Redrow Share Discussion Threads

[lordwilson] 22/6/2009 22:31

Anyone any view on these guys ???

[ecohouse] 21/4/2009 14:19

Darling to Pledge 1 Billion Pounds for U.K. House Builders
Bloomberg
By Gonzalo Vina
21 April 2009



Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling will set aside 1 billion pounds ($1.45 billion) to revive house building in the U.K., a person familiar with the matter said, after the financial crisis slashed the number of construction projects in half in the last year.

The government will buy stakes in stalled projects, finance infrastructure and buy shares of homes to help owners, the person said, asking to remain unnamed until a formal announcement in Darling's budget statement tomorrow.

Orders for new homes fell 46 percent from a year ago in February after credit dried up and the residential property market suffered its worst slump in at least two decades. Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government is attempting to boost building to make more houses available for the poor.

"We need the government to be brave and implement a range of fiscal measures in the budget to nurture the fragile early signs of an upturn," said Stewart Baseley, chief executive of the Home Builders Federation in a budget submission this month.

Companies including Bovis Homes Group Plc, Redrow Plc and Taylor Wimpey Plc completed about 160,000 homes last year, short of the government's target for 240,000 a year. The HBF says completions this year are on track to reach a record low.

Shares of the building companies have risen in recent weeks as some surveys indicated the worst may be past for property prices and executives disclosed investments in land to take advantage of the recovery, when it materializes.

Treasury Funds

Under the plans due to be announced by Darling in Parliament tomorrow, the government will establish a fund to help house builders restart developments stalled because of a lack of cash. The Treasury's funds can also be used to build roads and other public infrastructures that are often financed by private property developers, the person said.

Money from the fund may also be used to buy an equity stake in homes that are empty so that people on low incomes can afford to live in them.

Darling will extend a deferral on some taxes charged for the sale of homes until the end of the year, the person familiar with the plan said. He will also extend a temporary exemption on a sales tax until the end of this year for properties costing less than 175,000 pounds, the person said. Darling originally offered the exemption in November 2008.

Local Authorities

Other measures include a separate fund administered by the government that local authorities can tap to help finance social housing projects. Assistance for people struggling to make monthly mortgage payments will also be made available, the person added.

The value of residential-development land in Britain fell by half last year as demand for newly-built homes slumped, according to Knight Frank LLP, a property consulting firm. Banks approved 38,000 new mortgages in February, less than half the 104,000 monthly average in 2007, the Bank of England says.

Some surveys suggest the market has touched bottom. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said the slump in house prices eased last month after more than a year of declines lured buyers back into the market.

Also, an index of construction activity rose to 30.9 in March from 27.8 the previous month, the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply said. Figures below 50 indicate activity is declining.


Mortgage Help Plan Finally Launched
Tuesday 21 April 2009

A long-awaited taxpayer-backed scheme to help recession-hit families avoid having their homes repossessed is coming into force.

Hard-pressed homeowners will be able to reduce monthly mortgage payments for up to two years.

Lenders representing more than 80% of the market have agreed to offer support.

Details of the institutions signed up - not all of whom have taken up a Government guarantee to cover defaults on deferred payments - are due to be announced to MPs by housing minister Margaret Beckett.

One recent survey showed as many as 35% of people were worried to some degree about losing their homes and the Government has faced criticism for delays in implementing the scheme, first announced in December.

Speaking to the BBC, Mrs Beckett insisted the scheme was not a "payment holiday" and would offer temporary help to hard-pressed home-owners.

She said: "The idea is to try and help people who haven't lost everything and who aren't going to be eligible, if they are unfortunate enough to have their house repossessed, to be rehoused under homeless legislation, but whom nevertheless are having difficulties.

"Maybe one of them has lost their job but not both, maybe it is just that they have lost their overtime, but one way or another they are struggling with the mortgage payments that they could meet before."

She added: "Hopefully this difficulty is somewhat temporary. This is not a payment holiday, people do need to go on paying as much as they can from their mortgage. The really crucial thing is to talk to their lender as soon as possible and to get independent financial advice."

