Bargain Booze owner to raise £65m in London Aim listing July 17, 2013 THE COMPANY behind Bargain Booze announced plans yesterday to launch on London’s Alternative Investment Market (Aim) as the north west-based off-licence chain looks to target thirsty shoppers in the south of England. Conviviality Retail, which also trades as Bargain Booze Plus, Select Convenience and Thorougoods, said it hopes to raise £60m to £65m through a [...]
Brothers who took a punt on a new market June 13, 2013 Annabel Palmer talks tobacco with Taz and Umer Sheikh: salesmen, business partners, and self-professed pioneers of the growing electronic cigarette industry SIX years ago, the smoking ban came into force in England, making it illegal to smoke in enclosed workplaces. So when I meet Umer Sheikh – the younger of the two Sheikh brothers behind [...]
Brothers who took a punt on a new market | City A.M. June 13, 2013 Annabel Palmer talks tobacco with Taz and Umer Sheikh: salesmen, business partners, and self-professed pioneers of the growing electronic cigarette industry SIX years ago, the smoking ban came into force in England, making it illegal to smoke in enclosed workplaces. So when I meet Umer Sheikh – the younger of the two Sheikh brothers behind [...]
The Old Lady’s staff – gamers and gold bugs April 13, 2013 BANK of England employees spend their worktime playing online games, planning trips to expensive shops and working out how to buy gold, according to data obtained by The Capitalist. We’ve got hold of a list of the top 500 websites visited by central bank employees over the last year – and it reveals their most popular [...]
Horsemeat fear sends burger sales plunging February 26, 2013 SUPERMARKET sales of frozen burgers and ready meals have plummeted since the horsemeat scandal reared its ugly head last month, industry data shows. Market researcher Kantar Worldpanel yesterday said frozen burger sales fell by 43 per cent and frozen ready meals declined by 13 per cent in the four weeks to 17 February, as retailers [...]
Businessman who woke up and smelt the coffee February 24, 2013 Annabel Palmer talks to Andrew Rugasira, the Ugandan entrepreneur with a new book and a Good African story to tell THE lives of 14,000 farmers in the Ugandan Rwenzori Mountains have been transformed since Andrew Rugasira had his lightbulb moment in 2002. At the time, he was running a prosperous marketing and events company in [...]
Tesco voted worst supermarket in survey of 11,000 UK shoppers February 21, 2013 TESCO has been voted the worst of Britain’s nine major supermarkets in a poll carried out by one of the leading consumer groups. More than 11,000 Which? members rated the supermarkets with customer scores based on customer satisfaction and the likelihood they would recommend it to a friend. Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket group, came [...]
Supermarket bosses blame cheap food culture for horsemeat fiasco February 17, 2013 MALCOLM Walker, the chief executive of frozen food supermarket chain Iceland said yesterday local councils are to blame for driving down food quality with cheap food contracts for schools and hospitals. Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, Walker said supermarkets should not be held responsible for the horsemeat crisis, arguing that they had become [...]
Police raid Yorkshire abattoir over horsemeat kebab fears February 12, 2013 POLICE yesterday raided an abattoir in West Yorkshire and a meat supplier in Aberystwyth as the scandal over the mislabelling of meat products continued to spread. Officials from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) closed down the two sites following allegations that horse carcasses from the Yorkshire site were sold on to the Welsh company for [...]
Supermarket Ocado edges towards profit February 7, 2013 ONLINE grocer Ocado yesterday narrowed year-end losses from £2.4m to just £600,000 as it edged ever closer towards profitability, easing the concerns of long-suffering investors. Shares in the company, which has not made a profit since it began trading thirteen years ago, yesterday closed up 11 per cent at 115.9p. This is still well below [...]