Inflation

Ocado ditches Waitrose; Bill gates orders £500m beast-yacht; Boris to lower immigration wage threshold

A busy start to the week in the business pages. As the coronavirus story unfolds I am reluctant to spend every day providing updates on it, but it is worth noting quickly that there is likely to be some worldwide economic turbulence due to the latest developments. A slew of…

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Global CEOs and the IMF reckon the UK is about to have a good year

It’s not often there is some incontrovertibly positive news about the economy, but today we’ve had some. Audit and business advisory firm PwC has polled 1,600 chief executives, and found that they think the UK is the fourth most important target in the world for companies looking to make investments. PwC said Britain’s reputation…

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Boohoo more valuable than M&S – a sea-change encapsulated

From a purely journalistic standpoint it is now a de facto cliché to refer to Marks and Spencer as the “high street bellwether”, yet that is the status it has held for so many decades. The once mighty monolith was the first British retailer to reach a market capitalisation of £1bn and…

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Who would have thought skinny jeans could be anyone’s undoing?

It’s not often that the business pages give you a good belly laugh. But today we have the spectacle of Marks & Spencer blaming its poor Christmas trading results partly on an oversupply of skinny jeans for men. Apparently customer surveys revealed that the high street bellwether’s ranges were “too old” the…

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Treasury Committee urges MPs to reform ‘broken’ business rates

The government has been urged to fix the “broken” business rates system as it is continuing to affect high street retailers, a Treasury committee has said. An influential group of MPs has asked the government to examine alternatives to property tax, which puts more pressure on high street retailers than…

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A challenging retail environment

The last few months have been tough for UK retailers and with pressure on the high street unlikely to let up any time soon, factors such as Brexit, rising costs and online competition have left British merchants with little to celebrate. Although the macroeconomic picture seems to have improved more…

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Bank of England puts hold on interest rates due to Brexit uncertainty

The Bank of England has placed interest rates on hold following growing uncertainty around Brexit. A vote to leave rates unchanged held by the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) was in favour of leaving rates at 0.75% by 9-0. Financial markets are currently indicating that rates will not rise until…

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Online retail jumps 19 percent in April

UK online retail sales went from strength to strength in April, up 18.8 percent year-on-year (YoY) according to the latest figures. The IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index showed it was the highest YoY increase since November 2016, despite the dampening effect of Easter falling in March this year. There was…

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Retail consumer spending sees sharpest drop since 2012

Consumer spending has suffered its sharpest drop in six years, according to Visa’s latest consumer spending index. Spending in-store fell by 5.4 percent in April when compared to the same period last year, while overall consumer spending fell by two percent, matching March’s year-on-year figures. Online spending was also down…

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43,000 retailers in ‘financial distress’

Nearly 43,000 retailers ended the first quarter of the year in a state of ‘significant’ financial distress, according to research from insolvency firm Begbies Traynor. Its ‘Red Flag Alert’ research for Q1 2018, which monitors the financial health of UK companies, found the number of firms in the category was…

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