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Mark Allen’s beloved Stoke City may be on a roll — the Potters are unbeaten in the Premier League and FA Cup so far this year — but the company he runs is showing less certain form. Shares in Dairy Crest, the mid-cap maker of Clover, Country Life butter and Cathedral City cheese, have fallen by 17 per cent Mbt since its first-half results in November, against an unchanged FTSE all-share index and a 6 per cent gain for Robert Wiseman Dairies, its closest listed peer.

But yesterday’s third-quarter results conveyed little sign of weakness. Sales of Dairy Crest’s five leading brands, which also include Frijj flavoured milk and St Hubert Omega 3 spreads in France — are up about 10 per cent on the year, with the company citing the benefit of strong “non-promotional” (or higher-margin) sales during December. Its dairies division is also faring well, helped by recent cost-cutting, the renewal of big supermarket contracts, such as that with J Sainsbury, and brisk take-up of milk&more, its doorstep milk operation. And tight management of cash is making a dent in its borrowings: net debt is expected to have fallen to beneath £350 million by March 31, against £416 million a year earlier. The result is that, echoing the pattern of previous trading updates, full-year forecasts were nudged ghd hair straighteners modestly higher. Royal Bank of Scotland, Dairy Crest’s joint stockbroker, now expects pre-tax profits of £83 million this year, and £87.5 million next.

That advance must be considered creditable, given Dairy Crest’s increased expenditure on advertising (an additional £5 million in the second half) and stepped-up investment programme. Rather than jettisoning its dairies (which last year made profits of only £7.9 million on sales of £1.1 billion), it is committing an extra £75 million in capital expenditure on its four plants over the next three years — largely on efficiency improvements and product development. Such an outlay will hamper the pace of future debt reduction but should be seen as part and parcel of competing more effectively Mbt with Scandinavia’s Arla Foods and Robert Wiseman, whose facilities are more up to date.

Challenges remain. Dairy Crest last reported a pension deficit of £178 million, which is likely to have been inflated further by lower discount rates; moderating food price inflation may make supermarkets tougher buyers; and the long-term future of doorstep delivery is unclear. The corollary is that lower raw milk prices will boost profits from cheese.

The bigger picture is that Dairy Crest has been doing all the right things since last year’s enforced dividend cut — which, even so, has left the shares yielding a respectable 5.4 per cent ghd straighteners. At 341p, or seven times next year’s earnings, the shares’ recent underperformance should be nearing its end. Buy.

The multibillion-dollar alleged fraud masterminded by Allen Stanford, the American financier, has rocked Vantis, the listed accountancy firm, it emerged ghd hair straighteners yesterday.

Auditors for Vantis’s interim results warned shareholders that “material uncertainties associated with receipts from the Stanford insolvency … may cast significant doubt on the company’s ability to continue as a going concern”.

Ernst & Young, which refused to comment on its client last night, cautioned that “the validity of the going concern basis depends on the group being able to operate within its current ghd banking facilities and covenants which requires the successful outcome of the above”.

Vantis told shareholders that it had been unable to collect fees for advisory work carried out on the liquidation of Stanford International Bank over the past six months, because the United States and Switzerland had, in effect, frozen the assets. In a statement, the accounting firm said: “The group is confident that outstanding time costs will be recovered in due course but the various legal actions mean that timing is uncertain.”

Vantis has had to review its financial position and has renegotiated banking facilities to increase working capital; net debt stood at £40.4 million at the end of October. It has also begun a drastic cost-cutting programme, which may include redundancies. The firm has refused to comment on claims that it allowed itself to become overexposed on Stanford work, but privately it blames the length of the litigation process, the complex, cross-border nature of the Mbt liquidation and the fact that the Stanford assets over which it does have control are illiquid.

Mike Wheeler, its chairman, said: “The group has initiated cost reduction and working capital improvement programmes, which are expected to deliver improved performance in the new financial year commencing May 1, 2010. We expect further growth in BRS [its business recovery division], but the performance of BATS [advisory and tax] will be constrained until the UK economy improves.”

For the six months to the end of October 2009, Vantis fell into the red by £9.03 million, against a profit of £3.24 million for the same period in 2008, after exceptional items and amortisation.

In October, two of its senior executives were charged with a multimillionpound tax scam involving celebrities, sportsmen and other wealthy clients exploiting charitable donations. The two executives have faced charges over claims that they set up a sophisticated scheme that HM Revenue and ghd hair straighteners Customs (HMRC) alleges evaded tax on £219m of income. HMRC said that five people, including David Perrin and Roy Faichney, senior Vantis managers, would face charges of “cheating Her Majesty and the public revenue”.

