HSBC marks out the winners and losers from the national living wage October 19, 2016 HSBC has today outlined how businesses can combat the cost pressures of the national living wage – and the kind of companies that will be the winners and losers from the legislation. The best way to offset the new costs is to find productivity growth, HSBC analysts said in a note, although "this would require a [...]
The Brexit rally is less fragile than it looks October 19, 2016 The performance of UK shares has generally confounded most strategists. Since the vote to leave the EU in June, UK savers have enjoyed returns of close to 15 per cent. While the weakness of sterling has eaten most of those returns for overseas investors, we are in a much better place than many were predicting in [...]
Attempt to revamp retail banking was “feeble”, Treasury committee hears October 18, 2016 Recent efforts to improve banking for customers have been weak, the man at the helm of a leading consumer interest body has said today. Speaking in front of the Treasury Select Committee today, Peter Vicary-Smith, chief executive of Which?, slammed the Competition and Markets Authority's (CMA) recent report into the retail banking sector as "feeble", remarking it [...]
Take that, Aldi: Tesco gains market share for the first time in years but Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Asda decline further October 18, 2016 It looks like Tesco is beginning to win the battle of the supermarkets, after new figures showed it won supermarket share in the last three months – for the first time in five years. Figures by Kantar Worldpanel showed Tesco increased sales by 1.3 per cent in the 12 weeks to 9 October, which pushed its [...]
No, Nick Clegg: A true liberal knows Brexit should slash UK food prices October 17, 2016 So Brexit means more expensive breakfast! Or so Nick Clegg believes. Hanging onto the coattails of last week’s Unilever-Tesco row over who would bear the cost of a falling pound raising food import prices (so-called Marmite-gate), the former Deputy Prime Minister now warns us that milk and cheese will be more expensive as a result [...]
Brewing up a storm: Sales in craft beer at Tesco soar 130 per cent in a year October 17, 2016 It’s a trend that took off in the UK in the dingy East End of London by bearded men in plaid shirts. But now craft beer has become so popular in pubs across the country that demand at Tesco stores has jumped by 130 per cent in the last year alone. The supermarket started off with [...]
The fashion industry is on its steepest decline for seven years October 17, 2016 The fashion market is on its steepest decline for seven years, according to new data, with £700m wiped off the value of the UK market since last year. According to figures from Kantar Worldpanel, sales declined for the fourth month in a row in September as retailers continued to offer huge discounts to consumers. Kantar [...]
Hard Brexit or soft Brexit, does it matter? October 17, 2016 So is it going to be a “hard” or a “soft” Brexit? Since our new Prime Minister began to lay out her Brexit negotiating stance this question has become a persistent preoccupation, particularly in business circles. To consider the answer we need to separate the politics of hard and soft, from the financial and stock [...]
City AM talk with Bink cofounders Lee Clarke and Greg Gormley about resuscitating the loyalty marketing industry October 17, 2016 The road to a cashless society has been a fairly smooth one so far – the ubiquity of contactless payments and online shopping have made it so. But where cash may have once made your wallet bulge, often the weight has been replaced with a deck of loyalty cards. Before we’re quite done eradicating cash, [...]
The UK is facing a “cliff edge” on food prices, according to Nick Clegg October 17, 2016 UK food prices could spike dramatically if the UK quits the Single Market, according to former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg. Clegg, now the EU spokesman for the Lib Dems, says British shoppers will face dramatically increased bills if the UK reverts to World Trade Organization (WTO) rules after Brexit. The UK currently exports £11bn worth of agricultural products to [...]