-known digital companies, with the soaring multiples enjoyed by some groups evoking echoes of the original dotcom boom.

Shazam came to London in 2000 after failing to secure funding in Silicon Valley, and has since gone on to become one of the UK's most internationally-recognised technology start-ups.

The music company, which is branching out into television and other consumer services, recently appointed Rich Riley, a senior Yahoo! executive, as its new chief executive.

The appointment was interpreted by technology analysts as a signal that Shazam is likely to pursue a stock market listing in the next few years.

Andrew Fisher, Shazam's executive chairman, said when Mr Riley was appointed that he expected the company to be worth $1bn (£671m) when it went public.

America Movil's investment in Shazam - which describes itself as "the world's leading media engagement company" - will be accompanied by a strategic partnership across the markets in which the telecoms group operates.

The music company now has roughly 350m users around the world, a figure that has doubled in the last two years.

Its number of active monthly users has trebled to more than 70m, with sales of digital products now more than $300m (£201m) annually through affiliates such as Apple's iTunes service.

Shazam declined to comment ahead of an announcement about the investment from America Movil, which insiders said was likely as soon as Monday.

Mr Slim's wealth is estimated by Forbes magazine to put him marginally ahead of Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder.

The UK-based company employs more than 180 people and has offices in Australia, South Korea and the US.

Among Shazam's existing investors are Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the most prolific  firms in Silicon Valley, and Brent Hoberman, the co-founder of Lastminute.com, who has gone on to create a string of other tech start-ups.

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Retailers Agree Bangladesh Factory Inspections

Leading names in European retail have backed plans for co-ordinated inspections of factories in Bangladesh, in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the building collapse that killed 1,129 people in April.

The collapse of Rana Plaza, a factory built on swampy ground outside Dhaka, ranked among the world's worst industrial accidents and galvanised brands to look more closely at their suppliers.

The new accord led to the creation of a team of inspectors to evaluate fire, electrical, structural and worker safety in factories supplying signatory brands.

Crowds gathered when news of the collapse spread on April 24

In a report published on Monday, the implementation team said the brands now had to provide full details of the Bangladesh factories from which they source goods - the first time such data would be collected or shared in such a comprehensive way.

The world's two biggest fashion retailers, Zara-owner Inditex and H&M, have agreed to accept legal responsibility for safety at their Bangladesh factories.

The scale of the disaster overwhelmed rescuers

But a number of US chains, including Asda parent firm Wal-Mart, Gap, Macy's, Sears and JC Penney have shunned the deal, saying that it gives labour unions too much control over ensuring workplace safety and have proposed a non-binding initiative.

Under the accord, every factory will undergo an initial inspection within the next nine months, with repairs initiated where necessary.

Relatives were desperate for news on their loved ones

"Brand signatories are responsible to ensure that sufficient funds are available to pay for renovations and other safety improvements," the report said.

Tesco, the world's third-largest retailer and one of the accord's backers, said last month that it had stopped sourcing clothes from a Bangladesh site because of safety concerns.

Some were lucky to make it out of the building alive

European, Bangladeshi and US officials will meet in Geneva on Monday for talks aimed at improving safety conditions and discussing the country's trade benefits, which the EU has threatened to suspend without greater action from the Bangladesh government.

Bangladesh has pledged to improve safety, but it has not offered new money to relocate dangerous buildings.

An estimated 3.6 million people work in Bangladesh's clothing sector, employing mostly women on wages as little as £30 a month.

Tax concessions offered by Western countries and the low wages paid by the manufacturers have helped to turn Bangladesh's garment exports into a £12.7bn a year industry, with 60% of clothes going to Europe.

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Center Parcs Begins 1,500 Recruitment Drive

Center Parcs has begun a drive to recruit 1,500 staff for its new £250m holiday village, a decade after it first identified the Bedfordshire site for the project.

The posts at the Woburn Forest resort - which is due to open next spring following a protracted planning battle - include 500 housekeeper roles, mainly part-time, paying from £6.60 an hour.

Among other employees being sought are 126 waiting staff, 53 spa therapists, 50 lifeguards, 19 nursery nurses and six nurses.

The recruitment process is expected to be completed by January with short-listed applicants invited to assessment days near the site.

