Dignity rises as profits beat expectations despite tough year January 15, 2019 Dignity’s problems are not terminal it seems as the company beat market expectations to rake in a £79m profit. The group rose 2.1 per cent as the markets opened this morning, bringing it to 735p, but well below its 1,880p price on this day last year. Read more: Dignity shares slide after regulator proposes funeral competition [...]
Audit must reclaim its Victorian roots to win back public trust January 15, 2019 Today marks the first anniversary of the collapse of Carillion. It is also the first day that the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy select committee takes evidence in its inquiry into the audit market. Carillion’s downfall brought the role of audit in business and society into the spotlight, and was a watershed moment for the [...]
EU banking watchdog calls for fresh cryptoassets regulation January 10, 2019 New rules may be needed to stop existing regulation on cryptocurrencies and digital assets from getting too diverse across the European Union, the bloc's banking watchdog said yesterday. Cryptoassets such as bitcoin, ether and tokens created in initial coin offerings (ICOs) typically fall outside of the scope of EU financial legislation, which makes it hard to [...]
Aisle be damned: The knives are out for big UK grocers January 9, 2019 Aldi and Lidl’s tills jingled all the way in December – handing them their highest-ever combined market share for the festive season, data from Kantar Worldpanel showed this week. All the major supermarkets lost market share in the 12 weeks to 30 December as Aldi’s sales jumped 10.4 per cent while Lidl’s were up 9.4 [...]
Why the cheapest mortgage deal isn’t necessarily the right one January 9, 2019 The Financial Conduct Authority’s report into the mortgage market found that around 30 per cent of borrowers were unable to see that they were eligible for a cheaper deal. On average, these consumers paid around £550 per year more over the introductory period compared to the cheaper product. But this poses a question: is the cheapest [...]
Sainsbury’s suffers Christmas sales slowdown as Black Friday hurts the supermarket January 9, 2019 Like-for-like sales at Sainsbury’s fell by 1.1 per cent over the Christmas period, the supermarket said today. Total sales excluding fuel dropped by 0.4 per cent in the 15 weeks to 5 January, while general merchandise sales fell by 2.3 per cent and clothing by 0.2 per cent. Read more: Aldi sales hit £1bn in record Christmas [...]
Serco shares jump to 14-month high as government awards decade-long asylum seeker housing contracts worth billions January 8, 2019 Outsourcers Serco and Mears have been tasked with providing a decades-worth of accommodation and support for asylum seekers across the UK, in a string of billion-pound contract awards. The 10-year contracts, worth £1.9bn for Serco and £1bn for Mears, bumped both companies’ share prices up around seven per cent today. Home Office minister Baroness Susan [...]
Watchdog plans for audit sector shake-up set to draw backlash from businesses January 6, 2019 Finance bosses at some of Britain’s largest FTSE companies are set to hit out at new proposals put forward by the UK’s competition regulator, it emerged this evening. Plans by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to make publicly listed firms appoint two sets of auditors are expected to receive a harsh backlash from a [...]
Sainsbury’s begins search for new banking chief as Peter Griffiths prepares to retire January 3, 2019 Sainsbury’s has begun the search for a new chief executive of its banking division after confirming Peter Griffiths will step down next year. Griffiths, who has been in charge of Sainsbury’s Bank since 2012, will step down in 2020, Sky News first reported. The supermarket chain confirmed it was in the “early stages” of finding [...]
From Brexit to tariffs, brace yourself for an uncertain 2019 January 3, 2019 Get ready for a 2019 full of uncertainty. On the political scene, headline events range from Brexit to the US-China trade tensions to EU reforms – all coming at a vulnerable stage in the business cycle, with half of US chief financial officers expecting a recession in 2019, and over 80 per cent by 2020. [...]