Online shopping is masking the birth of hybrid retailers January 15, 2013 THE fall of yet another iconic British retailer, HMV, does little to assuage fears that the high street in its current form is in terminal decline. The statistics are bleak. According to a survey by PwC and the Local Data Company, 32 stores closed each day in July and August 2012. Over one gloomy five [...]
Bottom Line: Tesco hopes to charm shoppers February 17, 2013 When Starbucks opened its first stores in Mumbai last October, queues around the Taj Mahal hotel stretched almost to the Gateway of India – the imposing arch on the harbour under which Boris Johnson held a bike-riding photo call a few weeks later. America’s frothy coffee seemed, at the time, to go down much better [...]
Net-A-Porter posts a £27m loss despite jump in full-year sales January 13, 2013 NET-A-Porter, the luxury online retailer, swung to a loss last year after investing heavily in its expansion, despite seeing sales soar by 55 per cent. The group, which is owned by Swiss luxury conglomerate Richemont, made a £27m loss in the year to 31 March 2012 compared with a 5.2m profit the previous year. According [...]
Administrators announce 190 HMV job losses January 31, 2013 HMV’s administrators confirmed yesterday that 190 staff have been made redundant across the collapsed music retailer’s head office and distribution network. Deloitte, which was hired to run the chain after it fell into administration earlier this month, said no jobs cuts have been made at its stores, which all continue to trade. The redundancies took [...]
Hilco snaps up HMV debt pile to take control January 22, 2013 HMV was given a potential lifeline yesterday after restructuring firm Hilco bought the crisis-hit music retailer’s debt for about £40m, effectively giving it control of the group. Hilco – which already owns HMV Canada – confirmed yesterday it had acquired HMV’s debt from the group’s consortium of lenders led by the Royal Bank of Scotland [...]
Dealmakers already confident of better times ahead January 31, 2013 With the first month of the year out of the way, most investment bankers are beginning to feel a little bit chirpier – at least those of them lucky enough still to be in a job. In Europe, January has brought a few large deals to the markets, including ArcelorMittal’s $3.5bn (£2.21bn) mandatory convertible bond [...]
City Moves for 15 February 2013 | Who’s switching jobs February 14, 2013 CBRE The property firm has appointed Andrew Peacock as head of central London asset management. He joins after 24 years at Aviva Investors, where he held a number of senior roles, including manager of its central London office portfolio. Towers Watson The professional services company has appointed Liz Rennie as senior consultant in its human [...]
Daft planning rules are pushing up the price of food in shops January 8, 2013 IF you travelled abroad over Christmas, you will have noticed that goods in shops are often cheaper than in the UK. A uSwitch survey cited by the Institute of Economic Affairs shows that a food basket costs roughly a fifth more in the UK than it does in Germany, France and the Netherlands. Once again, [...]
Daft planning rules are pushing up the price of food in shops January 7, 2013 IF you travelled abroad over Christmas, you will have noticed that goods in shops are often cheaper than in the UK. A uSwitch survey cited by the Institute of Economic Affairs shows that a food basket costs roughly a fifth more in the UK than it does in Germany, France and the Netherlands. Once again, [...]
London’s new issues market is thawing, but slowly February 22, 2013 Not so long ago I asked an investment banker in London how long he and his colleagues had deliberated before deciding to float a Salford-based materials technology company called Luxfer in New York. “About 30 seconds,” he said, quickly and pointedly. But then this was October last year and the new issues market in London [...]