Big Four fight back: Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Tesco report rising sales after years of stagnation January 15, 2016 Tesco became the third supermarket to reveal better-than expected Christmas results yesterday, in the clearest sign yet that the industry is staging a successful fightback against German discounters Aldi and Lidl. The so-called big four – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons – have been battling to respond to changing shopping habits and reverse the tide [...]
EU referendum: Osborne slammed for lack of contingency plans for Brexit January 14, 2016 The government has come under fire for not making contingency plans for a possible Brexit. The criticism came after chancellor George Osborne told BBC 2 Newsnight that the Treasury is not planning for Brexit. Instead of a plan, he said his department is "100 per cent now focused on achieving the renegotiation… That is where the [...]
JetBlue flights delayed as budget airline’s website goes down after power outage January 14, 2016 US budget airline JetBlue is experiencing flight delays due to a power outage at its data centre. The company's website has also gone down due to the issues. In a statement on Twitter the company said it was experiencing "intermittent network issues" which were affecting airport systems, but it hopes to resolve the problem quickly: [...]
UK digital healthcare firm Babylon raises $25m in series A round from investors including Innocent Drinks and DeepMind January 14, 2016 Babylon, the UK digital health firm founded by ex-Goldman Sachs banker Ali Parsa, has raised around $25m (£17.3m) in a series A funding round. The financing was led by Swedish investment group AB Kinnevik with other participants including the founders of BXR Group, a multi-billion dollar global investment group; DeepMind, the British artificial intelligence company [...]
Judge policies by their results, not intentions January 14, 2016 Sometimes three small words can be very powerful. “Reward for failure” is one such example, a phrase that has come to encapsulate public discontent with the financial crisis and high pay at banks and in business more broadly. The rights and wrongs of high pay can be argued all day (and all night), but no one [...]
City Moves for 14 January 2016 | Who’s switching jobs January 14, 2016 Capital Access Group Investor engagement adviser Capital Access Group has announced that Bruce Packard has joined its investor analytics team. Bruce has 15 years’ experience in the City and has been part of several highly ranked banks’ teams. Having covered the UK banking sector since 2000 at Credit Suisse, ING, Societe Generale, Evolution and Seymour [...]
City A.M. shadow MPC: Global stock market plunge spooks economists who vote to hold rates January 14, 2016 The Bank of England should refrain from hiking interest rates today, City A.M.’s shadow monetary policy committee has said. With less room to cut interest rates should the economy take a downward turn, Anthony Yates, who spent two decades at the Bank, said it would be better to let inflation overshoot than to increase rates now. [...]
Supermarket bosses have nowhere to hide January 13, 2016 Who said there’s blood on the high street? Retail stocks rose well into green territory yesterday, Morrisons up nine per cent and Debenhams a whopping 16 per cent higher, after both reported a jump in like-for-like sales. Defying City expectations, the pair of troubled FTSE-250 outlets remind us that retail should not be viewed as an [...]
City Moves for 13 January 2016 | Who’s switching jobs January 13, 2016 Mount Anvil Mount Anvil, a residential-led central London developer has announced the appointment of Hilary Wells as its first people director. Hilary joins from wine and spirits merchant Berry Bros & Rudd, a family-owned business dating back to 1698 with a turnover of more than £200m, where she led the transformation of the company’s approach [...]
Yorkshire Tea makes for a Brand new firm on list January 13, 2016 It’s that time of the year again. YouGov has published its BrandIndex Buzz score rankings for 2015, and for the second year in succession Aldi and Lidl are the brands with the greatest score. This is whether a respondent has heard something positive or negative about a brand in the last two weeks. The German [...]
