Barclays beats expectations after Tesco Bank takeover February 13, 2025 Barclays surpassed analyst expectations in its annual results report on Thursday, after a strong year for its investment banking arm and day one benefits of its Tesco Bank takeover. The FTSE 100 bank reported a pretax profit of £1.7bn in the fourth quarter, ahead of the £1.62bn expected by analysts. For 2024 as a whole, the [...]
Retailers unite to warn Treasury on ‘perfect storm’ of costs February 11, 2025 A heavyweight group of retailers has warned the Treasury that hundreds of thousands of jobs are at risk in the retail sector due to unsustainable cost hikes this year. It’s the latest in a long string of warnings from the retail sector, which has been vocal about the coming damage to jobs and investment on [...]
Hyper-personalisation: Has AI finally made retail’s ‘holy grail’ possible? February 8, 2025 Hyper-personalisation has long been the holy grail of retail: to recreate the customer experience of a local, everyone-knows-your-name store on a global scale. Now, with the combination of data tracking, AI and our ever-increasing tendency to consume online content, genuinely personally-tailored ads are just about within touching distance. These ads, introduced in their earliest form [...]
Tesco considers franchise of axed Post Office branches February 6, 2025 Tesco has shown an interest in acquiring a number of axed Post Office branches as part of a franchise model, according to reports. Post Office chairman Nigel Railton told a group of MPs earlier this week that the UK’s biggest grocer had expressed interest in the 108-site Crown Post Office network, according to Sky News. [...]
Aldi to create 1,600 new jobs and expand as supermarket rivals cut February 4, 2025 Discount grocer Aldi is set to create 1,600 new roles this year as it expands its store presence in the UK, while its rivals slash jobs. The announcement stands in marked contrast to news of 3,000 jobs cuts at Sainsbury’s, and small reductions in staff numbers at Tesco’s and Morrisons. All three supermarkets have attributed [...]
Grocery inflation slowed as supermarket discounts deepened February 4, 2025 Grocery inflation in January slowed for the first time in six months after supermarkets lowered prices in response to stretched household budgets. Inflation was 3.3 per cent in January, easing from 3.7 per cent in December, according to the latest figures from Kantar. Prices rose for chocolate, juices and butters, but fell for cooking sauces, [...]
Asda equal pay dispute advances as UK supermarkets look on nervously February 3, 2025 Asda workers equal pay can advance to the final legal stage after the Tribunal ruled some of their jobs are of equal value to the jobs in the distribution centres
Barclays customers ‘unable to make payments’ as bank outage continues February 1, 2025 A major IT glitch is still affecting Barclays customers, with some locked out of their accounts throughout the night and almost 24 hours on from the bank’s initial outage. The bank has apologised to customers, saying they are facing “ongoing technical issues that are impacting our customers’ accounts”. They warned some people may see an [...]
John Lewis misses festive sales target as turnaround falters January 31, 2025 Sales at John Lewis are reported to have fallen short over the key Christmas trading period as middle-class Brits increasingly switch to shops like Marks and Spencer. According to reports from the Daily Telegraph, sales at Waitrose similarly missed targets. The employee-owned John Lewis Partnership (JLP) blamed “lower consumer confidence and weaker than expected market confidence” for [...]
Asda ditches Aldi and Lidl price match promise just a year after launch January 29, 2025 Asda has axed its price-matching scheme with Aldi and Lidl in a bid to stop “dancing to the tune of the discounters”, according to reports. The Leeds-based firm, which in January 2024 became the first of the UK’s ‘big four’ to offer the scheme, said it wanted to focus on “its own great Asda prices, [...]