Music fan buys Planet Rock

PLANET Rock, the digital radio station, will be bought this week from GCap Media by Malcolm Bluemel, an entrepreneur and rock music fan, for a nominal sum.

Bluemel, 55, who beat a bid from Queen guitarist Brian May, runs TLCS Global Visa Services, which manages visa and passport applications for corporate customers.

Despite amassing 563,000 listeners and being named digital station of the year at the Sony Radio Awards, Planet Rock was put up for sale by GCap to conserve cash as it unsuccessfully tried to fight a takeover bid from Charles Allen’s Global Radio.

The Plumber’s fluid

THE businessman known as The Plumber, Paul Davidson, will make his stock-market comeback this week when shares in his vehicle Fluid Leader Group begin trading on Plus Markets.

The business makes a clamp device that is used to prevent pipelines from leaking. Sheikh Faisal Bin Khalid Al Qassimi, a member of Sharjah’s ruling family, has acquired a 12% stake in the business.

Davidson also plans to acquire up to three manufacturing businesses in the UK to create a mini-conglomerate. Fluid Leader will have a market value of about £90m when dealings begin, making it one of the biggest companies on Plus.

Blow to TNS’s German tie-up

THE market researcher, Taylor Nelson Sofres, faces an uphill battle to win shareholder approval for its £1.5 billion merger with Gfk of Germany.

TCS Capital Management, an activist investor, is understood to have offered its 6% stake in TNS to marketing group WPP, which is trying to crash the tie-up. The nil-premium, 50-50 merger could be announced as soon as tomorrow

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