SSP employees take a bite out of firm’s £2bn stock market debut June 17, 2014 THE OWNER of train station food retailers Millie’s Cookies and Upper Crust is set to give its 30,000 employees a chance to buy a stake in the business. SSP, which unveiled plans to raise £500m from City investors by listing shares on the stock market, is considering plans to include an employee share ownership scheme [...]
M&M Direct sold for £140m after listing snubbed June 16, 2014 BUDGET online sports retailer M&M Direct is set to be sold for up to £140m – reversing plans for a stock market listing in London. The company, founded as a catalogue retailer in 1997, has clinched a deal to be acquired by Danish clothing outfit Bestseller. The firm’s current backer, private equity firm TA Associates, [...]
MySale flops on market debut after a share pricing faux pas June 16, 2014 MYSALE, the online fashion retailer 25 per cent owned by Sir Philip Green’s wife Tina, tanked on its market debut yesterday after an error on its listing price. Shares were priced at 226p but were inadvertently listed at 2.26p, sparking automated selling of the stock as trading programmes reacted to the lowball price by selling [...]
Tesco’s rating cut again by Moody’s June 16, 2014 TESCO suffered fresh bad news yesterday as Moody’s cut its rating again for the troubled retail giant, reducing its rating to Baa2 from Baa1, only two grades above “junk” status. The downgrade comes after Tesco announced its worst sales results in decades recently, while also posting a six per cent drop in its annual profits, [...]
Majestic Wine’s profits to stay flat until 2016 June 16, 2014 British booze retailer Majestic Wine disappointed investors yesterday after it reported flat profits of £23.8m for the year ended 31 March, compared to £23.7m the previous year, amid a market that its chairman said had been challenging for the business. Majestic’s board also warned that the company does not expect to see further substantial profit [...]
Footfall slump knocks retailers despite strengthening recovery June 16, 2014 RETAIL footfall dipped slightly during May in comparison to the same month in 2013, with London recording a larger than average drop in shopping traffic. Footfall fell 0.2 per cent across the country, according to the latest data from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Springboard – driven down by a 0.9 per cent drop [...]
London Report: Healthy economic data due as the UK’s growth continues June 16, 2014 ONGOING growth is expected to be reflected in healthy economic data out this week, showing strength in public finances, consumer price inflation, retail sales and manufacturing. Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight said: “Consumer price inflation is expected to have edged back down to 1.7 per cent in May as some transport prices ease back [...]
Bonmarche profits soar June 13, 2014 Women's retailer Bonmarche has enjoyed a massive rise in profit before tax of 66 per cent, to £8m for the year ended 29 March. Like for like sales grew by over 10 per cent, with revenue climbing 12 per cent to £164m. The company's market share of women's value sector also rose by a hefty [...]
World Cup gives boost to Argos and Homebase sales June 12, 2014 Home Retail Group enjoyed a strong start to the year as the warmer weather and the World Cup prompted Britons to stock up on barbecues and new wide-screen televisions. Argos’ like-for-like sales rose 4.9 per cent in the 13 weeks to 31 May, the chain’s eighth consecutive quarter of growth, driven by sales of garden [...]
Bottom Line: Nothing mythical about Argos biting back June 12, 2014 WAY BACK in my student days I had a girlfriend from a rather affluent background who had never visited an Argos store. She laughed when I suggested we buy some or other dull household item from there, assuming that this was a joke. Yet half an hour later we were mooching around the Holloway Road [...]