Greggs has appointed a new chief executive, with retail and property director Roisin Currie replacing Roger Whiteside, who transformed the baker into the UK’s largest on-the-go food retailer during his tenure (The Financial Times £).
Currie’s promotion to the top of the bakery shop chain’s board will make her the only female chief executive of a FTSE-listed retailer (The Times £).
Whiteside, who has led Greggs since 2013, has been responsible for opening a raft of new stores, adding new ranges - including the now popular vegan sausage roll - and growing the company’s share price from below £5 in 2013 to over £33 today (The Mail).
The company – known for its sausage rolls, steak bakes and vegan snacks – said in a trading update that it expected to beat its financial forecast for 2021 when it reports official full-year results in March (The Guardian).
Next, Greggs and B&M European Value Retail have warned that the price of goods ranging from suits to sausage rolls will rise this year as they seek to pass on higher wage bills and transport and energy costs to their customers (The Times £).
Farmers must “stand their ground” on price inflation and ensure that the rising costs they face are reflected in the prices paid to them by supermarkets for their produce, the UK’s environment, food and rural affairs secretary has demanded (The Guardian).
Households in Britain will be hit by a cost of living jump in April larger than anything seen since the 2008-09 financial crisis — and possibly worse than anything seen in a generation, according to experts in household finances (The Financial Times £).
A record proportion of UK firms are expecting to hike prices for customers in the next three months as they are faced with a ‘huge headache’ of soaring inflation, rising energy costs and supply chain disruption, a new survey shows (The Mail).
Gousto has been boosted by a $100m (£74m) injection from Japanese investment giant Softbank (The Telegraph).
Founded in 2012 by Timo Boldt and James Carter, the former investment bankers, the funding values Gousto at $1.7bn, a significant increase on the previous round in November 2020 of $1bn (The Times £).
Walgreens Boots Alliance has upgraded its full-year guidance after strong trading at both its US and international businesses as Covid-19 testing and online sales propelled first-quarter revenues higher (The Financial Times £).
The American owner of Boots cited rising sales on British high streets as it beat expectations in the latest quarter and upgraded its annual profit forecast (The Times £).
Walgreens Boots Alliance, which has put the UK business up for sale, said revenues at the Boots pharmacy branch were 8.8 per cent higher in the three months to November than in the same period a year earlier (The Mail).
Budget retailer B&M’s revenues nudged 0.1% higher in the three months to 25 December, clawing back lost momentum in the previous quarter and boosting full-year earnings forecasts amid the group’s ‘best-ever Christmas’ (The Mail).
B&M European Value Retail will hand out bonuses this month to more than 24,000 British-based store and warehouse workers after raising its full-year profit forecast in the wake of strong Christmas trading (The Times £).
An omicron grant scheme for businesses is a “drop in the ocean” that will fail to prevent a wave of corporate collapses, industry leaders warned on Thursday as councils prepared to distribute the funds (The Telegraph).
The chief executive of the competition watchdog, Andrea Coscelli, has confirmed that he will step down this summer after six years in the role (The Times £).
A person in the southwest of England has become the first in the UK to test positive for a potentially dangerous strain of avian flu (The Times £).
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