The tax authority claims that “over £4.5 million from the proceeds of the fraud found its way to offshore bank accounts controlled by some of the defendants as part of a manoeuvre to disguise their liability for personal tax on the money”.

In November, Mr Wheeler, a former senior partner at KPMG, became non-executive chairman, and Stephen Smith, a consultant, became interim finance director. Paul Jackson remained as chief executive Ghd.

THE chairman of Premier Foods is preparing to quit after six years at the helm Mbt of Britain’s biggest food producer.

David Kappler, the former HMV chairman, who has run the Premier board since the Hovis owner floated on the stock market in 2004, is expected to stand down at the group’s annual meeting this year.

An announcement confirming Kappler’s planned departure could come as early as this week. Premier is expected to appoint headhunters soon to search for his replacement.

The news comes amid testing times for Premier. The company, which also owns Mr Kipling cakes and Bisto gravy, has seen 14% wiped off its market value in the past two weeks after a disappointing Mbt shoes trading update, which warned that profits would be at the bottom end of City forecasts.

Investor confidence in the company remains brittle since Premier was forced to carry out a dramatic capital restructuring and £400m rescue rights issue last year to slash its huge debt pile.

The City had thought the company was back on track after a series of product launches from some of its biggest brands. But the news that profits would be worse than many analysts had hoped for has dented sentiment again.

City sources familiar with Premier Foods said that Kappler’s departure was entirely voluntary and did not follow pressure from shareholders. He still sits on the board of Shire, the ghd hair straighteners pharmaceuticals group, where he is the senior independent director, and Intercontinental Hotels.

There had been suggestions that Kappler’s relationship with Robert Schofield, Premier’s chief executive, had deteriorated after a very difficult spell for the business but insiders have dismissed the claims.

Speculation has also resurfaced that Schofield will come under pressure to leave unless the performance of the business improves.

For now, though, it is thought Schofield retains the backing of the biggest shareholders, which include Warburg Pincus, the private-equity house. Analysts at Investec believe that despite the latest stumble, there is plenty of upside in Premier’s share price. Martin Deboo, its food analyst, has set a 12-month target price of 45p. The shares closed at 32.24p on Friday, valuing the group at £780m.

Premier was spawned after a buyout of Hillsdown Holdings, a canned foods business, by Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, an American private-equity Mbt company, in 1999. It was renamed Premier Foods and set about building a portfolio of British brands.

In 2002 it bought a division of Nestlé, which brought household names like Branston Pickle, Sarsons vinegar and Sun-Pat peanut butter into the fold.

The business was listed in July 2004, with an initial market value of £526m. The following year it bought Bird’s custard and Angel Delight.

In 2006 Premier agreed a £460m deal to buy Campbell’s UK and Irish business, adding Oxo, Batchelors and Homepride. It was the acquisition of RHM in March 2007 that transformed the ghd straighteners business but also saddled it with huge debts.

RHM — which owned Hovis, Sharwoods, Cadbury’s cakes, Bisto and Mr Kipling — was bought for £1.2 billion.

At first blush, the US GDP data for the last three months of 2009 was exceptionally good, “blow the doors off” good. In reality, this first estimate — which, as in the UK, will be revised twice — was rather less dramatic. Getting on for three fifths of growth in the quarter was due to a sharp slowdown in the rate at which MBT Shoe businesses stopped running down stocks and began rebuilding their inventory levels.

Unfortunately, a recovery in inventories usually provides only a temporary lift to economic activity, akin to what has been dubbed, by Mervyn King among others, as the “Honda effect” — the one-off boost resulting from a mothballed factory resuming production. Strip out inventory rebuilding and the US economy grew during the quarter at an annualised rate of only 2.2 per cent, better than the third quarter of 2009 but not really enough to stimulate much job creation and reduce US unemployment from the current rate of 10 per cent.

A more optimistic assessment has it that once inventory levels begin being rebuilt, warehouses start restocking and factories crank up production, eventually leading to higher consumer spending. And here there is genuine cause for optimism. Business investment grew for the first time since the second quarter of 2008. Spending on equipment and software, a sure sign of future economic activity, rose by more than 13 per cent,ghd hair straighteners.

