UK housing recovery lifts Laura Ashley sales June 12, 2014 British fashion and homeware brand Laura Ashley posted a 0.7 per cent rise in like-for-like sales for the first 19 weeks of the year to 8 June as customers kitting out their homes with the retailer’s floral accessories and furnishings. Total sales were down 0.9 per cent as the group closed three stores in the [...]
B&M Retail bags £1.1bn to buck market gloom June 12, 2014 B&M RETAIL yesterday shook off the gloom in the new issues market to debut the biggest stock market flotation in London since Royal Mail. The budget chain, chaired by former Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy, raised £1.1bn by selling 40 per cent of the company to City investors. Shares rose in informal trading to close [...]
Sports Direct eyes Cotswold June 12, 2014 SPORTS Direct has joined the bidding for Cotswold Outdoor, as Mike Ashley’s high street retailer looks to the great outdoors again following its unsuccessful bid Blacks Leisure two years ago. The firm is understood to have lodged a bid for Cotswold’s parent company AS Adventure, which owner Lion Capital has put up for sale with [...]
US retail sales grow at half predicted pace June 12, 2014 US retail sales disappointed in May, creeping up by just 0.3 per cent last month. That's half what consensus estimates had suggested we'd see today, with economists predicting that we'd see growth of 0.6 per cent reported. Investors were expecting the pace of sales growth to pick up, with analysts at Rabobank pointing towards indicators [...]
How hard will Japan’s sales tax hike hit growth? June 12, 2014 In March, I said that it could be the most important economic event this year. But how has Japan's sales tax hike gone so far? Japan has effectively created a fiscal shock, providing its own test of the ability of monetary policy to offset the impact. Noah Smith, who was initially skeptical of Japan's new [...]
Mulberry share price drops as profits slump June 12, 2014 Luxury brand Mulberry has seen its share price drop one per cent on the back of news that the company suffered a massive drop in profit before tax of 45 per cent for the year ended 31 March. The handbag maker has issued two profit warnings so far this year and lost its chief executive [...]
WH Smith halts sales fall with overseas shops June 11, 2014 WH SMITH, the books to stationery retailer, brought years of sales decline to a halt in the last quarter, thanks to its strategy of opening more shops in airports and travel locations around the world. Shares in WH Smith edged up 1.5 per cent yesterday as it revealed that total group sales were flat in [...]
Rolls-Royce and airline share price falls put FTSE in a spin June 11, 2014 Trouble in the skies and a reduction in the World Bank’s global forecast and a couple of companies going ex-dividend yesterday brought the FTSE down. The FTSE 100 closed down 34.68 points at 6,838.87, a fall of 0.50 per cent. The cancellation of Emirates Airlines’ major order for 70 new Airbus A350s hit shares of [...]
Justin King’s final curtain: Sainsbury’s CEO goes out on sliding sales June 11, 2014 It is chief executive Justin King’s last set of results, and Sainsbury's has reported a 1.1 per cent fall in like-for-like sales – in line with expectations. Including fuel, they dropped 2.4 per cent in the 12 weeks to 7 June. But shares have risen by as much as two per cent this morning. Darren [...]
Ted Baker sales rise as overseas growth pays off June 10, 2014 TED BAKER posted a 17.9 per cent jump in first quarter sales yesterday, as the fashion retailer’s tailoring and quirky prints won over customers overseas where it had been opening more stores. Retail sales rose 15.8 per cent in the 19 weeks to 7 June, helped by 48.1 per cent growth in its online business. [...]