Morrisons and Tesco lose grip on market share and sales July 1, 2014 Morrisons and Tesco have both suffered another heavy fall in sales and market share in the last 12 weeks despite efforts to slash prices and win customers back into their stores. Data released yesterday from Kantar Worldpanel showed that overall grocery market grew by 2.8 per cent year-on-year in the 12 weeks to 22 June, [...]
London Report: Miners lead way as second half kicks off with a jump July 1, 2014 LONDON’S leading shares yester-day kicked off the month and the second half of the year on a positive note, as investors looked to a mixed bag of global manufacturing surveys. The FTSE 100 ended up 0.87 per cent at 6,802.92. The FTSE 100 is still 1.3 percent off its 2014 peak of 6,894.88 in May, [...]
Aldi and Lidl to grab more sales from supermarket stores June 30, 2014 The amount of money spent at Britain’s larger supermarket stores is set to shrink over the next five years, new figures show, as competition from discounters, convenience stores and online gathers pace. According to research released yesterday by the industry body IGD, the value of the UK grocery market is set to rise by 16 [...]
Emojli: What’s so great about the emoji-based social network? June 30, 2014 Emoticons frequently supplement online conversations, but have you ever considered communicating in emojis alone? A new app is being developed to let you do just that. Emojli will allow users to communciate in emojis – and only emojis. An iOS app is on the way, and its developers claim it will be able to fix [...]
Tesco living through a period of radical change, says CEO June 27, 2014 Tesco's annual general meeting has kicked off, with shareholders expressing anger at the poor performance of the UK's biggest supermarket over the last year. Philip Clarke, who replaced Sir Terry Leahy as CEO of the company in 2010, acknowledged that the results had been bad but remained optimistic, saying that Tesco was "living through a [...]
Monitise buys voucher firm Markco for £55m June 26, 2014 MOBILE payments firm Monitise yesterday said it would acquire MyVoucherCodes.co.uk and Last Second Tickets owner Markco Media in a £54.5m deal. Monitise said the acquisitions would allow it to become “the enabling partner of choice amid the biggest shift in financial services and shopping in a generation, as brands turn to mobile”. The deal is [...]
Amazon’s lockers arrive in London Tube station car parks June 25, 2014 Amazon has introduced new lockers at Finchley Central and Newbury Park tube station car parks in a partnership between the online retail giant and Transport for London that will let customers collect their purchases at the lockers – like they can do in some Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s car parks. Amazon has lockers in over [...]
Sainsbury’s Bank doubles its workforce June 24, 2014 SAINSBURY’S hired 500 more workers yesterday as it expands its foreign currency operations through its banking arm. The expansion of its deal with forex provider Travelex will more than double its workforce, which currently stands at 400. Those staff had previously worked in the supermarket’s bureaux, and are being transferred over under the five-year agreement. [...]
Accelerating competition: How to level the playing field for challenger banks June 24, 2014 THERE is something that politicians and bankers both agree upon – we believe that greater competition improves the service and the products that customers get. We’ve heard ideas about increasing competition in banking from across the political spectrum. Today, the BBA is adding to that debate with some new ideas on promoting competition by levelling [...]
Fitch slashes Tesco credit rating June 23, 2014 Tesco came under renewed pressure yesterday after Fitch downgraded the troubled supermarket’s credit rating amid growing competition in its home market. Fitch said it has cut its rating from BBB+ to BBB, citing increasing competition from the hard discounters Aldi and Lidl and the mounting price war among the big four grocers. The downgrades comes [...]