After doing better than expected over Christmas, is there a case for being bullish on Tesco? January 15, 2016 Philip Dorrell, partner at Retail Remedy retail consultants, says Yes. Tesco has reached bottom and is now on the way back up. Pre and post Christmas, the supermarket appeared to have the best availability and store operational improvements of all the Big 4. The marketing campaign was solid, back to its roots with a bit of [...]
Judge policies by their results, not intentions January 14, 2016 Sometimes three small words can be very powerful. “Reward for failure” is one such example, a phrase that has come to encapsulate public discontent with the financial crisis and high pay at banks and in business more broadly. The rights and wrongs of high pay can be argued all day (and all night), but no one [...]
Britain needs an industrial house-building revolution to tackle housing market failure January 14, 2016 The world is moving from uncertainty to instability. Economic, political and social “flashpoints” include the United States, EU, China, North Korea and the Middle East. While the UK has sensible economic goals – 2.5 per cent growth, 2 per cent inflation, £1 trillion of exports by 2020 and improved public finances – progress is mixed. [...]
Sell everything? Broad money growth suggests the Goldilocks Love-In isn’t over yet January 14, 2016 The year has started with a whole swathe of negative speculation about economic prospects. George Osborne has spoken of the “dangerous cocktail” of threats (from China, the impact of low oil prices on producer economies, and the potential normalisation of monetary policy) facing the UK economy. US economist Larry Summers has argued that it would [...]
The next chapter of the Greek crisis: Unsustainable pensions are an economic time bomb January 14, 2016 You may have thought that the Greek crisis was over. But as today will show, when Eurozone finance ministers meet to discuss – among other things – the Greek government’s proposed reforms to pensions, nothing could be further from the truth. As a condition of its bailout agreement in the summer of 2015, Greece is [...]
With global shipments falling by a record 10.6 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2015, is the PC now dead? January 14, 2016 Andy Hobsbawm, co-founder of Evrythng, says Yes. Over 90 per cent of adults on the planet have a mobile, and about half of those are smartphones – soon they all will be. It’s a mistake to keep thinking of desktop and mobile as two separate categories. Smartphones are computers, just better. They’re more portable and come [...]
Supermarket bosses have nowhere to hide January 13, 2016 Who said there’s blood on the high street? Retail stocks rose well into green territory yesterday, Morrisons up nine per cent and Debenhams a whopping 16 per cent higher, after both reported a jump in like-for-like sales. Defying City expectations, the pair of troubled FTSE-250 outlets remind us that retail should not be viewed as an [...]
National Audit Office report: Why government needs management consultants January 13, 2016 A new National Audit Office (NAO) report published today shows that government spending on external management consultants and temporary staff – just over £1bn in 2014-15 – has fallen dramatically since 2010. We welcome this scrutiny of the industry. At a time of austerity in the public finances and with ministers rightly demanding value for [...]
Alcohol limits: How much wine should you drink each week? Why science can’t give a straight answer January 13, 2016 The biggest story for many people last week was the new alcohol guidelines issued by the UK’s chief medical officers. In 1995, the recommended weekly upper limit for men was set at 21 units, or about eight pints. This has now been slashed to only 14 units. We might imagine that this drastic reduction is [...]
Alternative finance can unlock the potential of small developers to tackle Britain’s housing crisis January 13, 2016 Hearing that the Prime Minister plans to open up public sector land for small-scale developments was a great way to start the year. Gaining access to land is a major hurdle that keeps too many small property development companies out of the market. All initiatives to correct that should be welcomed. Yet lack of land [...]