Sainsbury’s has dived to a £261m annual loss despite booming sales of groceries during the pandemic, as it spent millions of pounds on protecting staff and customers from the coronavirus. The UK’s second biggest supermarket said it had spent £485m on special bonus payments for staff who worked through the pandemic, extra staff to cover those...
Northern and Midlands towns with sprawling warehouse distribution centres have emerged as the places in Britain with the strongest growth in job opportunities as the economy exits lockdown. Reflecting the online shopping boom during the pandemic, data compiled by the jobs website Indeed and the Centre for Cities thinktank showed that Barnsley, Mansfield and Stoke-on-Trent –...
MusicMagpie, the online reseller that specialises in secondhand tech such as smartphones and games consoles, has announced plans for a £208m flotation. The initial public offering of MusicMagpie, which was founded in Stockport in 2007 and also has operations in the US under the Decluttr brand, is expected to raise £95m for selling shareholders. After the listing...
Consumers in Britain should be given a clearer idea of the costs they face when buying from EU retailers following Brexit so they are not left with unexpected fees or scammed, the consumer group Which? has said. Since the transition period ended, many customers buying from the EU have faced bills for VAT and, when the item has...
Restaurants and bars with outdoor seating say bookings are at unprecedentedly high levels before a possible reopening next Monday, with people eager not to miss their first chance to eat out since lockdown was imposed. Some venues have invested vast amounts of money to accommodate guests outside before the government’s planned reopening of outdoor hospitality...
Small businesses have reported a marked drop in exports to the EU as another company bemoaned the post-Brexit “nightmare” of delivery delays and increased costs. The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), a lobby group, said 35 of the 132 exporters it surveyed had temporarily suspended trade with the EU or stopped it permanently. One in...
Small local grocery stores and online retailers are likely to benefit from permanent changes in shopping habits after a year of Covid-19 restrictions, according to a report one year on from the first lockdown. More than nine in 10 of people who have shopped locally say they will continue to do so, a survey by...
The digital payments firm Stripe has been valued at $95bn after a funding round that makes the company the most valuable private business to come out of Silicon Valley. The company, which is dual-headquartered in San Francisco and Dublin, raised $600m (£430m) from investors including Ireland’s National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), Allianz X, Axa, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management...
The impact of the UK’s third lockdown on the economy has been laid bare by official figures showing that spending in stores and online fell by more than 8% last month while government borrowing was the highest for a January since modern records began. All sectors of retailing except for food and online outlets were affected by...
Shares in the UK clothing retailer Next are close to an all-time high, thanks to a strategy that has seen the company sail through Covid-19 headwinds. With the start of the first lockdown last March, Next feared shuttering its high street stores would have a disastrous impact on finances. But sales have held up better than anticipated, bolstered by...