Woburn Forest will be Center Parcs' fifth UK site and is to include 625 forest lodges and a 75-bedroom hotel, as well as a spa, sports facilities, restaurants and retail outlets.

An Executive Lodge at Woburn Forest

The project faced strong opposition from the local community and only received planning consent 22 months ago - with Center Parcs promising to plant thousands of trees as part of efforts to overcome environmental concerns.

Martin Dalby, chief executive of Center Parcs UK, said: "As the job market remains unsteady, I'm delighted that we are able to create such a large number of new jobs and offer people an exciting and rewarding career.

"Our employees play an important role during our guests' short breaks with us and I'm confident that the Woburn Forest team will recruit 1,500 enthusiastic individuals who truly reflect our brand values."

Tracey Purser, human resources anager for Center Parcs Woburn Forest, added: "We're looking for people who have the right attitude, strong personality, a passion for the leisure industry and perhaps, more importantly, take pride in their work."

The UK company, owned by the Blackstone Group, has four other locations - at Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, Elveden Forest in Suffolk, Longleat Forest in Wiltshire and Whinfell Forest in Cumbria.

They attract more than 1.7 million guests every year.

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TPG Swoops For Teachers' Bible In £400m Deal

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

The publisher of the Times Educational Supplement is to be sold to an American buyout firm in a deal valuing the teachers' bible at around £400m.

Sky News has learnt that TPG Capital, one of the world's biggest private equity groups, is buying TSL Education from Charterhouse, another investment firm. The deal is expected to be announced later on Monday.

Charterhouse has owned TSL since 2007 and has been sounding out prospective buyers for months.

TPG is understood to have been enticed by the opportunity to exploit the global community of 52m teachers, which it believes are underserved by existing professional networks.

The American buyout firm's interest has been led by Karl Peterson, its managing partner in London and the former boss of Hotwire, the online car rental and travel booking site.

The Times Educational Supplement was first published in 1910 as a pull-out in The Times newspaper.

Monday's deal will mark the third change of ownership for TSL in less than a decade. Previously owned by News International (now called News UK), the publisher of The Times, TSL was sold to Exponent Private Equity in 2005.

The price of around £400m is expected to crystallise a modest loss for Charterhouse.

TPG, which declined to comment, has owned prominent British companies before, including Debenhams, the department store chain, and Spirit, the pubs group.

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Jobs Market 'Soaring' In UK, Report Says

Recruitment firms say they are placing the highest number of people into permanent jobs for two years, amid strong evidence of rising wages.

The report by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and professional services group KPMG found that demand for staff was at a three-year high, with vacancies also accelerating.

Pay for permanent staff rose at the fastest pace for two years, the survey suggested, while the position was even healthier for temporary and contract workers.

Bernard Brown of KPMG said: "The latest figures reveal permanent placements enjoying their highest growth rates for over two years and temporary roles being filled at the quickest pace since Christmas.

"Perhaps the sun has finally come out to shine on the jobs market and economy at large."

REC chief executive Kevin Green added: "The UK jobs market has been agile enough to weather the recession and emerge with more people in work than ever before and has performed considerably better than our European counterparts.

"Our main concern is that the soaring success of the jobs market and signs of economic recovery could be undermined if the Government does not do more to address the growing skills gap.

"Roles in engineering and IT are in ever increasing demand as recruiters struggle to source the talent that businesses need to succeed.

"However more roles, such as sales and digital marketing, have been added to this growing list in the last couple of months and show no signs of disappearing."

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Lloyd's Of London HQ Sold To Chinese

The landmark City headquarters of the Lloyd's of London insurance market has been sold to a Chinese insurance company in a £260m deal.

The famous glass-and-steel construction - designed by Richard Rogers and opened in 1986 - had been owned by the German asset management fund CommerzReal, which bought the building in 2005 for £231m.

Lloyd's lease on the site in One Lime Street expires in 2031.

Jon Crossfield, a central London director of Savills, which handled the latest transaction to Ping An, said: "This is a potentially landmark transaction, given it is the first by a Chinese insurance company overseas.

"It is a high-profile and confident entry to the market for them and further illustrates the dominance of overseas investors in London at present."

Roland Holschuh, a board member of CommerzReal, said: "We are delighted with the transaction and it has been a major success for our investors.

