Daily Mail, Thursday, March 5, 2020^
MINIATURE figures of Star Wars char-
acters, wizards from Harry Potter
and Marvel superheroes helped
boost annual profits at Lego.
The Danish toy giant said profits
rose from £1.22bn to £1.25bn in 2019,
after sales rose from £4.22bn to
£4.47bn. Best sellers included Star
Wars and products such as Lego City
and Lego Technic.
It opened 150 stores last year, tak-
ing its total to 570 worldwide, and
plans more, with around 80 set to be
in China. It is also trying to make its
b r i c k s m o r e e n v i r o n m e n t a l l y
friendly by experimenting with
plant-based plastics.
Niels Christiansen, the company’s
chief executive, said: ‘It was a strong
year where we outperformed the
toy industry and grew consumer
sales and market share in all our
largest markets.’
Lego said there was single-digit
growth in western Europe, including
the UK, and the Americas.
China, a key focus, enjoyed ‘strong’
double-digit growth.
It marks the second year of profit
growth after sales fell in 2017.70bn
Lego pieces sold
per year915.1m
Ways to
combine six
2x4 Lego bricks17,000
Staffemployed
byfirm globally£4.47bn
Revenues
last year£1.25bn
Profit in
2019£649.99
Cost of Millennium
Falcon, aboveLego puts buiLding bLocks
in pLace for expansion
n
ever waste a good crisis.
A n d r e w B a i l e y ’ s f i r s t
appearance before the
Treasury Select Commit-
tee as anointed Governorof the Bank of england was meant
to be an imbroglio.
Blowhard MPs wanted to eviscerate
him over Financial Conduct Authority
(FCA) shortcomings in handling the
Woodford scandal and the implosion of
London & Capital Finance.
Bailey was never going to be fazed by any
of that. As the Bank of england official at
the centre of the banking firestorm in 2007-
09 this always was going to be water off a
duck’s back.
Bailey is calm and wisdom personified. He
is a central banker whose curiosity about
the soundness of the Co-op Bank and its
discredited chairman Paul Flowers was
piqued when, on a routine inspection visit,
the bank entertained him lavishly at a coun-
try house hotel and insisted on buying the
most expensive claret on the wine list.
No one could be more agitated about the
failings of Link as the authorised corporate
director at the Woodford funds or the FCA’s
slow response to the liquidity mess than
this writer.
When confronted directly with these criti-
cisms, Bailey was able to treat the sting by
explaining carefully the limits of rule-based
eU regulation and pointing out much of
what went wrong on his watch is peripheral
to what the FCA does.
All of this, although serious for people who
lost money by trusting in Woodford, pales
into insignificance when one starts to think
about the coronavirus. Panic shopping, the
plunge in financial markets and the devas-
tation of the travel industry are early symp-
toms of the disruption.
The bigger danger will come from firms
pushed to the brink by interruption of sup-
ply chains, cash flow blockages and banks
pulling up the drawbridge. The Bank of
england stands ready to use its powers to
help by opening special credit windows foraffected firms and lowering the cost of
money. Bailey offered the practical reassur-
ance needed at a moment of acute stress.
It’s hard to argue against that.On the brink
JUST two years ago, property and shopping
centre giant Hammerson proposed a £3.4bn
all-share offer for Intu, owner of the Traf-
ford Centre. The bid fell apart amid inves-
tor resistance and, after another stock mar-
ket beating, Intu is now worth just £85m.
Intu hoped to pull back from the brink of
disaster by raising £1bn to £1.5bn from
existing investors. But with markets highly
volatile, as a result of Covid-19, that avenue
has been closed.
The weakness of the retail sector has seen
the value of Intu assets savaged. At the
same time, rental incomes have come under
pressure from tenants seeking better deals,
simply to survive, and the group is sitting
on a debt mountain of £4.5bn.
The shares now stand at a 95pc discount
to net asset value, and the company is
frozen out of capital markets with the audi-
tors expressing ‘material concern’.
It looks like airline Flybe has beaten Intu
to become the first big commercial victim
of coronavirus uncertainty. Intu chief exec-
utive Matthew roberts has not abandoned
hopes of rescuing matters through assetsales. But with debt of £4.5bn and the loans-
to-value ratio (which sets covenants) tum-
bling, it is a race against the clock.
Bond markets are unconvinced about
prospects. A £375m convertible bond is
trading at half its value.
Another £485m bond secured against the
Metro Centre in Gateshead is trading at a
less alarming 79p in the pound.
Intu’s route out is dependent on the kind-
ness of lenders. A possibility is that private
equity might pick off the better assets. It is
hard to think this is going to be a propitious
time to sell retail property of any kind.Anglo tangle
IN THe end, the plea by Sirius investors for
a better deal was comfortably rolled over by
Anglo American.
No one is going to be grieving if Odey
Asset Management lost out even if, on this
occasion, it was on the side of the gods. It
would be nice to think that a higher bid
might come along – you never know.
