Jimmy Choo Planning London Ipo

Luxury shoe company Jimmy Choo, which shot to fame on the feet of the stars of “Sex and the City,” said Tuesday that it plans to pursue an initial public offering in London. The shoe market is ripe for deals, with many small and medium-size independent names, most still owned by the individual or family who founded them, like Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin, Giuseppe Zanotti, Rene Caovilla, Casadei and Santoni. “We know this area well, there is available land, and there is a favorable climate for us,” Francois Sterin, director of global infrastructure at Google, said at a news conference in Eemshaven, 133 miles northwest of Amsterdam. Executives and marketing staffers will set up shop in a loft office in Manhattan’s trendy SoHo neighborhood starting next year. Richard Branson said that the almost 800 would-be space tourists who signed up for $250,000 flights with his Virgin Galactic venture have been understanding about glitches that caused commercial services to be delayed until 2015. Compalints from clients who include physicist Stephen Hawking, singer Sarah Brightman and “X-Men” director Bryan Singer have amounted to “almost none whatsoever,” the billionaire told Bloomberg Television. Virgin Galactic won’t make a commercial flight until early spring, with Branson and his son aboard, he confirmed, after revealing this month that a target of commencing operations this year had become unrealistic. British regulators fined Barclays about $61.6 million for failing to properly segregate billions of pounds in client assets, potentially putting them at risk if the bank were ever to become insolvent. Barclays also agreed to pay a $15 million penalty to the Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to have adequate compliance after it acquired the advisory business of Lehman Bros.