A good performance from investment banking helped Switzerland’s largest bank Credit Suisse to a 70

A good performance from investment banking helped Switzerland’s largest bank, Credit Suisse, to a 70 per cent increase in first-half profits. Credit Suisse First Boston contributed almost two-thirds of the group’s interim profit of 1.4bn Swiss francs (pounds 580m), despite a sharp rise in staff costs. The group yesterday reported an unaudited loss of pounds 370,000 for the nine months to the end of March.. It later reported losses of pounds 329,000 for the period, and a further loss of pounds 293,000 for the six months to the end of March this year.In March Rushmere Wynne bought Fairplace Training, which operates training facilities at Birchin Court in London, from Fairplace Consulting for cash and 50 million shares, and Fairplace Training’s chief executive, Colyn Gardner, became executive chairman of Rushmere Wynne.Last month the original loss-making publishing interests were sold to BT Batsford for pounds 225,000 in cash and shares The business will be renamed Birchin International.

The cash was used to take over another small publisher, Rosters, and a jobbing printer, HS Printers.The shares were suspended at 2p last November when the company warned it would make a loss of pounds 100,000 in the 10 months to the end of September 1995 instead of the profit it forecast when it floated. Shareholders will be offered three new shares for each two shares held.It is the third big reorganisation this year for the struggling group which was launched on AIM two years ago when 27 per cent of the company was floated, raising pounds 750,000. Rushmere Wynne, the loss-making former publisher, yesterday agreed to buy the residential training division of Coutts Consulting for pounds 6.5m in cash in a deal which completes its conversion into a provider of business training services. The division consists of two operating companies, Eynsham Hall near Witney in Oxfordshire, and Chewton Place, near Keynsham, not far from Bristol.

The two centres are hired out to UK companies for staff training activities and made an operating profit of pounds 1.06m on a turnover of pounds 3.7m in 1996.
The deal is being financed by a pounds 4m loan, a bank overdraft facility of pounds 500,000 and an open offer of 230 million shares at 1p each. “They are putting pounds 20m into our company at a hell of a premium, they will exchange products and put non-executives in, but they have no special privileges.”The deal will give Kalamazoo the cash it desperately needs to develop its car dealer software system “We were near the limit of our bank borrowing facilities Our gearing was uncomfortably high. We are having a torrid first half,” said Mr Jordan.He was equivocal on whether Reynolds was planning to launch a full bid after two years: “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”Analysts said that Reynolds, which has a good spread of products in the US, was a sound partner and was probably interested in Kalamazoo for the platform it would provide into the European car dealer software market, where it has no foothold Kalamazoo has a 45 per cent market share in the UK.. Analysts said the deal looked remarkably free of strings, wiping out Kalamazoo’s sky-high debt. Though Reynolds, which is capitalised at $1.6bn (pounds 1bn), will appoint non-executive directors to Kalamazoo’s board and share products, there are few other binding conditions and Reynolds has agreed not to buy more shares in Kalamazoo for two years.”This is a true strategic alliance,” said Mr Jordan. Analysts are forecasting full-year profits of pounds 50m, putting the shares on a prospective price/earnings ratio of 11 Good value.. Kalamazoo, the troubled UK computer services company which named itself after a one-horse town in Michigan, has once again turned to the US, this time for a rescue refinancing.