Dollond & Aitchison merge with Boots the Opticians

January 30th, 2009 by admin | Filed under Daily News, Recession, Retail.

Boots Opticians is to merge with Dollond & Aitchison, the high street retail chain said today.

The combined business, trading as Boots Opticians, will have around 690 practices and employ more than 5,000 staff with Dollond & Aitchison gradually disappearing from the high street as its stores adopt the Boots Optician brand.

A spokesman announced that said the new company will become second largest chain of opticians in the UK, knocking taking over the slot currently held by Vision Express. Specsavers are expected to remain Great Britain’s largest chain of opticians.

Boots Opticians will be run as a separate and autonomous entity from the rest of the Alliance Boots group, with head offices to be situated in Nottingham.

Boots Opticians currently has a staff of 2,800 people, while Dollond & Aitchison employs 2,200.

A spokeswoman for Alliance Boots said neither company had full coverage in the UK, so it was anticipated that there would not be much overlap.

On the floor, mining giant, Rio Tinto, announced that they could be looking for a rights issue whilst rival Xstrata unveiled their plans to raise £4.1bn through a heavily discounted two-for- one share offer causing their shares to fall eleven per cent almost immediately As rapidly as they had fallen, Xstrata’s shares rose, and by the end of the day had not only recovered, but risen a further 3.61 percent.

Another company whose shares had an erratic day was the Cookson Group, manufacturers of industrial materials. The group announced that they would also be looking for a rights issue, and a fairly spectacular twelve -for-one deal at that. Obviously such a strong dilution did not please the market and their shares fell in value over some frenzied sell off activity. However recovery was not far away and their shares closed up 12.25 per cent at 95.5p

On the day the FTSE 250 index rose by 1.49% or 93.35 points to 6351.92 while the FTSE 100 finished the session 3.9 per cent, or 156.5 points, higher at 4,209.

Sterling fell slightly against the dollar and the Euro and rose slightly against the Japanese Yen and the Swiss Franc:

· Pound/US dollar 1.424

· Pound/Euro 1.018

· Pound/Japanese Yen 127.58

· Pound/Swiss Franc 1.6425Wall Street shares had a bad day on Thursday’ trading

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 226.44 38.47, to close at 8149.03. Nasdaq fell 50.5 points to 1507.84

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell has posted a sharp fall in quarterly profits after the price of oil slumped dramatically towards the end of last year.

Profit for the final three months of 2008 fell to $4.8bn (£3.4bn), down 28% from the same period a year ago and 56% lower than the previous quarter.

But annual profits at the Anglo-Dutch company rose 14%, to $31.4bn, helped by record oil prices over the summer.

Oil prices rose slightly to $41.00 a barrel with calls from producers to gradually reduce production and increase prices.

Hong Kong’s key stock index climbed in its first trading session of the Lunar New Year, after the U.S. House of Representatives approved an $819 billion stimulus plan that investors hope will revive the world’s largest economy.

Catching up after a three-day break to celebrate the Year of the Ox, the blue chip Hang Seng index Thursday surged more than 7 percent at the open, then pared some gains.

The benchmark index finished 575.83 points, or 4.6 percent, higher at 13,154.43.