Clothes push retail sales up 0.3pc in April May 20, 2010 IMPROVING clothing and department store sales offset flat food sales to push British retail revenues slightly higher than expected in April, according to the Office for National Statistics. Including petrol and diesel, high street sales rose 0.3 per cent last month, above analysts’ forecasts of 0.2 per cent and up 1.8 per cent year-on-year. The [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING May 18, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES BC PARTNERS WINS MORE TIME Investors in BC Partners have granted the UK-based private equity group an extension to the investment period on its latest fund, in a sign that buy-out groups are winning more time to deploy their $500bn of unspent capital. The extension of BC Partners’s investment period from November until [...]
RPI inflation sees sharpest jump since ‘91 May 18, 2010 NEW chancellor George Osborne yesterday called on the Bank of England to accelerate plans to reintroduce house prices into the benchmark rate of inflation, after the housing-linked index in April recorded its biggest monthly increase in two decades. The consumer price index (CPI) – the official inflation measure which does not currently take housing into [...]
Wal-Mart price cuts pay off May 18, 2010 WAL-MART’S quarterly results yesterday beat Wall Street expectations as a curb on costs helped the world’s largest retailer overcome weaker US same-store sales. The costs cuts on everything from labour to transportation helped the company fund “rollbacks” on prices for thousands of items in recent weeks, as it tries to hold onto customers pressured by [...]
SPITALFIELDS MARKET: SEEKING OZ CLARKE OF THE REAL ALE SCENE May 12, 2010 REMEMBER that cushy job as a caretaker of a desert island that caused such a stir when it was advertised a year or so back? Well, The Capitalist might just have discovered an even more covetable role – at least for the beer-loving socialites of the City. Old Spitalfields Market is looking for someone to [...]
Emerging bonds are a good bet this year May 11, 2010 LOW interest rates have been one of the less attractive aspects of holding developed market debt in recent years. But after recent events in Europe you can now add sovereign risk to that list. Investors who want a safer fixed income alternative should look at bond funds in emerging markets. It’s not that long ago [...]
Easter timing hits retailers May 10, 2010 THE timing of Easter, combined with consumers’ ongoing uncertainty, caused UK retail sales to fall 2.3 per cent on a like-for-like basis last month compared to April 2009, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) will say today in its monthly retail sales monitor. This year, only two days over Easter fell in April compared to all [...]
Sainsbury’s expects to ring up profit rise May 9, 2010 J SAINSBURY is this week expected to say its pre-tax profits grew 15 per cent to £595m, but analysts believe it will avoid giving an update on sales amid tough conditions. Sainsbury’s, the third-largest supermarket chain in the UK by market share, is tipped to hand staff a bonus pool of £70m following a buoyant [...]
Morrisons’ sales growth slows despite record number of customers in stores May 6, 2010 SUPERMARKET giant Morrisons has seen record numbers of customers in its stores but the new financial year has been hit by a slowdown, it said in a trading statement yesterday. The group has continued to grow market share in the first quarter with sales, excluding fuel, up 5.9 per cent in the 13 weeks to [...]
Shop prices rose last month but stability forecast May 4, 2010 SHOP price inflation rose to two per cent in April on a year earlier compared to 1.2 per cent in March, according the latest survey from the British Retail Consortium (BRC). Rising costs as a result of higher commodity prices were the main reason behind the increase. The BRC’s director-general Stephen Robertson said: “With commodity [...]