Farmfoods sees surge in annual sales and profit June 7, 2015 FROZEN food discounter Farmfoods has reported a surge in annual sales and profits as Britons increasingly searching for ways to cut spending on their weekly grocery shop. The supermarket, which is owned by the publicity shy Herd family, said pre-tax profits jumped by 38 per cent to £20.8m in 2014 compared with £15.1m the previous [...]
Virgin staff on parental leave get year’s pay up to 100 per cent of basic salary June 7, 2015 Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin will offer staff who take shared parental leave after the birth of their child up to a full year’s pay, under new policies announced today by the fitness-to-financial services giant. The government introduced new rights in April allowing parents to share up to 50 weeks of leave and 37 weeks of [...]
Online farmers market Farmdrop receives funding from Zoopla founder Alex Chesterman June 7, 2015 Farmdrop, the online farmers’ market for Londoners, has received significant funding from Alex Chesterman, the man behind Zoopla, It is also preparing to launch another major crowdfunding campaign. This is expected to launch in the next two to three weeks. Chesterman, who also founded LoveFilm, invested £100,000 in the final quarter of 2014. Farmdrop founder, [...]
City Moves for 08 June 2015 | Who’s switching jobs June 7, 2015 Dalriada Trustees The independent trustees firm has appointed Richard Favier as a trustee representative. He is a former head of restructuring and insolvency at the Pension Protection Fund, and left the PPF to set up his own consultancy in 2013. Favier is a member of the International Insolvency Institute. Arthur J Gallagher The international division [...]
Best of the Brokers for 08 June 2015 June 7, 2015 To appear in Best of the Brokers, email your research to notes@cityam.com HALFORDS Cantor Fitzgerald reiterated its “hold” recommendation for the UK retailer. The full year results, covering the 52 weeks to 27 March, reported underlying profit before tax of £81.1m, up 11.4 per cent driven, as expected, by Halfords Retail operations. JOHNSON MATTHEY Numis [...]
Retail sales on way up as trade deficit narrows – London Report June 7, 2015 DATA out this week might just provide some reasons to be cheerful, with retail sales numbers expected to show healthy growth during May. The British Retail Consortium sales monitor is expected to show strong year-on-year retail sales growth in May in data out tomorrow. According to Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight, this would “fuel [...]
Investors still uncertain over Fed’s rate hike – New York Report June 7, 2015 STOCK investors are expected to tread carefully next week, as speculation about the timing of a US Federal Reserve interest rate hike adds to concerns about valuations. Since hitting record levels two weeks ago, the US stock market has struggled for direction, and investors said the next several sessions might prove no better. A run of better-than-expected economic figures [...]
Land Rover can be the driving force behind a memorable World Cup 2015 June 7, 2015 If it were possible for an inanimate sporting trophy to have a personality, then it’s probably safe to say that the Rugby World Cup itself, would currently be lying down in a darkened room screaming “not another selfie please.” The cup is meandering its way around Britain, going on display at more than 350 [...]
The Greek crisis will end in calamity: You can’t reconcile the irreconcilable June 7, 2015 Despite conventional wisdom almost constantly (and falsely) reassuring the public in literally thousands of columns that all would come right in the end, here we are, exactly as I said, on the edge of the abyss regarding the Greek crisis. The latest ‘final’ deadline for Greece to release the magical last €7.2bn of its current [...]
How to lose money: Our flawed fixation on the safety of cash is losing us billions every year June 7, 2015 Savers in the UK rely far too heavily on cash. Between us, we have an astonishing £729bn sitting in savings accounts of various kinds, and it’s been earning only around 1 per cent a year on average since 2009. Fifty per cent of that money is in instant access accounts earning less than half that. The [...]
