December 14: Sudoku session

December 14: Fox-Pitt Kelton is being sold by Swiss Re. There is certainly no shortage of potential buyers in town, including Icelandic banks and Australia’s Macquarie (which has already approached several smaller City firms, including Bridgewell and Altium).

Dubai’s bid for world domination continues with news today that Dubai International Capital (owner of Madame Tussauds) is buying Doncasters Group, the British engineer, for £700m. The company, which makes components for the Airbus A380, is currently owned by Royal Bank of Scotland.

The Sudoku craze is being converted into hard cash by the owners of Puzzler Media, which publishes the number game. The company is being sold by ABN Amro Capital to DC Thomson, the Dundee-based publisher of the Beano, for a £36.7m profit in just under four years, which looks like they made five times their money (phew, didn’t use the same number twice in that line).

Half year figures from RHM show the business is still pretty dull but maybe a bit less so than we thought (it’s done well on Hovis, less so on Kipling). Let’s see if we can write the piece without getting the words “stale” or “exceedingly” into it. Also, the group says it will increase contributions to the pension scheme. The stock is up 4 per cent.

GUS says its Experian division is buying US online comparison shopping business PriceGrabber for $485m plus expenses. The move boosts GUS’s exposure to the fast-growing online retail business in the US. Read Lex to see just how jaw-dropping that price really is.

John Laing’s takeover talks have ended.

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