Diplomat wins €100,000 prize for Brexit plot April 8, 2014 THE UK could boost its GDP by £1.3bn if the country left the EU and negotiated a looser relationship with Brussels, according to the winner of a competition to design a “Brexit” plan. The Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) announced a competition last year to plan a potential exit from the EU for the UK, [...]
Scotland told independence will cut growth and hike energy bills April 8, 2014 SCOTLAND’S economy would take a severe blow if it left the UK, as trade and business are reduced, economists warned today. If the new border has the same impact on trade and business as the Ireland-Ulster border, David Comerford and Jose Rodriguez Mora will tell the Royal Economic Society that GDP will take a 5.5 [...]
Bottom Line: Online retailers still falling out of fashion April 8, 2014 ON MONDAY, investors panicked. Having had the weekend to mull over the losses that sent the Nasdaq 2.5 per cent lower last Friday, sellers piled out of anything that could be broadly considered a tech stock – from FTSE 100 chipmaker Arm to recent market entrant AO.com. Yesterday, they seemed to have calmed down a bit. While [...]
Eyes down in battle to acquire UK bingo halls April 8, 2014 THE FORMER owner of high street stalwarts Comet and MFI is weighing a bid for up to 137 UK bingo halls from Gala Coral, underscoring a sudden turnaround in fortunes for the unloved bingo sector. Henry Jackson, the US investor who heads London-based firm OpCapita, has registered his interest in snapping up Gala Bingo from [...]
Record drop in shop prices with 11th month of deflation in March April 8, 2014 SHOP prices tumbled further in March, with the fastest deflation for more than seven years recorded by a major monthly report on the sector. According to the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Nielsen’s latest research, shop prices fell by 1.7 per cent in the year to March, the largest drop since the groups began keeping [...]
Becks lined up as face of Posh new whisky April 8, 2014 DAVID Beckham is dipping his toe into the world of high-end whisky, teaming up with global drinks company Diageo to promote Haig Club, a single grain Scotch. Beckham will be joined by his manager Simon Fuller and both will be part of a responsible drinking campaign to run alongside advertising the new tipple, said to [...]
Brand Index: Cheaper supermarket brands are outflanking Morrisons April 8, 2014 GERMAN discounters Aldi and Lidl continue to expand their reach in the UK at the expense of the so-called “big four” chains, with Aldi increasing its market share by more than a third. Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons have all experienced a decline in sales, though Asda has proved the most resilient and Morrisons has [...]
Big four grocers all lose ground to discounters April 8, 2014 BRITAIN’S four biggest supermarket groups all lost market share over the last three months to German discounters Aldi and Lidl, with Sainsbury’s suffering the biggest drop in market share in ten years. Sainsbury’s has until this month been the only one of the big four to resist the pressure of the discounters and hold onto [...]
Lloyds struggling to identify a non-exec to reform IT system April 8, 2014 LLOYDS is having trouble finding a non-executive director who can understand its ageing IT systems and bring the bank into the modern world, its former chairman Sir Win Bischoff said yesterday. Currently Lloyds’ computer setup is made of decades-old systems from several banks, forced together over years of mergers. “We as a bank are looking for [...]
Barclays closes repayment gap April 8, 2014 BARCLAYS has accelerated its redress payments to small firms who were mis-sold interest rate swaps, official figures showed yesterday. The bank has now determined how it will repay 64 per cent of customers affected, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said. The March figure is up from 50 per cent in February and is firmly ahead of [...]
