After the separation, announced last August, the North American grocery business will operate as an independent, publicly traded firm under the name Kraft Foods Group Inc.

Dave Brearton, Kraft’s CFO and executive vice president, welcomed the IRS ruling saying the group is on track to launch the two new companies before the end of this year.

The remaining global snacks business, which makes the other publicly traded company, generates annual revenues of some USD32bn (EUR25.2bn), while the North American grocery unit has sales of around USD16bn, Kraft has said, adding that the break-up would allow each of the businesses to pursue their growth freely.

The group views the planned split as the next logical step in its development, expected to enhance performance and generate increased long-term shareholder value, Kraft Foods said in August 2011.

The spin-off is still subject to a number of conditions, including the execution of related inter-company agreements and the final approval from the board of Kraft Foods Inc, the company said today.

With a portfolio of snacks including biscuits, confectionery, beverages, cheese, grocery products and convenient meals, sold in around 170 countries globally, Kraft Foods Inc made revenues of USD54.4bn last year.

AIG Century, which held 7.56% in AIRE before announcing plans to launch its EUR17.00 per share buyout offer on 30 April, said today it had struck agreements with more of the target’s shareholders and secured about 69.5% in AIRE.

By 30 April, the buyer had received commitments from AIRE shareholders, which together with its own stake in the target firm brought its total ownership level to around 31.8%.

The revised price is a premium of 35.69% to AIRE’s closing on 27 April, the last trading day before the offer was announced, and 87.4% above its estimated volume weighted average price for the six months to 27 April.

AIG Century said it would publish the final terms of the buyout offer in the offer document as soon as it receives clearance from the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority.

The acceptance period will start after that approval is secured.

The buyer expected to publish the detailed offer documentation today, after filing with regulator BaFin on 4 May, it has said.

With the document made public, the acceptance period for the EUR22.50 (USD28.61) a share cash offer begins, subejct to Fresenius reaching an ownership level of 90% by deadline.

The group, seeking to boost its hospital business, is offering some EUR3.1bn in total for Rhoen-Klinikum which it wants to combine with its own Helios unit and create the largest private hospital operator in Germany with around EUR6bn in annual revenues and significant cost and growth synergies, the buyer has said.

When announcing the offer, Fresenius said it aimed to wrap up the deal in the third quarter of 2012. It would finance it with a syndicated loan, a bond issue and up to EUR1bn in equity instruments.

Eugen Munch, owner of 12.45% in Rhoen-Klinikum, has pledged his stock to the deal, saying he would recommend the premium offer to other shareholders.

The target company, running 53 hospitals and 39 healthcare centres, reported EUR2.6bn in sales and a net income of EUR161m last year.

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By rescuing this firm, Wilmington secures the continuing employment of its headcount as well as the future support for the operations of one of its own units, said Charles Brady, chief executive officer of the buyer.

The company took over the business and certain assets of Millennium ADMP today, through its wholly-owned unit Wilmington Millennium Ltd. It intends to pay for the acquisition using its existing debt facilities.

Millennium ADMP offers information and services to the insurance market along with data and sales services to Wilmington’s Smee & Ford Ltd unit. The business had profits before interest, tax and amortisation of GBP400,000 on a turnover of GBP5.9m for the fiscal year to 30 June 2011. Its gross assets amount to GBP900,000.

Wilmington Group serves professional business markets such as accountancy and tax, banking, charities, financial compliance, healthcare, insurance, law and pensions.

Groups of hackers like Anonymous have drawn attention to just how vulnerable information is when it is stored online and just how much havoc can be wreaked in the course of a cyber-attack. In 2010, following the WikiLeaks controversy, the ad-hoc group of ‘internet vigilantes’ hacked sites including Mastercard after they ceased allowing donations to Julian Assange’s controversial site.

Of course, not all illegal online activity of this nature is performed with ‘freedom of speech’ or grand moral principles in mind. Often, plain old greed is the motivation for cyber-crime. With millions of users’ details in online systems, a successful online criminal could stand to make significant profits from this information.

Cyber liability insurance is designed to protect against 1^st and 3^rd party risks which e-businesses are vulnerable to. This relatively fledgling form of insurance will protect you and your business against issues like:

• Intellectual property infringement
• Issues surrounding infringement of privacy
• The transmission of viruses
• & other issues that could be transmitted from 1^st to 3^rd parties online

Areas like intellectual property infringement might sound like the sort of area covered by professional indemnity insurance, whilst virus transmission could well be fitted into a public liability insurance policy. However, as of yet, traditional forms of insurance do not offer cover for the huge raft of possible risks that exist on the web.

As consumer awareness and hacking techniques develop and grow, there is only going to be more call for Constructaquote liability insurance that protects businesses that have an online component.

For 21^st Century businesses this is simply not something you can ignore and is something any company with a website, internal or external email needs to start thinking about.

Written by Ceri Harris.

The UK government’s rescue of Northern Rock could end up costing taxpayers GBP2bn, a report from the National Audit Office (NAO) claimed today.

A decision by the Treasury in early 2009 to support mortgage lending by splitting Northern Rock in two was reasonable at the time but the spending watchdog said that it was based on a business plan prepared by Northern Rock management “which events quickly showed to have been optimistic”. In addition, the Treasury committed itself to the split without further detailed analysis of the consequences for the taxpayer, the NAO said.

Nevertheless, the alternative of selling the deposits and closing down the business was unlikely to have been significantly better in financial terms and would not have delivered mortgage lending.

