Made.com sees sales jump but still turns a loss in H1 2021 September 14, 2021 Homeware retailer Made.com saw gross sales jump by 54 per cent in the first half of the year, but the company struggled to balance the books. While sales topped £213.9m the company’s loss before tax stood at £10.1m, a 34 per cent improvement on the first half of 2020 when Made.com lost £15.2m. EBITDA climbed [...]
Hot under the collar: Ocado pins revenue tumble on warehouse fire September 14, 2021 Online supermarket Ocado has pinned a revenue dive over the last quarter on a fire at one of its London warehouses, in its latest trading update today. The fire, at its south London Erith Customer Fulfilment Centre in July, cost Ocado some £35m in revenue, it said in a statement – the equivalent of 300,000 [...]
UK unemployment rate falls amid August hiring spree September 14, 2021 The UK unemployment rate fell 0.3 per cent in the last quarter as businesses continued on a hiring spree to keep pace with the economic recovery from the pandemic. According to the Office of National Statistics, the unemployment rate now stands at 4.6 per cent, in line with economists’ forecasts. The fall was powered by [...]
CDR agrees pensions deal with Morrisons as takeover nears September 14, 2021 Private equity house Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CDR) looks to have shored up its grip on takeover target Morrisons after coming to an agreement with trustees over the supermarket’s pension schemes. The supermarket has been at the heart of a bidding war between CDR and fellow private equity firm Fortress, with the former agreeing a £7bn [...]
Fake news: Walmart confirms it is not partnering with Litecoin September 14, 2021 The price of Litecoin soared 34 per cent in a matter of hours before crashing down to Earth when news of a partnership with Walmart turned out to be false. Yesterday, a press release distributed by GlobeNewswire, which was reported on in Reuters, Bloomberg News and CNBC, claimed that Walmart would accept Litecoin payments in [...]
Johnson: Booster Covid-19 jabs for over 50s ‘going ahead’ September 14, 2021 A third booster jab is to be offered to over 50s in the upcoming months, prime minister Boris Johnson confirmed last night. It is expected that all over 50s will be offered a third Pfizer/BioNTech jab at least six months after their second dose, beginning with those over the age of 70 and the most [...]
Vodafone: We need to focus on the tech we already have to tackle climate change rather than gambling our future on innovation September 14, 2021 The United Nations Climate Change conference – better known as COP26 – has forced us all to keep climate change at the front of mind. The world is awash with public and corporate pledges to be net zero. But in order to do this in a fair and equitable way, there will need to be [...]
Britain must be alive to the threat of Chinese influence in our universities September 14, 2021 Last year, Downing Street U-turned on a decision to grant Chinese state-backed telecomms giant Huawei even “non-core” access to Britain’s 5G famework. The threat of influence or privacy invasion was deemed to be too high a price to pay. Not so for Cambridge University it seems. Yesterday, it was revealed that three out of the [...]
James Barbour CA on the seven essential elements for corporate reform September 14, 2021 From the outset of the calls for audit reform, ICAS has advocated a holistic review of corporate governance, reporting and audit (“the corporate ecosystem”). This article first appeared in ICAS’ CA magazine. We therefore see the recent consultation by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), “Restoring trust in audit and corporate governance”, as [...]
FTSE 100 and 250 fall flat as mining stocks drag September 14, 2021 The FTSE is down 0.48 per cent today at 7,034.42, falling by 33 points compared to yesterday’s close as mining stocks spurred losses. Industrial and energy mining companies dragged the index down. Evraz is down 4.12 per cent, Anglo American PLC shed 3.1 per cent while mining giant BHP dropped 2.6 per cent. Amid continued [...]
