Musicals coup is in the air

BOOSEY & HAWKES, the classical-music publisher that controls the rights to works by Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff, has emerged as a contender to buy the Rodgers and Hammerstein collection of music and shows including Annie Get Your Gun and South Pacific.

The back catalogue of more than 3,000 songs, such as You’ll Never Walk Alone and There’s Nothing Like A Dame, is expected to fetch £120m. Early interest was registered by Sony, Lord Lloyd Webber and the Ambassador Theatre Group.

Premier in cash hunt

PREMIER Foods, the owner of Hovis and Mr Kipling, is talking to the private equity group, CCMP Capital, to secure a big cash injection.

CCMP Capital, formerly the private equity arm of JP Morgan, could provide the group with several hundred million pounds.

This would enable Premier to pay off part of its near-£1.8 billion debts. It would be the first such significant investment in a public company for some time.

5-star Iraq hotels deal

UP to four new five-star hotels will be built in Iraq after the regional government of Kurdistan, in the north of the country, gave large parcels of land to four developers.

Sheraton, Kempinski, Europe’s oldest luxury hotel group, Rotana, a Dubai hotelier, and Royal, an Iraqi-backed group, have all taken up the government’s offer. They have signed agreements obliging them to build on the parcels which will be in the cities of Erbil and Suleimaniya.

Advisers step in at JJB

JJB SPORTS has appointed specialist debt advisers at KMPG to help secure the troubled retailer’s short-term financial future as its problems continue to escalate.

The team from KPMG will lead negotiations between JJB and its lending banks, HBOS and Barclays, in an effort to get firm agreements that they will continue to support the company, which has been hit by a spate of financial problems.

Pubs boss joins gym chain

ONE of the pub industry’s most successful executives, Karen Jones, pictured left, has joined the board of Virgin Active, the gym chain, as a non-executive director.

She is the second high-profile business figure to join the board, following the appointment of former Boots boss Richard Baker as chairman in April.

Virgin Active’s newest recruit co-founded the Café Rouge restaurant chain before going on to run Spirit, the managed-pub operator. She was chief executive for four years, stepping down after Punch acquired it in early 2006.

Jones, 51, is also a non-executive director at HBOS, the troubled high-street bank and retains an interest in the pub trade through Food & Fuel, a chain of gastropubs she founded.

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