The week in brief April 27, 2014 Sony in Made in Chelsea stint Sony will become the first product placement partner for E4’s reality TV show. The deal, brokered by Mediacom and Channel 4, will see six cast members using the Xperia Z1 Compact phone. Channel 4’s Rob Ramsey said: “Xperia Z1 Compact is a perfect PP partner.. The cast are socially [...]
Troubled group’s shops to spend £100m in cutting prices of goods April 24, 2014 THE CO-OPERATIVE group became the latest supermarket chain to slash its prices yesterday, as it fights back against growing competition in the convenience sector. The retailer, which admitted earlier this year to years of underinvestment, is spending £100m this year in cutting prices of every day essential products such as bread, milk and bananas. It [...]
Don’t fear the quantified workplace April 24, 2014 While it has shades of Big Brother, personal analytics could make your job happier and easier SELF-KNOWLEDGE is the first step towards self-improvement for the personal analytics evangelists. If you can use wearable sensors to acquire data about yourself, and then analyse your performance over tasks, you can deploy this information to change your behaviour [...]
How the FTSE 100 is being undermined by the strong pound April 24, 2014 The mood music for the British economy has been sounding all the right notes this year. But one section of the business community are not tapping their feet – stocks listed on the UK’s top share index the FTSE 100. According to a new note from investment bank Deutsche Bank, business analyst have revised down [...]
Primark set to launch its first stores in the US April 23, 2014 ASSOCIATED British Foods (ABF) is taking Primark to the US, the FTSE 100 conglomerate announced yesterday, as it reported a 26 per cent leap in the budget clothing chain’s profits. Primark is set to open a 70,000 square foot store in Boston in 2015 and it is also in talks to open a further eight [...]
Retail successes and failures in the US April 23, 2014 Primark is making its first foray into the US, which has in the past proved to be a tough market to crack and one often described as the graveyard of UK retailers. However alongside a number of failures there have been several success stories. BurberryBurberry has proved to be one of the biggest British retail [...]
Why breakfast staples could be about to get more expensive April 23, 2014 The surge in coffee futures documented over the last couple of weeks isn’t the only thing that could up the cost of breakfast. A Brazilian drought, which significantly damaged crops, is pushing up prices. Changes will most likely felt by global wholesalers over the next couple of months as harvests begin, says Thomas Pugh, a [...]
Tesco steps up assault with more price cuts April 22, 2014 TESCO yesterday launched a fresh round of price cuts and slashed its online shopping charges as it steps up its efforts to stop customers defecting to its discount rivals. The retailer dropped prices on over 30 products yesterday including bacon, sugar, broccoli and some of its bread ranges. The price of six Tesco free-range medium [...]
Best of the Brokers for 22 April 2014 April 21, 2014 To appear in Best of the Brokers, email your research to notes@cityam.com TESCO HSBC cuts its forecasts on the supermarket by 11 per cent for this year as UK like-for-like sales and margins appear to be sliding further, and has advised Tesco to consider withdrawing from parts of Europe. The broker keeps its “underweight” rating [...]
City & Gild: How Tesco can make us fall back in love with its brand April 17, 2014 Tesco’s current strategy worries me enormously, especially off the back of a six per cent fall in profits. Chief executive Philip Clarke has confidently explained, “Tesco will be firmly established as a middle-market retailer, which offers low prices and good quality – all under one roof”. My translation of this is essentially, “we’re going to [...]