[ecohouse] 14/4/2009 22:27

Good news on LIBOR --

Libor Falling Fastest Since January on Credit Revival
Bloomberg
By Gavin Finch and Anna Rascouet
14 April 2009



The London interbank offered rate for three-month dollar loans is dropping at the fastest pace since January as bankers gain confidence that the worst of the financial crisis is over.

Debt strategists at Credit Suisse Group AG, Societe Generale SA and Royal Bank of Canada, three of the 16 banks that provide the data that sets Libor each day, say the declines will continue. Momentum may be building as signs of economic stability emerge, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke.

"Not so long ago the main worry was whether the bank you're dealing with was going to be around in three months time," said Ira Jersey, head of U.S. interest-rate strategy at RBC Capital Markets in New York. "Now that concern is on the back burner. We're going to see Libor coming down steadily."

Libor, the British Bankers' Association interest rate that determines borrowing costs on about $360 trillion of financial agreements ranging from home mortgages to corporate bonds, fell to 1.12 percent today from 1.32 percent a month ago. The fastest drop since the start of the year, when the rate tumbled to 1.08 percent on Jan. 14 from 1.42 percent nine days earlier, coincides with President Barack Obama's efforts to restore the economy and the banking system to health.

The combination of plans to help banks get rid of devalued assets such as mortgage and leverage loans, the first back-to- back monthly increases in consumer spending since the first half of 2008 and an unexpected rise in home sales for February stoked optimism that the worst of the recession is over.

'Intended Effect'

Bernanke told CBS Corp.'s "60 Minutes" on March 15 he saw "green shoots" in some financial markets. Fed programs to relieve disruptions in credit markets and restore the flow of credit "are having the intended effect," Bernanke said April 3 during a speech in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Libor will decline to 1.04 percent by June, according to the average forecast of 12 banks on the BBA's Libor panel surveyed by Bloomberg News April 6 through April 9, compared with 1.21 percent in a survey last month. Societe Generale, which bet on Libor rising as recently as February, says the rate will fall to 0.98 percent by the end of the quarter.

"There is a cautious optimism evolving that things are beginning to get better," said Dominic Konstam, head of interest-rate strategy at Credit Suisse in New York. He predicts Libor may drop to about 0.75 percent this year. "There's a sense that things are going to go relatively smoothly through April with Libor continuing to fall."

Failed Institutions

Lending between banks started to freeze in August 2007, when losses from subprime mortgages left financial institutions with billions of dollars in securities and financial contracts they couldn't value. Credit markets contracted more in September 2008, when Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for the biggest bankruptcy in history.

More than 60 U.S. financial institutions have failed over the past two years. Global losses and writedowns have swelled to $1.29 trillion, helping to sink the global economy into its first recession since World War II.

As credit evaporated and stock markets tumbled, investors fled to the relative safety of gold and government bonds. In the five months following New York-based Lehman's collapse, the MSCI World Index of stocks tumbled as much as 36 percent, gold soared 31 percent to $1,007.70 an ounce and the rate on U.S. Treasury bills fell to less than zero percent.

Government bonds returned 53 percentage points more than the Standard & Poor's 500 index, according to Merrill Lynch & Co. data, the widest margin since the bank started calculating fixed-income returns in 1978.

London Fix

The gap between the Fed's target rate for overnight loans between banks and Libor widened to 3.32 percentage points on Oct. 10 from 0.82 percentage point just before Lehman failed and an average of 0.22 percentage point in the five years before credit markets froze. The cost banks said they'd pay to borrow from each other soared even as central banks lowered benchmark interest rates and provided unlimited dollar funding.

Every morning, the London-based BBA surveys member of the trade group on how much it would cost them to borrow from each other for 15 different periods, from overnight to one year, in currencies including dollars, euros and yen.

Now, strategists say, credit is starting to move again. The U.S. government and the Fed spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, the equivalent of 90 percent of last year's gross domestic product, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s. Obama met with more than a dozen chief executive officers from banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. on March 27, imploring them to get credit flowing through the markets again.

'Aggressive Fiscal Expansion'

Governments' stimulus measures worldwide will boost GDP by 1 percent to 1.5 percent this year, Deutsche Bank AG economists led by Peter Hooper in New York said in an April 8 report.

"Aggressive fiscal expansion will, in our view, play an important role in ameliorating the economic downturn and helping to lift the global economy out of its current severe recession," the economists wrote.