More to the point, with imports growing at a slower rate than expected, nearly all the investment will have been in American goods. That has to be encouraging, as does the point that this looks to be a private sector recovery, since spending by the US Government actually fell during the quarter. How different from the UK, where, without spending by the NHS, even the pitiful 0.1 per cent growth figure reported on Tuesday might not have been possible.

Other positive aspects to yesterday’s figures include the fact that US export growth is outpacing imports, pointing to an improvement in the US trade deficit, while household savings also continue to improve.

Elsewhere yesterday, there was a strong Mbt number on the Chicago purchasing managers index (PMI), another forward-looking indicator. It rose for a fifth successive month.

With all this going on, a more positive response might have been expected from the markets, but the reaction was rather muted. Why? Quite simply, confidence is draining away again from investors, many of whom have lost their appetite for risk. Signs that China’s Government is so worried about inflation that it has told banks to ease back on new lending have certainly contributed to this. So, too, has some of the recent left-leaning rhetoric emerging from President Obama and some US senators. A third factor is the Greek debt crisis, even though, with Greece accounting for only 2 per cent of eurozone GDP, not everyone is convinced of this.

It all points to an uneasy first half of 2010 for ghd hair straighteners  markets. Genuine evidence of firms committing to new capital projects and to hiring new staff will be the antidote.

Sir David Jones is to step down as chairman of JJB Mbt Sports because of ill health.

The veteran retailer had intended to stay on at the sportswear group after handing over executive duties to Keith Jones, the incoming chief executive. But yesterday, in a trading update detailing depressed sales and margins, the company said that John Clare, the former chief executive of DSG International and senior independent director of JJB, will become acting chairman. It also appointed Sir Matthew Pinsent, the Olympic gold medal winning rower, to the board, alongside David Adams, executive chairman of Jessops, the camera equipment retailer, which has also been steered through painful ghd hair straighteners restructuring.

Sir David, who was appointed executive chairman in January last year, became embroiled in controversy over a personal loan from Mike Ashley, who controls JJB’s rival Sports Direct. Sir David has since repaid the £1.5 million loan.

Sir David, who is credited with saving Next, the fashion retailer, from collapse in the early 1990s, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1982. A friend said that his condition had worsened in recent months. He will remain at JJB as a non-executive director and will not receive a payoff Mbt.

The board accepted his resignation “reluctantly” and said that he had led the rescue of JJB over the past year. Sir David took drastic measures to keep JJB in business. It sold its gym business to Dave Whelan, JJB’s founder; secured a vital company voluntary agreement (CVA) with landlords; put two failing footwear businesses into administration, and raised £100 million last autumn.

Like-for-like sales at JJB fell 28 per cent in the year to January 24, as the company continued to suffer from low stocking levels brought about by suppliers’ ghd straighteners refusal to trade with the company when it was at its lowest point last year. Revenue fell by 51 per cent.

It had long been groomed for sale or flotation, lovingly deloused and scrubbed up to look its best. The result yesterday was a sale price that made Pets at Home the best in discount Mbt shoes show.

Britain’s biggest pet food and equipment retailer was bought by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), the New York-based private equity firm, for £955 million in a deal that is expected to set a benchmark for other disposals.

Bridgepoint Capital had valued the business at £700 million, with four private equity groups placing intitial bids greater than £800 million.

KKR’s bid equates to a valuation of about ten times next year’s earnings. Nick Coulter, a retail analyst at Numis Securities, said that the valuation was “punchy” and showed private equity groups’ greater willingness to take on debt. He added that a longer time horizon than that of the quoted market — KKR claims that its average holding is seven years — meant that KKR was able to present a more attractive option than an IPO.

KKR is understood to have financed the deal Mbt equally between debt and equity, suggesting debt of about five times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.

The deal marks a successful exit for Bridgepoint, which bought the business for about £230 million in 2004. It was reported to have been considering selling or floating Pets at Home in 2007, before the credit crunch brought M&A activity to a halt.

Onlookers likely to have taken note of the deal include Apax and Permira, the owners of New Look, which are considering floating the retailer, and John Hargreaves, the owner of Matalan.

Pets at Home has 252 stores and Matt Davies, its chief executive ghd straighteners, has said that there was potential for up to 400 out-of-town stores — a figure that KKR is believed to consider conservative.

The company is KKR’s first British purchase since it bought Northgate Information Solutions, the IT company, in December 2007 for £593 million. In the same year it secured the buyout of Alliance Boots jointly with Stefano Pessina.

Pets at Home has grown rapidly through the recession. It reported like-for-like sales for the six weeks to January 7 up 6.7 per cent, a slight slowdown from the 9.8 per cent growth seen in the first 41 weeks.