"The current liquidity and investor demand within the London market presented an ideal time for us to seek an exit in line with our original business plan."

Humbert Pang, head of the China division at Gaw Capital Partners, which advised on the sale, added it was "seeing more opportunities to assist Chinese institutional investors going overseas."

The Lloyd's building, which took eight years to construct, is noted for its futuristic design which includes service features such as pipes and lifts on its exterior.

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Fallon To Unveil £2.5bn Royal Mail Flotation

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

The Government will this week fire the formal starting-gun on the most ambitious privatisation in decades by unveiling plans for a £2.5bn autumn stock market listing of Royal Mail.

Sky News can exclusively reveal that Michael Fallon, the Business Minister, is expected to disclose the news in a statement to the House of Commons. The statement has been provisionally scheduled for Wednesday although the timing could still change, according to people close to the situation.

Mr Fallon's announcement will end any lingering suggestions that the Government could abandon plans for a flotation of Royal Mail in the face of escalating public hostility from trade unions.

The Communication Workers' Union rejected an 8.6pc basic pay rise offer – spread over three years – from the company's management last week, a deal which Mr Fallon described as "pretty reasonable".

It will also confirm the widely-held expectation that the Government wants to pursue a listing in which members of the public can participate, although there may be restrictions on the number of shares for which individuals can apply.

Mr Fallon had previously said the Coalition's "preferred route" to injecting capital into Royal Mail was a stock market flotation but insisted that other options remained under consideration.

Last week, the Government hired three investment banks to add to an existing quartet of advisers that will work on the share sale. They are expected to earn up to £15m in total, a relatively small fee pool for such a sizeable listing.

It is unclear whether this week's statement will include full details of the terms of an initial public offering (IPO), such as the mechanism through which Royal Mail's 130,000 staff will receive shares in the company.

Sources said the Government was leaning towards the option of giving the equity to staff for free rather than at a discount.

However, Sky News understands that the employee share offer, which will take place over a period of some months, will only include those Royal Mail staff who are based in the UK.

Ministers and officials have been deliberating over whether the roughly 13,000 people who are employed by General Logistics Systems (GLS), Royal Mail's European parcels business, should be involved in a staff share ownership scheme.

The Government has been sensitive to potential accusations that they are orchestrating a share giveaway worth hundreds of millions of pounds from which thousands of French, German and Italian citizens would stand to benefit.

GLS, which delivers more than 360 million parcels to 220,000 customers every year, is one of the most profitable parcel delivery businesses in the world. Its earnings have been one of few financial bright spots during the restructuring of Royal Mail during the last decade.

The company has staged a significant financial turnaround under the leadership of Donald Brydon, its chairman, and Moya Greene, the Canadian who was parachuted in to lead the restructuring in 2010.

Royal Mail's annual report, which could also be published this week, is expected to show that she will receive an annual bonus worth almost £500,000 after nearly trebling the company's operating profit to £403m last year.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Royal Mail both declined to comment.

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Beazley Chair Holt Leads Race For TSB Post

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

A former Lloyds TSB executive is a frontrunner to take the helm of one of Britain's biggest retail banks when it lists on the stock market in 2014.

Sky News understands that Dennis Holt, who was on the main board of Lloyds between 2000 and 2001, has emerged as a leading candidate to become chairman of TSB's network of more than 630 branches.

TSB is being separated from Lloyds Banking Group - in which UK taxpayers hold a 39% stake - under European state aid rules, and is expected to be floated as a public company following the collapse of a controversial deal to sell the network to the Co-Operative Group.

Mr Holt, whose roles at Lloyds TSB included running its insurance arm and its retail banking operations, went on to run the UK division of Axa, the French insurance giant. Since retiring as a full-time executive, he has taken a number of boardroom roles, including the chairmanship of Beazley, the specialist insurer.

His appointment as chairman of TSB is not yet a foregone conclusion, and he remains in discussions with Lloyds' board about the move. A number of other candidates also remain in the frame for the post, insiders said on Monday.

If it is confirmed, Mr Holt's appointment would resolve one of the important challenges facing Lloyds as it prepares to float TSB on the stock market. The size of the network, which would rank it in the ten biggest retail banks in Britain, would be likely to catapult the company straight into the FTSE-250 index.

