Manufacturing giant Premier Foods to increase prices due to Brexit vote January 10, 2017 Premier Foods, the supplier of iconic brands such as Mr Kipling cakes and Bisto gravy, is in talks with its major retail customers about lifting prices due to a double whammy of weaker sterling and higher commodity costs. City A.M. can reveal that the listed food manufacturer last month opened discussions with the likes of [...]
A big year, but it won’t Trump 2016’s shocks January 6, 2017 2016's events made fools of most pundits, and looking back at my column exactly a year ago, I fared little better. True, I correctly said that Santander UK would re-engage in an effort to buy Royal Bank of Scotland's Williams & Glyn unit, but I was well wide of the mark arguing that the FTSE-100 [...]
Shop prices continued to fall over Christmas – but inflationary pressures are pushing up clothing prices January 4, 2017 The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has called the start of a likely rise in inflation as it reported overall shop prices fell by 1.4 per cent in December, a deceleration from the 1.7 per cent fall in the previous two months. The sharp fall in the value of the pound since the Brexit vote has not [...]
These are the four commodities that will go up in price in 2017 December 22, 2016 Since the pound plummeted after the Brexit vote, consumers have been faced with warnings of coming food price hikes – most notably Unilever's Marmite, Birds Eye and PepsiCo. “There’s absolutely no chance prices will stay the same. They’ll go up for sure, it’s just a question of how much," a food supplier told research firm Nielsen. New [...]
Video analytics firm Big Sofa announces Aim flotation after raising over £6m December 19, 2016 Video analytics firm Big Sofa begins trading today on London’s junior market, with an eye on US expansion. Big Sofa has raised around £6.1m by way of a placing of, and subscription for, new ordinary shares at 17 pence per share, valuing the business at £10m. It hopes the fundraising will boost expansion in the [...]
Tata leadership race must show open mind December 16, 2016 Trump, May, Modi: protectionism takes many forms, and has many masters (and mistresses). In India, a curious case of economic nationalism is quietly unfolding at the country’s most significant conglomerate. In one sense, that’s unsurprising – India’s track record of foreign ownership restrictions in industries like insurance, banking and technology, is a lengthy one. But at [...]
Revealed: The best places to work in the UK December 7, 2016 Businesses can breath a sigh of relief – the trend of trying to emulate Google's particular brand of work environment with bean bags, slides, hot desking and food freebies might just be over. The tech company has slipped out of the top 10 best places to work list for the first time, coming 13th in the annual ranking by [...]
Marcus Brookes: How we’ve prepared for the return of inflation December 6, 2016 Inflation was already on the rise. Now I expect the policies likely to follow in Donald Trump’s presidency will pile on further price pressure. The deflating effect of QE We have been changing our portfolios over the last year to reflect our view that inflation may be returning to the financial system. Yes, quantitative [...]
Marcus Brookes: How we’ve prepared for the return of inflation December 6, 2016 Inflation was already on the rise. Now I expect the policies likely to follow in Donald Trump’s presidency will pile on further price pressure. The deflating effect of QE We have been changing our portfolios over the last year to reflect our view that inflation may be returning to the financial system. Yes, quantitative easing, [...]
How to prepare your portfolio for inflation December 2, 2016 Concerns about inflation were already on the rise. Donald Trump’s victory in the US election has further stoked expectations that price pressure, absent in most Western economies since the financial crisis, may make a return in 2017 and beyond. The basics Inflation is a measure of how fast the prices of goods and services [...]