Tesco fixes Scottish pricing discrepancy August 7, 2011 TESCO yesterday said the grocer is committed to its national pricing policy, following a computer bug that gave Scottish shoppers cheaper prices on hundreds of household items. The alarm was raised when it emerged Scottish families have been paying on average five per cent less on an estimated 800 products for the past three weeks [...]
Nightmare for Dreams as insurer pulls cover despite refinancing August 7, 2011 BED retailer Dreams has been hit with a vote of no confidence from the insurer of its suppliers, which suspended its cover of about a fifth of Dreams’ suppliers last week. Euler Hermes, which insures suppliers against their customers going bankrupt, put Dreams’ suppliers on notice that its cover would end in 30 days, leaving [...]
NET-A-PORTER INVESTOR TAKES STAKE IN LOOKK.COM August 7, 2011 CARMEN Busquets, the luxury-goods investor who made a profit of almost £100m from the sale of Net-a-Porter, is to reinvest some of her gains into social networking clothes design firm Lookk.com. Busquets, 45, will take up a 5.1 per cent stake and a seat on the board of the company, which founded in 2008 under [...]
Bad numeracy is damaging UK economy August 7, 2011 THE FUTURE of the economy is in jeopardy unless the UK’s failing maths education system is radically overhauled, according to Tory maths guru Carol Vorderman who today releases the damning findings of her two-year investigation into financial literacy. Shocking findings from the study, which was commissioned by the Conservative party in 2009 and carried out [...]
The City needs to calculate the benefit of better maths August 7, 2011 MATHEMATICS is essential to the City, with A-level graduates in the subject better-equipped for logical thinking and statistical analysis – and likely to earn 10 per cent more on average than those without the qualification. And yet, in the advisory committee for mathematics education’s (ACME) report into the nation’s maths needs, published last month, evidence [...]
City firms need to be prepared for the Olympics August 7, 2011 London 2012 TIME TO GET READY WITH London 2012 less than a year away, companies around the capital need to prepare for the impact the Games will have on their business. The good news is that the City is leading the way in business preparedness. According to research from London 2012 and Transport for London, [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS August 7, 2011 Survitec Group The manufacturer and distributor for the marine, defence and aerospace survival technology industries that was bought by private equity firm Warburg Pincus in 2010 has appointed Paul Lester CBE as chairman. Lester, the former chief executive of VT Group and group managing director of Balfour Beatty, is currently chairman of Greenergy and non-executive [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS August 7, 2011 BP Credit Suisse rates the oil group “outperform” with a target price of 610p. The broker likes BP for its expected positive news from the Gulf of Mexico assets, and expects progress in the region to help the group push past share price pressure linked to its failed deal with Rosneft. Credit Suisse also thinks [...]
Potential chaos as markets absorb US downgrade August 7, 2011 SO ratings agency Standard and Poor’s has downgraded US long-term sovereign debt, from AAA to AA+, with a negative outlook just for good measure. Cue potential market mayhem this morning as we are now in unchartered territory. My forecast this morning comes with a larger than usual health warning attached, as it’s likely to be [...]
WALL STREET WEEK AHEAD August 7, 2011 WALL Street hit the panic button last week and survived. But the shocks have left investors stranded. Following its worst week in almost three years, the S&P 500 has fallen into correction territory and year-end forecasts are being lowered. Safe havens like gold and the Swiss franc rallied. Economic growth has slowed and budget-cutting legislation [...]
