Insurers hit out at no win no fee claims September 5, 2011 AMBULANCE-CHASING lawyers came under fire from major UK retailers and insurers demanding reform of the booming market for personal injury claims yesterday. Businesses led by the Association of British Insurers are fighting back against a surge in “no win no fee” legal actions behind a 72 per cent jump in the number of bodily injury [...]
Retailers and insurers campaign for no-win-no-fee reform September 5, 2011 Insurance companies are to join with some of the UK’s biggest retail brands in a new campaign to crack down on no-win-no-fee legal claims. The Association of British Insurers is working with carmaker Ford, supermarket chain Asda and pub group Whitbread to call for reform of the UK’s injury compensation system that has led to [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS August 21, 2011 Yorkshire Building Society Chris Pilling, head of branch network at HSBC Bank, has been appointed as chief executive of the UK’s second-largest building society. Pilling will join Yorkshire Building Society on 31 December, taking over from current chief executive Iain Cornish. Prior to joining HSBC as chief executive of its telephone and internet banking arm [...]
… as Asda loses market share to budget chains August 16, 2011 ASDA, which is owned by Walmart, yesterday reported a narrow 0.5 per cent like for like sales rise between 1 April and 30 June. The company said it was pinning its hopes for growth on its acquisition of 147 Netto stores. Asda said sales growth accelerated in the second quarter as its online price guarantee, [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING August 15, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES SINO-FOREST DELAYS PUBLICATION OF FRAUD REVIEW Sino-Forest, the Chinese forestry company fighting allegations of fraud, has delayed publication of its internal review into claims made by research outfit Muddy Waters that triggered a collapse in the company’s share price in June. An independent committee has presented an interim report to Sino-Forest’s board but [...]
Supermarkets kick off price war over petrol August 14, 2011 TESCO today reduced its fuel prices by up to two pence per litre (ppl). The price cut covers both unleaded and diesel and is in addition to the price cut of up to 1ppl announced earlier in the week. Yesterday Morrisons took two pence off the price of a litre of unleaded and diesel. The [...]
Tesco hits out after £10m fine for fixing cheese price August 10, 2011 TESCO has threatened legal action and called for the Office of Fair Trading to be dismantled after being hit with a £10m fine for fixing cheese prices between 2002 and 2003. A seven-year investigation by the watchdog ended with Arla, Asda, Dairy Crest, McLelland, Safeway, Sainsbury’s, The Cheese Company, Wiseman and Tesco being fined £50m [...]
Tesco hits back after £9.6m price fixing fine August 10, 2011 Tesco has hit back at a record fine imposed by the competition regulator today for its role in a ring of supermarkets and dairy companies that fixed price of milk and cheese for more than a year. The Office of Fair Trading has fined UK’s biggest supermarkets and dairy companies have been fined £49.5m for [...]
Supermarkets cut petrol prices as oil tumbles August 8, 2011 SUPERMARKETS have cut the price of petrol from near-record levels after the cost of oil tumbled in the face of continuing fears over Eurozone debt, the US downgrade and plunging stock markets. Asda was the first of the big retailers to announce yesterday that it would cut the price of unleaded petrol and diesel by [...]
Retail sales fall at fastest rate in a year July 28, 2011 Retail sales fell at their fastest pace in a year and stores expect a further deterioration in August, as hard-hit consumers clamp down on spending, a survey by the Confederation of British Industry showed. The CBI distributive trades survey’s reported sales balance fell to -5 in July from -2 in June, the lowest reading since [...]