It has been a bad 24 hours for the Co-operative Society, though by no means the worst in its history.
Department store and supermarket owner the John Lewis Group has usurped the Co-op’s position as Britain’s biggest worker/member-owned business in terms of sales.
The Waitrose owner’s sales in the year to the end of March totalled £10.9bn, just ahead of the Co-op’s £10.8bn.
The Co-op’s clout has been lessened by the near collapse of its banking arm that precipitated the sale of 80% of the business.
The bank’s problems are by no means behind it, either, with the bank revealing it will start talks with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Bank of England next month on the scale of the fines it will face over regulatory lapses between 2008 and 2013.
The FCA is set for a busy time as it is launching an investigation into the accounts of Quindell (LON:QPP), the insurance claim processing group.
"The company will co-operate fully with the investigation," Quindell said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Quindell has asked for trading in its shares to be suspended while it conducts its own review into historic accounting issues.
The group said subsequent changes to its accounting policies would "materially impact previously reported results for the year ended 31 December 2013 and the six months ended 30 June 2014."
The regulators are tipped to take more than a passing interest in the mooted merger between Ladbrokes (LON:LAD) and the bookmaking business of Gala Coral.
The deal may fall at the first hurdle, suggests a headline in the Guardian that adheres to one Fleet Street tradition – a gentle pun – while eschewing another alleged Guardian tradition – a typo.
If the competition authorities do get involved, it would not be the first time they had looked askance at a merger of Ladbrokes and Coral’s; a previous attempt to merge was blocked in 1998, and though the betting landscape has changed a lot since then, the Competition and Markets Authority’s raising of a red flag over the takeover of 99p Stores by Poundland (LON:PLND) suggests the watchdog is still acutely conscious of how things look on the high street.
On to the small cap space and a quick look at what private investors are turning into.
Brady (LON:BRY) revealed a top tier multi-asset global trading house has selected the company to support the global trading and risk management of the trading house’s physical and derivatives operations.
Brady said it was a “significant contract win” but gave no other details of the value of the contract, leaving … er … trading houses to guess what Brady’s shares might be worth now; current think is “about 3% more than they were last night”.
Mediterranean-focused upstream gas company Sound Oil (LON:SOU) is wanted after it revealed the results of its recent open offer.
The company’s shareholders snapped up 15.6mln shares at 19p a pop.
Lastly, medical devices firm Deltex Medical (LON:DEMG) should probably reconsider updating the market on any of its activities.
Yesterday, the shares retreated after a regulation announcement about the appointment of a chief financial officer, while today good news about new UK government research & development funding being secured has prompted another mark down in the shares.
The grant covers 35% of eligible costs on a defined project aimed at developing and commercialising an innovative approach to the non-invasive acquisition of haemodynamic data from patients.
Deltex estimates that the grant will be worth up to around £170,000 between June 2015 and planned completion of the project in the second half of 2016.