Britain’s big banks decline to follow Lloyds lead on bitcoin credit card bans February 5, 2018 Lloyds Banking Group has banned customers from buying bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies using credit cards, but other big British banks say they currently have no plans to clamp down on the risky assets. A wave of lenders around the world have placed restrictions on customers using debt to buy digital currencies, including JP Morgan Chase, [...]
‘Supermarket giants doomed’ – no, just history repeating February 2, 2018 Investors, analysts, journalists or other market commentators often become convinced some scenario or trend definitely will or will not play out. Check back a few years later, however – always anyone bothers – and that certainty may prove unwarranted. Three or four years ago, for example, many were arguing it was ‘game over’ for supermarket [...]
Sainsbury’s takes full control of Nectar in £60m deal with Aimia February 1, 2018 Sainsbury’s has paid £60m to take full control of the Nectar loyalty scheme, giving it greater access to information about customer habits. It said the decision to acquire the shares in the programme from analytics firm Aimia Inc UK was part of a strategy “of knowing its customers better than anyone else”. While consumers will [...]
Craft beer maker FourPure to create 20 new London jobs with £2.5m brewery investment in Bermondsey January 31, 2018 Craft brewer FourPure has put £2.5m into expanding its Bermondsey brewery, increasing capacity by 400 per cent. The project will create 20 new jobs and allow the brand, which is stocked in the likes of M&S, Tesco, Asda and Ocado to keep up with demand. Co-founder Daniel Lowe said the company was now talking to [...]
Automation is evolution, not a class war January 26, 2018 I suffer the great misfortune of living near a busy Tesco Express store, which, absent of self-service checkouts, often makes the innocuous task of buying eggs feel like a test of one’s self-restraint. While waiting for the two portraits of human inefficiency behind the till to serve 20 shoppers, glancing at my phone, I read [...]
Countrywide’s (CWD) share price rises as chief executive Alison Platt resigns after profit warning January 24, 2018 Alison Platt has resigned as chief executive of estate agent Countrywide, and will stand down from the board, after a shares slump last week off the back of a profit warning. The board has asked Peter Long to become executive chairman until a successor is appointed. Paul Creffield, previously managing director of commercial development, becomes [...]
Thousands of Sainsbury’s jobs at risk as UK supermarket shakes-up management January 23, 2018 Thousands of Sainsbury’s jobs are at risk as the supermarket seeks to shake-up its management structure. The announcement comes shortly after Tesco put more than 1,500 staff into a consultation period as it prepared to cut around 800 jobs. Read more: Tesco announces it is cutting 800 jobs Structural changes in the retail industry, combined [...]
Tesco announces it is cutting 800 UK jobs January 22, 2018 Tesco is cutting 800 jobs within the business in a bid to simplify its operations. The UK’s biggest supermarket is removing all people managers and compliance managers from its large stores and fulfilment centres, and is removing its customer experience managers. Read more: Tesco “outperforms market” with Christmas sales rise As a result of the [...]
Compass CEO Richard Cousins and family killed in plane crash: The City pays tribute January 2, 2018 Tributes have been paid to the FTSE 100 chief executive who was killed alongside his family in a New Year’s Eve plane crash. Richard Cousins, 58, the outgoing CEO of the world’s largest catering firm, Compass Group, died in a seaplane crash near Sydney Harbour on 31 December 2017. Also killed were Cousins’s two sons [...]
Palmer & Harvey collapses into administration despite rescue talks with Carlyle Group November 28, 2017 Palmer & Harvey (P&H), the UK’s biggest cigarette supplier, has collapsed into administration despite weeks of crunch takeover talks with private equity firm Carlyle Group, according to reports. PwC was appointed today to handle the administration. Matthew Callaghan, joint administrator and PwC partner, said: “The Palmer & Harvey name has been a trusted partner for [...]