Sainsbury’s suffers Christmas sales slowdown as Black Friday hurts the supermarket January 9, 2019 Like-for-like sales at Sainsbury’s fell by 1.1 per cent over the Christmas period, the supermarket said today. Total sales excluding fuel dropped by 0.4 per cent in the 15 weeks to 5 January, while general merchandise sales fell by 2.3 per cent and clothing by 0.2 per cent. Read more: Aldi sales hit £1bn in record Christmas [...]
DEBATE: Should the government cut the number of university courses and places to ensure value for money? January 9, 2019 Should the government cut the number of university courses and places to ensure value for money? Gillian Keegan MP, parliamentary private secretary to the Treasury and co-author of the foreword to the Onward report, says YES. The government should cut the number of low-value university places and steer people towards better options. Analysis of government [...]
Europe has suffered from the stultifying impact of the euro – just ask the Greeks January 9, 2019 One of the entertainments of the holiday period was reading Adults In The Room, the book by Yanis Varoufakis. It describes his time as finance minister of Greece, and his negotiations with the IMF, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission. Varoufakis was only in the job between January and July 2015. He had [...]
Instability is the new norm, and banks must learn to weather it January 9, 2019 Global financial markets stumbled into 2019, having endured their worst December since 1931. Both the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 indices fell by nearly nine per cent over the Christmas month. For the financial sector, this has refocused attention on the worsening political and economic backdrop for 2019. Politically, instability is becoming the new [...]
The Brexit film was fun, but don’t mistake fiction for history January 9, 2019 I expect, as a piece of history that the vast majority of viewers will have lived through and probably voted in, that Brexit: The Uncivil War was highly entertaining to most people who caught it on Monday night, irrespective of which way they had voted in the EU referendum. There was some impressive acting and [...]
There’s only one way to fix the housing crisis: build more January 9, 2019 From free marketeers on the right to proponents of central planning on the left, cries to fix Britain’s broken housing market have become deafening. The solutions, of course, differ greatly depending on where along the political spectrum you stand. Yesterday, for example, Shelter issued its latest call to action, proposing three million new social homes [...]
UK tipped to remain attractive location for M&A in 2019 after deal value surged in 2018 January 9, 2019 The UK has been tipped to remain one of the most popular locations for M&A in 2019 after the value of deals with a UK target in 2018 surged 40 per cent to £413bn. Research published today by Willis Towers Watson and Cass Business School showed that globally 2018 was the worst year for shareholder [...]
Salary inflation hits 53-month high in London as shortage of EU candidates bites January 9, 2019 Salary inflation is at a 53 month high in London because of a shortage of EU candidates due to Brexit and an uncertain economic background leading to reluctance among workers to switch jobs. According to a survey published today by audit firm KPMG and the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) and compiled by IHS Markit, [...]
City Moves for 9 January – who’s switching jobs at Novidea, Unily and Hunton Andrews Kurth? January 8, 2019 Who’s switching jobs? Novidea Novidea, the data-driven platform provider for the insurance industry, has announced that Ben Potts has joined the company as UK managing director, to spearhead the company's growth and expansion across the UK and EMEA region. Previously, Ben held various leadership and revenue-focused executive roles with Majesco, Xchanging and Jardine Lloyd Thompson [...]
London City Airport sees record passenger numbers despite a decrease in flights January 8, 2019 London City Airport welcomed a record number of passengers in 2018, with a total of 4.8m passengers using the airport. The figures, comprised of both arriving and departing passengers, represent a 6.4 per cent increase over the previous year and the highest ever seen by the 31-year-old airport. The number of flights passing through the airport decreased [...]