JD Sports: Shares slump as profit at FTSE 100 giant to be at lower end of expectations Retail JD Sports has revealed its full-year profit will now be towards the lower end of its expectations after softening consumer demand hit its sales. The Greater Manchester-headquartered FTSE 100 giant had previously set a target for its pre-ta profit of between £995m and £1.035bn but it has now confirmed the total will be towards the [...]
Retailers ‘right’ to warn of Budget job cuts, says Bank of England governor Economics The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, has said a group of retailers were “right” to warn of sweeping job cuts as a result of Labour’s punishing £40bn tax raid at the Budget. A group of Britain’s biggest supermarkets and retail chains, including Tesco, M&S, Boots and B&Q, wrote to the Chancellor Rachel [...]
How Arla Foods boss went from selling cigarettes to Lurpak and Cravendale Business A globe-trotting career that began selling cigarettes at British American Tobacco and has led to heading up the UK arm of dairy giant Arla Foods is maybe not what Bas Padberg could have predicted when he started out in the early 1990s. The managing director of the group behind Lurpak, Cravendale, Skyr and B.O.B milk [...]
Mark Kleinman: Thames needs to clear murky waters to restore credibility November 14, 2024 Mark Kleinman is Sky News’ City Editor and is the man who gets the Square Mile talking in his weekly City AM column. This week he tackles resetting Reeves, Thames Water and challenges for challenger banks Reeves’s post-reset reset may need new faces at City regulators How about a post-reset reset? Such has been the turbulence of Labour’s [...]
Virgin Active: Billionaire owner of Richard Branson-founded gym chain eyes UK listing November 13, 2024 The billionaire majority owner of Virgin Active is looking to list the business in the UK, according to reports. South African Christo Wiese owns the company private equity firm Brait, while Richard Branson’s Virgin Group holds a 16.8 per cent stake. A listing is “most likely” to be in the UK, with a secondary offer [...]
Richard Branson-backed 23andMe axes hundreds of jobs November 12, 2024 Genetic testing company 23andMe, which is backed by Virgin billionaire Richard Branson’s former company VG Acquisition Corp, has revealed plans to make 200 redundancies in a bid to regain stability after a major slowdown in the business over the last year. The company is cutting 40 per cent of its workforce to help its continued [...]
Virgin Media 02 reignites calls to crack down on fraud as Brits lose £600m November 5, 2024 Virgin Media 02 has called on the new Labour government to appoint a dedicated minister for fraud and set up a centralised, specialised national body to handle investigations. The telecom giant has argued that current law enforcement resources regarding fraud “remain inadequate” despite fraudulent activity representing 40 per cent of all crime in the UK. [...]
Should a business be like your family? The boss of B&Q thinks so November 5, 2024 A business should be more like a family in order to attract employees with the right moral and cultural judgements, the boss of B&Q has said.
Virgin Media O2 sells Cornerstone Towers stake as revenue dips October 30, 2024 Virgin Media O2 has announced the sale of a stake in its mobile towers joint venture, Cornerstone, to infrastructure investor Equitix, bagging £186m in cash. The deal, which leaves the telco with just over 25 per cent of Cornerstone after selling 8.33 per cent, involves a 16.66 per cent stake in a holding company that [...]
Virgin Active continues to make huge loss despite revenue passing £500m October 28, 2024 Virgin Active continued to make a huge pre-tax loss during its latest financial year despite its revenue passing £500m, it has been revealed. The London-headquartered chain has posted a pre-tax loss of £146.7m for 2023, after also reporting a loss of £147.3m in 2022. The last time the group made a pre-tax profit was the [...]