The struggling bank was taken into public ownership in 2008 at the start of the financial crisis. In January 2010 the business was split into a “good” bank, Northern Rock plc, including customer accounts and GBP1.4bn of taxpayer equity, and a “bad” bank, Northern Rock (Asset Management) plc, which manages the assets and liabilities retained in the public sector.

Northern Rock plc, a stand-alone bank taking deposits and providing mortgages, was sold to Virgin Money in late 2011 and the NAO said today that it expects the taxpayer to lose GBP480m of the original GBP1.4bn investment in the company.

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, commented that a sale of Northern Rock plc at the earliest opportunity was the best option to minimise losses on the GBP1.4bn of public money invested in the bank. Ultimately, though, there could be a net cost for the taxpayer of some GBP2bn by the time the publicly-owned assets of the business are wound down.

The NAO stressed, however, that this cost should be seen as part of the overall cost of securing the benefits of financial stability during the financial crisis.

Much of the exported pork will be parts of the animal that are popular in China but go to waste in the UK because they are not widely eaten by British consumers, such as offal, trotters and ears.

Agriculture and Food Minister Jim Paice, who agreed the deal with the Chinese Government during a trade mission to the country, said that China’s rapidly expanding middle class has an appetite for Western goods. In particular they are eating more meat and Chinese supply cannot meet the demand.

Welcoming the deal, British Pig Executive (BPEX) chairman Stewart Houston said that pork is the most popular meat in China and some of the cuts which are less popular here command a premium over there. The deal comes after several years of work with the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the British embassy in Beijing, he added.

As well as promoting British businesses offering breeding pigs and pork during the six-day mission to China, the Agriculture and Food Minister is expected to work on building relationships with key retailers and importers to help make it easier for British producers to sell their goods in the country. He is also scheduled to meet key Chinese officials to develop trade relationships and seek out further export opportunities.

UK firms already export a variety of food and drink products to China, such as breakfast cereals, biscuits and whisky, but as Chinese consumers’ tastes change there is the potential to provide a wide range of products, the minister claimed.

Defra said that it hopes to use the experience of developing the pork deal to open up markets for other British products and services. According to the BBC, negotiations over lamb and beef exports may follow soon.

DED has showed that the recovery in the Gulf country is now well on its way – a stark contrast with the situation of troubled Eurozone countries.

The governmental institute recorded in the first quarter of the year an increase in trade licences by 27 per cent over the same period last year.

This has been interpreted as a sign of mounting business confidence, a trend which was also noted earlier this month by HSBC, which highlighted a 10 per cent increase on the number of visitors to Dubai over the previous year.

At the same time, reports by HSBC Holdings also showed that, in the month of April, non-oil private sector business reached a 10-month high thanks to new business orders and more staff being hired.

This was accompanied by increasing sales revenues and an encouraging atmosphere surrounding services and trading sectors.

On a more general level, Dubai’s GDP is now expected to grow by 4 to 5 per cent this year, a number that exceeds previous predictions of 2.5 per cent.

Most of the credit goes now to Dubai’s thriving trade sector which, combined with tourism and five more sectors represents 96 per cent of the country’s GDP, and is a symbol of the country’s expanding business opportunities.

Mohammed Shael Al Saadi, chief executive of business registration and licensing at DED, also welcomed the data, and said that it will drive “growing interest in engaging in diverse business activities in Dubai”.

Al Saadi words were followed by chief economist at Dubai’s Economic Council, Ali Tawfiq Al Sadeq, who added: “Growth this year will be supported by expansion in overall economic activities and strong performance of key factors. This was shown in the first quarter of 2012.”

WPP did not disclose the value of the deal. It is part of the group’s goal to develop its services in rapidly-growing and key markets and sectors, as well as to enhance its digital media capabilities, the stake buyer said.

Moscow-headquartered Grape was established by Andrey Vinograd and Boris Ryss in 2002 and is now led by chief executive officer Andrei Anischenko. The agency, with a staff of 124, concentrates on website and social media strategies. In 2011, it had consolidated unaudited revenues of nearly RUB425m (USD13.6m/EUR10.7m) and gross assets of almost RUB216m as at the year end.

WPP is a marketing communications services specialist with units operating in the advertising, media investment management, consumer insight, public relations and affairs, among other sectors.

The group has a total headcount of about 158,000, including around 1,900 employees in Russia and nearly 6,000 workers across the central and eastern European markets as a whole. Its total revenues amounted to USD16bn (EUR12.6bn) in 2011, including USD4.8bn in digital revenues. In Russia alone, the total figure surpassed USD200m last year.

The Irish group’s objective is to have its digital revenue account for 35-40% of its total amount in the next five years, it said.

Japan’s main share index closed down by almost 3% and shares in Hong Kong lost 1.4% of their value. The market opened down in London this morning, sliding by 1%.

“There is no resolution to the [European] problem yet, and we also we had very disappointing US data, so overall, it’s negative and further denting market sentiment,” Frances Cheung, a senior strategist, at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong, told the BBC website.

Late yesterday, credit rating agency Moody’s cut the ratings of 16 banks, causing more worries over the Spanish financial services industry, which is heavily exposed to the country’s troubled building sector.

Depositors in Spain and Greece have been withdrawing money from their bank accounts. Yesterday, Madrid denied rumours that customers had withdrawn over EUR1bn from nationalised bank Bankia, which was taken over by the state last week.

According to media reports earlier this, Greek depositors took out EUR700m of their money and practically leaving some Greek banks insolvent.