FCA looks to ease consumer duty burden as Reeves pushes regulators for growth January 17, 2025 The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will look to ease the burden of complying with its stringent consumer duty rules as part of a push to cut red tape in the City and unlock growth. In a letter to the Chancellor Rachel Reeves this week, FCA boss Nikhil Rathi said the regulator would drop a requirement [...]
Superdrug hails record Christmas as sales surge January 17, 2025 Superdrug has hailed its Christmas trading as its best ever after sales rose by more than five per cent in the final weeks of 2024. The high street retailer said it was boosted by one gift set being sold every second throughout December. Own Brand top sellers included the Studio London Ultimate Brush Collection, the [...]
Retail’s Christmas results don’t match up to the gloom in the market January 17, 2025 If you were to judge the health of the retail market solely from the last two weeks of festive trading results, you would think the market is in rude health. But that would be a significant departure from the actual sentiment in the market, which has taken on a sense of almost unrelenting gloom in [...]
UK retail sales plunged in December as Budget fallout spread January 17, 2025 UK retail sales dropped during December, despite expectations of a Christmas bounce as consumers pulled back on spending. In a worrying sign for the economy, retail sales fell 0.3 per cent in December. Analysts had pencilled in growth of 0.4 per cent. November’s retail sales growth was also revised down by the Office for National [...]
‘The Silicon Beach dream was a lie’: Onbuy quits home with parting shot January 16, 2025 Technology company Onbuy has quit its home town of Bournemouth and hit out at the local council saying there is no support for the industry. Chief executive Cas Paton took to LinkedIn to announce the news that the business will now mainly operate from London and New York. He added that while Onbuy “will always” [...]
Reeves ramps up pressure on regulators in bid for growth January 16, 2025 Chancellor Rachel Reeves and business secretary Jonathan Reynolds are set to meet with a group of watchdogs today as they kickstart plans to cut red tape from the economy and drive growth through regulation. The chiefs of various regulatory agencies, including Competition and Markets Authority, Ofcom and Ofwat, have been summoned to Downing Street. Officials [...]
Young’s: Pub chain in ‘great shape’ after Christmas despite Budget burden January 16, 2025 Young & Co have reported an excellent Christmas trading period, with optimism abound despite a higher cost burden for the hospitality sector this year. The pubs-and-rooms operator, which has around 228 pubs and 5,600 employees, said that revenue in the five weeks to January 13 rose 30.4 per cent, with like-for-like sales up 11.6 per [...]
The Capitalist: Traitors, Tories and death to the robots January 16, 2025 Traitors, the Trump inauguration and broken robots in this week’s edition of City AM’s gossip column The Capitalist ROSES ARE RED, TULIP IS THROUGH At around about the same time that Tulip Siddiq was drafting her resignation statement, Labour MP Callum Anderson was hosting former London Stock Exchange colleagues for a chat in Westminster about [...]
No Conservative should stand for Britain in decline January 16, 2025 With persistent inflation, Conservatives exhausted and a Labour government with no ideas, the ghosts of the 1970s have returned to haunt Britain. Now, just as then, a comprehensive reboot of the right is required, says Sir Simon Clarke We live in a time of ghosts. The spirits of the 1970s are stirring across the UK, [...]
Mark Kleinman: Regulators’ D-Day is crucial for Starmer agenda January 16, 2025 Mark Kleinman is Sky News’ City Editor and is the man who gets the Square Mile talking in his weekly City AM column. This week, he looks at D-Day for regulators, Ebury’s IPO knife-edge and Badenoch’s Reform nightmare Regulators’ D-Day is crucial for Starmer agenda It’s D-Day for Britain’s regulators. Barely three weeks after a dozen economic watchdogs were [...]