It reported underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of £70 million on sales of £404 million last year.

KKR’s offer is understood to be at the upper end of Bridgepoint’s IPO range — without presenting any of the risk or delay in returning cash to Bridgepoint’s MBT Shoes investors. The offer was financed by Nomura, Calyon and KKR Capital. Nomura also advised KKR. Bridgepoint was advised by Rothschild.

Pets at Home was founded in 1991 by Anthony Preston, a pet food wholesaler. The company’s management, which includes Luke Mayhew, the chairman of the British Retail Consortium, who was formerly the former managing director of John Lewis, will receive more than £100 million between them.

It is a second windfall for ghd hair straighteners  Mr Preston, who still sits on the board. He is believed to be reininvesting in the business under KKR.

The Cheshire-based company employs about 4,200 and has been growing by about 20 stores a year since the Bridgepoint acquisition.

Britain’s water companies may have to cut thousands of jobs as executives draw up plans to meet stringent new price controls set by Ofwat, the industry ghd straighteners regulator.

A deadline for Britain’s 21 water companies to appeal against the Ofwat ruling — which sets the amount that they can charge households and invest in network upgrades over the next five years — expired last night. All but a handful have chosen to accept the settlement, triggering what industry experts believe will be a string of redundancies to cope with sharply reduced investment.

United Utilities, one of the largest British water suppliers, with almost 9,000 staff, has said already that it would cut 500 positions by the end of March. Pennon, the owner of South West Water, has also refused to rule out compulsory redundancies to drive down costs. Thames Water and Anglian are among other MBT Shoes companies thought to be considering cutting staff in some administrative roles.

Richard Laikin, water specialist at Ernst & Young, said that these would be merely the opening salvoes as the industry scrambled to adjust to more austere spending. “It’s inevitable that these companies are considering headcount reductions,” he said. “Ofwat is effectively asking them to find 10 per cent to 15 per cent overall efficiency savings … Different companies will find different ways to achieve that, but clearly cutting headcount will play an important role.”

Ofwat’s final decision in November called for an average cut in household bills of 1 per cent by 2015. The water companies had asked for an average increase of £31.

Britain’s 21 regulated water companies employ about 40,000 staff directly, while tens of thousands more are employed through subcontractors. One industry insider estimated that ghd hair straighteners job losses across the industry would total “several thousand”.

A spokesman for Thames Water, which supplies 8.5 million customers in the South East, said that contractor companies “would probably bear the brunt” of the reduced spending.

The company is being forced to scale down a key pipeline replacement programme of London’s Victorian sewer network. Yesterday it dropped plans for a legal challenge against Ofwat to the Competition Commission.

Martin Baggs, interim chief executive of Thames Water, said: “Ofwat set us a particularly tough challenge, but there have been some welcome changes from the draft and we will get on and deliver the agreed plan.” Thames plans to spend almost £5 billion on the network over the next five years, down from £5.5 billion.

Only Bristol Water, which was limited to a 7 per cent rise in discount Mbt shoes bills when it asked for a much bigger increase — has publicly announced plans to appeal to the Commission.

Wills & Co, the private client stockbroker, has ceased trading amid financial troubles and a Financial Services Authority (FSA) ghd straighteners investigation.

The group, set up in 1883 as the financial services division of the Wills tobacco business, fell foul of the FSA last year after it was accused of mis-selling. The subsequent cost of putting its house in order — by hiring one of the “big four” accounting firms and in defending itself from more than 100 legacy Ghd  complaints — has put pressure on its finances.

Wills’s 19,000 clients are gradually being passed to Pritchard Stockbrokers. All clients are being informed of any changes and the broker says that all investments are safe.

The FSA accused Wills of not giving clients full and proper risk warnings on 19 of several hundred  ghd hair straighteners calls that the regulator monitored last year. Wills says that it believed that risk warnings were not necessary on the calls in question because they were dealing with active trading clients who knew what they were doing.

Peter Shakeshaft, chief executive of the Wills & Co Financial Group, told The Times yesterday that the broker had been a victim of a wider assault by the FSA on small broking MBT Shoes firms, which has rendered small-cap stockbroking space as closed for business.

President Obama remains confident that Ben Bernanke will win Senate approval for a second term as Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, despite growing opposition to the MBT Changa nomination, a senior White House adviser said yesterday.

David Axelrod told CNN, the news broadcaster, that Senate leaders had assured the President that they had sufficient votes to win Mr Bernanke another four years at the helm of the central bank. His first term ends on January 31.