My quarrel is with Anglo and its bankers
who showed a distinct lack of imagination
in failing to design a deal which offered
small investors an appropriate stake in any
future upside.
A company with Anglo’s honourable
South African heritage should have
known better.bailey applies the balm
Alex
Brummer
City Editorgulf in uk life
expectancy
alarms L&g
BrITAIN must get better at
investing in its own economy
to help shrink the chasm in life
expectancy between the rich
and the poor, the boss of Legal
& General has said.
Nigel Wilson sounded the
alarm over the fact that people
in some areas die at 58 while
expectancy is as high as 85 in
wealthier neighbourhoods.
He called on the UK’s pen-
sion savers to squirrel away as
much as they can to improve
quality of life in retirement.
Higher savings would result
in more money invested by
asset managers in vital infra-
structure projects – boosting
the economy in the long run.
It came as L&G, Britain’s
biggest retirement savings
firm which manages £1.2tril-
lion, said it made £155m last
year from people dying sooner
than it thought they would.
Chief executive Wilson (pic-
tured) told radio 4’s Today:
‘Lots of poorer people are not
living as long as we expect in
our major cities. Life expect-ancy in some poorer areas is
58, in the richer areas is 85.
That’s an amazing difference.
‘What we want to do is get
people to live healthier, longer
lives, and make more money
during their lives, by investing
in the economy and growing
real wages a lot quicker.’
Wilson said he was particu-
larly keen to plough money
into cities outside London
where the difference in life
expectancies between richer
and poorer is starkest.
He told the Mail:
‘Manchester, Leeds,
S h e f f i e l d , C a m -
b r i d g e , O x f o r d ,
edinburgh, Glas-
gow, Newcastle –
t h e y ’ r e a l l g o o d
places to invest.
‘We moved our life-
time mortgage busi-
ness to Solihull –
it’s been a big
success. We’rebig in Cardiff and Hull. For the
country to be successful, we
need to invest across the UK.’
Wilson has urged the Gov-
ernment to set up an infra-
structure bank to invest in
vital projects such as trans-
port and health initiatives to
tackle childhood obesity.
His rallying call came as L&G
s a i d i t s o p e r a t i n g p r o f i t ,
excluding the boost from
higher-than-expected mortali-
ties, rose 12pc to £2.1bn in- The 63-year- old also
called on investors to increase
the amount of money they are
allocating to ‘green’ projects
and technologies.
H e s a i d : ‘ B r i t a i n c a n
become a world leader in
offshore wind, in solar tech-
nology, in nuclear fusion
and carbon storage.
‘ We ’ v e g o t e n o r m o u s
opportunities because our
scientists and young
people in university
are producing all of
t h i s i n c r e d i b l e
technology.’
by Lucy White
Walmsley lands £8.4m payday
GLAXOSMITHKLINe boss emma Walms-
ley was handed a £2.5m pay rise after a
bumper year of sales at the drugs giant.
The 50-year-old boss saw her package rise
to £8.4m in 2019, up from £5.9m in 2018.
It included her £1.1m salary, £422,000 in
pension contributions and benefits, a £1.8m
bonus and £5.1m in performance bonuses.
The rise came after an audacious deal to
merge Glaxo’s consumer business with rival
Pfizer, with the executive plotting to later
spin it off as a standalone company.
Shingrix, Glaxo’s blockbuster shingles
vaccine, notched up sales of £1.8bn, which
it said made it ‘the most successful biop-
harma launch of the last ten years’.
Star scientist Hal Barron, 58, saw his pay
fall by £223,000 to about £6.3m, with finance
chief Iain Mackay paid £2.3m after joining
in January 2019.
Glaxo’s annual report yesterday said its
legal costs rocketed from £117m to £363m
last year, after it settled with insurers who
accused it of misleading them in a wrangle
over drugs made at a Puerto rico plant in
violation of US standards.INTERNATIoNAL Airlines Group’s departing
boss Willie Walsh saw his pay jump to
£3.2m last year – despite tumbling profits
at the British Airways owner – and stands
to retire with millions in share bonuses.
The annual report showed Walsh had a
5.5pc rise, up from £3m in 2018, with an
£883,000 bonus and £1.2m in shares.
He stands to get 1.1m shares worth £5.2m
under long-term bonus schemes over the
next four years, if targets are met.
More shares worth around £1.1m are duein annual payouts between this month
and March 2022. This is on top of £288,000
for pay and benefits for 2020 before he
steps down on March 26, while he is also
eligible for a proportion of the 2020
annual bonus, worth up to £425,000.
Details come just a week after IAG posted
a 33.6pc fall in profits to £2.6bn for 2019.
Walsh is retiring after a 15 years with the
company. His successor, Luis Gallego, will
be paid £820,000, and possible bonuses
worth up to £3.3m a year.Walsh in the money as profits fall
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