You know how it is. You sign up to join a club – a gym, say – and then think better of it.
Pure Gym knows exactly how you feel, as it has yanked plans to list its shares on the London Stock Exchange.
“No pain, no gain” may be a cliché among gym rats, but in the gymnasia owner's case the current market conditions were deemed a bit too tough to contemplate.
Chief executive Humphrey Cobbold, who sounds more like he should be in a Charles Dickens novel than a board room – or a gym, for that matter – said: “Given the challenging IPO [initial public offering] market conditions, the board has decided not to proceed with a listing despite the strong interest shown by potential investors.”
So, the punters were up for it, but the directors were worried they might have to set the bar too low to get the flotation away.
Oh well; they can always drown their sorrows with a bit of pure gin.
Jamie Nimmo, formerly of this parish, is thinking along the same lines as us.
Confused by Pure Gym shelving float. Blames short-term conditions, then says not in the long-term interests of shareholders. Hmmm...
— Jamie Nimmo (@JamieNimmo63) October 11, 2016
If Hard Brexit is peanut brittle, what is soft Brexit?
“Hard Brexit” sounds like a brand of peanut brittle – not that anyone knows what peanut brittle is these days. I am not sure I know what “hard Brexit” is, either, but I do know that, judging by leaked papers, Her Majesty’s Treasury estimated before the referendum on European Union (EU) membership that UK gross domestic product would be between 5.4% and 9.5% lower after 15 years outside the European Union, assuming no similar trading arrangement was put in place.
"The net impact on public sector receipts - assuming no contributions to the EU and current receipts from the EU are replicated in full - would be a loss of between £38bn and £66bn per year after 15 years, driven by the smaller size of the economy," the bean counters at the Treasury estimated.
The leaked papers have reignited the old Brexit-induced animal spirits, only this time the ruck is not between “Bremainers” and “Brexiteers”, but between those in favour of “hard Brexit” (peanut brittle) and “soft exit” (Fry’s Turkish Delight, perhaps).
Oh well, at least it has kept Wayne Rooney off the front pages, and sparked this caustic comment from Lord Heseltine, appearing before a parliamentary committee.
Referring to Messrs Johnson, Davis and Fox, Heseltine said the following:
“We have three ministers now in charge, a brilliant set of appointments in my view because they can come up with the answers which have escaped me,” Heseltine said.
“The ability to trade seems to me an important part of our future ... We have to find places to trade, and if there are all these markets that have escaped the attention of British exporters, it will be marvellous to have it pointed out to them by the new minister responsible,” he added.
So, inter-planetary trade it is, and say hello to the Merchant of Venus.
Temps and perms
In a development that shocked absolutely nobody, recruitment firm PageGroup PLC (LON:PAGE) said the old employment scene in Britain has been a bit skewiff since the Brexit vote.
Explaining why gross profit from its UK operations was down 4.7% year-on-year in the third quarter, the company’s chief executive, Steve Ingham, said: “In the UK, confidence levels remained fragile and below levels seen earlier in the year.”
"At the moment they're slightly fewer jobs and (firms are) taking slightly longer to turn jobs into new appointments,” Ingham told news agency Reuters, according to an article written by Esha Vaish in Bengaluru and edited by Kate Holton and Mark Potter somewhere else (probably).
Interestingly, after the Brexit vote, Page saw a sharp upturn in the temporary placement market in the UK.
Of course, in the modern age, all jobs are temporary jobs.