Mr Obama contacted key senators, including Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, on Saturday to check that the nomination was not being derailed by lawmakers’ increasing reluctance to reappoint a Fed Chairman regarded as friendly to Wall Street.

Mr Axelrod said yesterday: “The President is very confident. The readings he’s getting from his conversations is that Chairman Bernanke will be confirmed mbt shoes clearance.”

His comments were backed up yesterday by Valerie Jarrett, another senior White House adviser, and Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, who told the MSNBC channel that he believed Mr Bernanke would still win bipartisan support.

Mr Axelrod also defended Mr Bernanke’s handling of the financial crisis. “He’s been a very steady hand,” Mr Axelrod said. “He’s taken initiatives that have been important in terms of stabilising the economy.”

That Mr Obama felt it necessary to make the calls to Senate leaders is an indication of how tenuous Mr Bernanke’s position has become. The Democrats’ loss of Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts last week was read as a rebuke to the Obama Administration for pushing through healthcare reform and failing to crack mbt uk down on bankers’ bonuses.

The President further fuelled anger within the financial sector on Thursday when he announced limits on bank sizes and trading — the latest in a series of attacks that he has levelled at Wall Street. But this newly aggressive tone from the White House towards bankers has prompted some Democrat lawmakers to shy away from supporting Mr Bernanke, who is closely associated with last year’s unpopular $800 billion bailout programme.

On Friday two Democrat senators — Barbara Boxer, of California, and Russ Feingold, from Wisconsin — said that they would vote against Mr Bernanke’s nomination when the Senate was polled, possibly as early as next week. Ms Boxer said that she wanted a new Fed chairman as a “clean break from the failed policies of the past”.

Mr Obama nominated Mr Bernanke in August for another term at the helm of the central bank. The Senate banking committee approved the nomination in December, despite opposition from Republicans on the committee who blamed Mr Bernanke for failing to spot the financial crisis, being too lax in hisshoes mbt regulation of the banks and too generous in the bailout.

Because four Republican senators have put a so-called “hold” on Mr Bernanke’s reappointment, Senate leaders need 60 “yes” votes from the 100-strong chamber simply to bring about a vote on the nomination. Once they have won the right to hold a vote, the leaders then need a straight majority to approve Mr Bernanke’s second term. Senator John Kerry said on Saturday that he would vote for Mr Bernanke, bringing the number of confirmed “yes” votes to 27.

A Dow Jones poll showed that 15 senators, including four Democrats, had vowed to oppose the Chairman’s return. The remaining 58 senators have not yet said how they will vote.

If Mr Bernanke’s appointment is not confirmed mbtshoes sale by January 31, Donald Kohn, vice-chairman of the Fed’s board, could take over in the interim.

Hershey today confirmed that it will not bid for Cadbury after the British confectioner’s board this week recommended an £11.9 billion offer from MBT Changa Kraft Food.

Cadbury executives had previously publicly backed Hershey as having “similar values” to their company. However, today Hershey confirmed in a formal statement that it will not compete with Kraft’s 850p per share offer, mbt shoes clearance stating that it “does not intend to make an offer for Cadbury”.

Hershey had until Monday under Takeover Panel rules to announce whether it would launch a counterbid. In its statement, the chocolate company said that it reserved the right to make an offer if within six months circumstances were to change, for example if Kraft’s offer were to be declared “unconditional”.

Italy’s Ferrero, which also expressed mbt uk interest in Cadbury, is thought to have lost interest but is yet to make a formal statement.

The takeover of one of the UK’s best-loved companies has provoked anger among politicians and unions as Kraft has not yet revealed plans for job cuts in the UK — but has said it will spend $1.3 billion (£800 million) on restructuring.

MPs will debate the deal next week after a flurry of questions in the House of Commons yesterday.

Announcing the debate, Harriet Harman, Leader of the House of Commons, said: “People are concerned, not only about their pride in this historic brand but also the work generated in factories up and down the country.”

Gordon Brown said earlier this week that the Government shoes mbt would do “everything we can” to make sure jobs are kept in Britain.

Lynne Jones, the Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak, which includes Bournville, the village built for Cadbury workers, said the takeover meant a “well-run, debt-free company is now saddled with billions of pounds worth of debt, while those who have no interest in the long-term health of this company, or any other industry, have made a huge killing”.

The role of the part-nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland mbtshoes sale  in backing Kraft’s bid has also been questioned.