Sainsbury’s braced for first loss in a decade as supermarkets move to downsize May 5, 2015 Battling with excess space and a revival at Tesco, Sainsbury’s is having to fight harder than ever. It is early on a weekday morning, and the first wave of customers are yet to arrive at Sainsbury’s revamped store in Wandsworth – its aisles stacked high with everything from garden furniture to Le Creuset-style saucepans [...]
Ocado sales jump 19.2 per cent as company says it expects to keep growing ahead of the curve March 10, 2015 The figures Ocado’s group sales jumped 19.2 per cent in the 12 weeks to 22 February, rising to £271.1m, from £227.5m during the same period last year. Meanwhile, retail sales were up a similarly impressive 15.2 per cent to £252.0m, two months after the company reported its first profit. Ocado said that on 22 February it had [...]
Tesco tells a third of senior directors they face redundancy or demotion as Dave Lewis’ restructure begins to bite January 16, 2015 Tesco has started warning senior directors that they face redundancy or demotion, as part of a restructure designed to get the supermarket back on track. Around a third of these key decision-makers have been told by Tesco top brass that they face redundancy or “changed responsibilities at a lower work level”, according to [...]
Sir Philip Green sold BHS for £1 – but can the high street stalwart be salvaged? March 16, 2015 It’s a rare day when retail mogul and the official patron saint of lost causes Sir Philip Green decides to throw in the towel. The tycoon’s decision last week to back out of BHS after 15 years of ownership and offload it to a previously unknown group of investors for £1 set the City’s retail [...]
Fighting forward: The Black Farmer’s Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones talks sausages, political incorrectness and willpower May 31, 2015 Being an entrepreneur is all about timing. You can have the best-laid plans in the world, a huge amount of skill, but it’s really about catching the zeitgeist.” This is Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones’s opening line to me. After a brief pause, he adds, “life is also all about timing”. This is something the founder of [...]
Supermarket wars: Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons feeling the pressure in one share price chart January 8, 2015 Tesco’s share price is up today, and by a lot: 9.8 per cent at the time of writing. All in all, though, it’s been a bad past 12 months for supermarkets, with Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons share prices all sliding against the FTSE, which has itself dropped over the same period. Tesco’s story has been [...]
Morrisons, Tesco, Ocado and Marks & Spencer’s share prices soar after UK food sector shows signs of growth February 10, 2015 Supermarkets led the FTSE 100 higher this afternoon, after figures revealed the grocery sector was in growth once again. Morrisons' share price had recorded the biggest gains at pixel time, rising 5.5 per cent. This was on the back of Kantar figures out this morning, showing its sales had fallen 0.4 per cent, the [...]
Two of the big four supermarkets pay less than the cost of production for milk, Sainsbury’s advert claims January 21, 2015 Sainsbury's has revealed how much supermarkets pay farmers for milk- and claims that at least two of the big four stump up less than the cost of production. The figures have been released as part of the grocer's latest ad campaign, which claims that “at Sainsbury's we support our British fresh milk farmers,” asking [...]
Ex Tesco-chief Sir Terry Leahy: Supermarket suffered “failure of leadership” under Philip Clarke January 19, 2015 The man widely credited with turning Tesco into Britain's biggest supermarket chain has criticised his successor, saying there was a "failure of leadership." "People tried very hard to do the right thing, it clearly has not worked," former chief executive Sir Terry Leah said in an interview to be broadcast on the BBC's Panorama programme tonight. "In [...]
Tesco share price rises as declines in its market share slows, while Waitrose reaches record high October 21, 2014 Tesco shares rose 2.2 percent in mid-morning trading after new figures showed while it has lost yet more market share, its rate of decline is slowing. while Waitrose has climbed to a record high, doing just enough to keep it ahead of German challengers Aldi and Lidl. The figures, by Kantar Worldpanel, also showed [...]