In the past month, the MSCI World rose 15 percent and gold closed at $895 an ounce, down 13 percent from its record high. Treasuries posted their worst first quarter since 1999, losing 1.4 percent, including reinvested interest, according to Merrill Lynch's U.S. Treasury Master Index. The index is down 0.7 percent so far in April.

Credit Costs

Consumer credit costs are still high by historical standards compared with what banks pay to borrow, an obstacle that Bernanke says must be removed to fix the economy. "Restoring the flow of credit to households and businesses is essential if we are to see, as I expect, the gradual resumption of sustainable economic growth," Bernanke said April 3.

The difference in yield, or spread, between the average 30- year U.S. mortgage and 10-year Treasuries narrowed to 2.13 percent today, down from 3.07 percent on Dec. 19, which was the highest level since 1986, according to Bloomberg data. Still, the gap averaged 1.75 percentage points in the decade before the credit crisis began.

Credit-card borrowing rates are 10.23 percentage points above Libor, compared with an average of 9.91 percentage points in the past five years, according to Bloomberg data.

More losses by banks could trigger an increase in Libor, said Kurush Mistry, an interest-rate strategist at Barclays Plc in New York. "There's still a lot of uncertainty regarding bank earnings and stress tests, and Libor could easily be shocked higher."

Libor-OIS Spread

The International Monetary Fund is expected to raise its estimate of bad assets held by financial institutions worldwide to $4 trillion, the London-based Times newspaper reported April 7, without citing anyone. The IMF's forecast for bad assets originating in the U.S. will increase to $3.1 trillion from a January estimate of $2.2 trillion, according to the newspaper.

The Libor-OIS spread, an indicator for banks' willingness to lend, also remains elevated, while down from its highest levels. The measure narrowed to 0.92 percentage point, from 1.08 percentage points a month ago. It's above the 0.25 percentage- point level that former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said would indicate markets were back to "normal."

Contracts in the forward market show traders are betting the spread will fall to 0.82 percentage point by December, according to data compiled by Tullett Prebon Plc, the second- biggest broker of interbank transactions after ICAP Plc. It averaged 11 basis points between December 2001 and July 2007.

Economic Recovery

Bulls say Libor will decline because the U.S. economy is showing signs the recession will end later this year. The U.S. will expand at a 1.6 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 74 forecasters.

Consumer spending, which accounts for more than 70 percent of the U.S. economy, rose 0.2 percent in February after climbing 1 percent in January, breaking a six-month string of declines. Orders placed with factories increased 1.8 percent in February, the first gain since July, the Commerce Department said. Purchases of existing homes jumped 5.1 percent to an annual rate of 4.72 million in February as lower prices attracted buyers, the National Association of Realtors said March 23.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's plan to rid banks and markets of distressed assets heightened optimism the worst of the slump was past. The S&P 500 rallied 12 percent since March 20, the Friday before Geithner announced the program.

'Less Stressed'

Pacific Investment Management Co., the Newport Beach, California-based manager of the world's biggest bond fund, and New York-based BlackRock Inc., the largest publicly traded U.S. asset manager, said they may be interested in participating in Geithner's Public-Private Investment Program.

The government programs have served to unclog rates beyond dollar Libor, the BBA said.

"Over recent months Libor rates have fallen in all currencies," said John Ewan, a London-based director at the BBA. "We have also seen the spreads between individual contributor rates narrow. An interpretation of this could be that the markets are less stressed."

[humsaz] 13/4/2009 13:48

205p and heading down at rdw....

[siloans] 12/4/2009 09:02

Just watch this company get upto £250.00 very soon and Taylor winpey will woosh past 0.75 next week

[humsaz] 11/4/2009 15:34

Certainly is stirring as rdw as got to high for people to cope with out of hours selling happening and next week will be here. Sell..................------- 182p set in concrete.

[p-m] 03/4/2009 19:56

about time !

[walker10] 01/4/2009 09:50

Well something is sturring !!