Originally set a deadline of the end of this year to complete the disposal of the branches, Lloyds has appealed to Brussels for more time to offload TSB, which it has codenamed Project Verde.

The collapse of the Co-Op deal caused embarrassment within the mutual, at Lloyds and at the Treasury, where George Osborne, the Chancellor, had enthusiastically backed a transaction.

The mutual had beaten off competition from NBNK Investments, a specialist buyout vehicle, to be selected as the preferred buyer of the branches. In recent months, Lord Levene, the former chairman of NBNK, has waged a public campaign against Lloyds' board over the decision not to pursue his offer.

Paul Pester, chief executive of the Verde network, was lined up to run the Co-Op's banking arm as part of their agreement and is now likely to stay on as the boss of the quoted TSB business.

Lloyds declined to comment on the appointment of a chairman of TSB, which could be announced as soon as next week.

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Bad Bankers Face Criminal Charges And Jail

Reckless bankers could face criminal charges and jail after the Chancellor pledged to implement most of the recommendations produced by the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.

George Osborne is also backing calls for tighter control of bonuses but he has rejected the Commission's recommendation that UK Financial Investments (UKFI) - the body that handles the state's holdings in the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group - be abolished.

In a statement, the Government set out key proposals from the commission to be added to the banking reform Bill in the autumn.

These are to include a new offence of "reckless misconduct" for senior bankers, with those found guilty facing a possible jail sentence.

Lloyds then RBS face returns to private ownership after taxpayer bailouts

Mr Osborne also backed moves to allow bonuses to be deferred for up to 10 years and enable 100% "claw back" of bonuses where banks are propped up by the state.

Further measures, designed to improve competition, will include asking the new payments regulator to look into making it easier to switch between accounts, and beefing up the role of the new Prudential Regulation Authority.

Labour has accused the Government of ducking radical reforms and is demanding that ministers explain how it will protect taxpayers' interests when the state-owned stakes in Lloyds and RBS are sold off.

The commission, chaired by Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, was set up by the Chancellor in the wake of the financial crisis and the Libor rate-rigging scandal.

Mr Osborne said the main recommendations of its report, published last month, were being delivered.

He said cultural reform was necessary in banking "to move the whole sector from rescue to recovery and ensure that UK banks demonstrate the highest standards, and are able to support business and drive economic growth."

He added: "The Government is determined to raise standards across the banking industry to create a stronger and safer banking system."

Business Secretary Vince Cable said: "If we're to get our economy back on track, we need to get the banking system back on track first.

"Creating new powers to jail bankers who are reckless with other people's money and getting more competition into banking, is a start."

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Teresa Heinz Kerry's Condition Upgraded

Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of US Secretary of State John Kerry and heiress to the ketchup company fortune, has been upgraded to fair condition but remains in a Boston hospital.

The 74-year-old was flown to Massachusetts General Hospital on Sunday after first being taken by ambulance to hospital on Nantucket, where the couple has a home.

She was originally listed in critical but stable condition.

Glen Johnson, a spokesman for Mr Kerry, said doctors upgraded Mrs Heinz Kerry's condition after she underwent further evaluation.

Teresa Heinz Kerry and John Kerry were married in 1995

Neither the family nor hospital officials have released any more details about her medical emergency,

However, a person in close contact with the family told the AP news agency that they saw her exhibiting symptoms consistent with some sort of seizure.

Mrs Heinz Kerry was previously treated for breast cancer in late 2009.

Mr Johnson said Mr Kerry and other family members are at the hospital.

Mrs Heinz Kerry is the widow of former US Senator John Heinz who died in April 1991 when a helicopter collided with a plane over a Pennsylvania school.

Seven people, including two children, perished in the accident.

She went on to marry John Kerry in 1995.

She enthusiastically participated in her husband's campaign for president in 2004 and became known for her strong opinions, sometimes attracting as much attention as the candidate.

Before Sunday's emergency, the Secretary of State had been at the Nantucket home since returning from a nearly two-week diplomatic trip to the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

State Department officials said this week's schedule, including meetings with senior Chinese officials and a possible trip back to Israel, may now change pending developments with his wife's health.

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