In Short

A round-up of other business news in brief.

BAA gets six indicative bids for Gatwick

BAA received at least six indicative bids to acquire London Gatwick airport yesterday, as the process to take over the second-largest UK airport intensifies.

Bidders believe they can improve the operational efficiency of the airport, but bids are expected to be depressed both by the problems of finding sufficient debt finance and the cost and terms of the debt.

BAA and Spain's Ferrovial, its parent company, have been hoping to attract offers of about £2 billion, but bidders indicated yesterday that a winning offer was more likely to be in the range of £1.7 billion-£1.8 billion. – ( Financial Timesservice)

Lloyds predicts cost saving of £1.5bn

Lloyds Banking Group expects annual cost savings of at least £1.5 billion by the end of 2011 after its acquisition of HBOS was completed.

The newly formed group said yesterday that Lloyds TSB had traded satisfactorily since its last update on December 12th. It added that, although the difficult market conditions suffered by HBOS last month have continued, there has been no major change in trading at HBOS businesses.

The takeover has created a banking giant with around 145,000 staff and 3,000 branches across the UK. – (PA)

Farrelly Mitchell clarification

An entry in the 2008 Merger Acquisitions table carried last Friday stated that Farrelly Mitchell, the consultants, investment and advisory firm based in Balbriggan, Co Dublin, had been acquired by German group Roleg last October for €1.7 million.

In fact, Farrelly Mitchell acquired Roleg, a supermarket property group, for that sum on behalf of a group of clients.