[el topo] 20/3/2009 13:59

MARKET REPORT: Morgan moves in on Redrow By Geoff Foster
Last updated at 12:24 AM on 18th March 2009


Punch-drunk shareholders of Redrow, the UK's sixth biggest housebuilder, should sit tight. They will be in for an exciting ride over the next six months or so.
The shares may have eased 3¼p to 142¾p but if founder and former chairman Steve Morgan has anything to do with it, the bricks are being put in place for a major recovery.
Whispers from our man in the hard hat suggest that Wolverhampton Wanderers owner Morgan, who recently returned to the fray by amassing a stake of almost 28 per cent in the company, is well on the way to regaining control.
He is about to be appointed deputy chairman and will take over the role of chairman from Alan Bowkett in June. He will then immediately find a replacement for retiring chief executive Neil Fitzsimmons and speculation is rife that his old mate Greg Locke, who heads up Morgan's private property group Bridgemere and who was chief executive of David Wilson Homes, has being primed for the slot.
Like most of its housebuilding competitors, Redrow has struggled in a dire housing market. Earlier this month it disclosed that sales had halved in the six months to end December 2008.
All the latest stock market news

It sustained a £46.2million loss over the same period and has had to cut its workforce by 43 per cent.
But if anyone can steer the group through to recovery and to a possible sale to Bovis Homes (10¾p off at 421¾p), it is founder Morgan. He knows the business inside and out and also has the support of major shareholder, Martin Hughes' Toscafund, which still sits on a 20 per cent-plus stake.
The UK housing market is beginning to see some green shoots of recovery with estate agents reporting a definite increased interest in site viewings.

[cockneyrebel] 06/3/2009 11:55

Lot of buying today and some large trades at the close last night - dunno what Morgan has in mind but something interesting going on imo.

CR

[marknicho] 04/3/2009 17:38

Nice to see some posts for a change. 3rd March generated some interest then. See my post of 28th October. Had to happen.

[chrismcglone] 04/3/2009 12:10

Looks like it's worth a punt.

Held these a few years back and have always taken an interest. Don't think he's increased his stake just for the fun of it.

[cockneyrebel] 04/3/2009 11:01

Win/win - didn't realise he was Redrow's founder - did well under his leadership.

CR

[chrismcglone] 04/3/2009 10:02

So how much will he offer?

[wapper] 04/3/2009 07:29

Morgan got support of Toscafund too (still got 20%) in his bid to become Executive Chairman. Done deal IMHO.

[bigbertie] 03/3/2009 20:20

He founded the company so I imagine he wants to run it again.

[lightning] 03/3/2009 09:48

Question is, does he just want a finger in the pie or does he want the whole pie?

[cockneyrebel] 03/3/2009 08:39

Steve Morgan takes a 30% stake - first big builder to get taken over at the bottom?

He owns Wolves, he was going to buy Liverpool (well we ain't all perfect) - worth £450m personally - enough to swallow up Redrow easy.
CR

[dividend3] 23/12/2008 11:36

Positive news today from Taylor Wimpey which should help confidence in the housebuilding sector ---


RNS Number : 6681K
Taylor Wimpey plc
Update on Financing Discussions
23 December 2008

The Company notes the press speculation regarding its covenant deferral negotiations and the recent movements in its share price.

At the time of our Interim Management Statement on 11 November, we confirmed that it was likely that a revised covenant structure with all of our debt providers would be agreed in early 2009, prior to the announcement of our Preliminary Results. We have made good progress since our Interim Management Statement and the discussions with our debt providers are continuing on a constructive basis.

As previously indicated it is likely that we will breach our interest cover covenants in January 2009 under the original testing schedule for the year to 31 December 2008. We have been progressing towards a deferral agreement with our lenders on these covenants. These discussions are close to completion and we expect to reach an agreement prior to the end of the year.

We are confident that a robust, stable medium term financing solution for the Group, which takes into account the requirements of all relevant stakeholders, will be achieved prior to the announcement of our Preliminary Results.

[bernie123] 22/12/2008 07:33

His post sounds the same as his August posting (post 79) but since then they have managed to up the dept by £0.2 billion.

Does'nt look good to me.

[p-m] 21/12/2008 12:29

it beats me how crosswire can post on 1.9 billion bbs

[bernie123] 21/12/2008 07:43

It beats me, how come a company be valued at £134.6m and be in debt of £1.9 billion?

If they have a £1.9 billion debt, they should shut shop.

Its no wonder the Worlds economy is in trouble.