Asda’s new boss has claimed that the struggling grocer mounted an unlikely resurgence over the festive period, luring shoppers away from its biggest rivals and racking up the best sales of the big four supermarkets, The Sunday Telegraph writes. Roger Burnley, who took the helm at the start of this year, has told colleagues that the grocer beat its targets “by some way” in December. “In December we were the only one of the ‘big four’ to hold our market share year on year despite the considerable number of new stores that the discounters have opened in the year, and we reduced considerably our losses to the discounters,” Burnley said in a message to colleagues.
Premier Foods is in talks to sell the soup and noodles brand Batchelors to its biggest shareholder – a move that could trigger a gradual break-up of the debt-laden business, The Sunday Times reveals this weekend. Premier is understood to be exploring a deal with Nissin Foods, the Japanese inventor of instant noodles. Batchelors is said to be valued at more than £200m.
Christopher Etherington, the former chief executive of Palmer & Harvey, has hit back at claims that he helped to precipitate the collapse of the wholesaler and said that he did his best in difficult circumstances, according to The Times this morning. He has written to Frank Field, chairman of the Commons work and pensions committee, which is investigating the demise of Palmer & Harvey, and claimed that recent remarks made by the Labour MP created a “misleading impression of him and his involvement in P&H”.
The ferocity of the battle to snap up Nestlé’s US business is explored by The Telegraph, with the Ferrero Group going head to head with the Hershey Company, as well as a couple of private equity firms.
The head of a French dairy giant at the centre of an international salmonella scandal has promised to withdraw 12 million boxes of powdered baby milk from the supermarket shelves of 83 countries, The Guardian reports. Emmanuel Besnier, the president of Lactalis, which is at the centre of a salmonella infection scandal, has broken his silence following a third product recall and said that the company will pay damages to the families affected by its contaminated infant formula (The Financial Times).
The buyout firm behind the Eat sandwich chain has pulled a £400m fundraising and shown the door to a raft of senior staff (The Sunday Times). Last week, Lyceum Capital wrote to potential investors to inform them that it would no longer be raising cash for a planned new fund, blaming its troubles on Brexit.
The Sunday Times examines Greggs share price ahead of a trading update this week.
B&M Bargains has reaped the rewards of demand for cut-price food and drink, with strong Christmas trading that underlines the challenge facing the big supermarkets, The Times writes on Saturday. Group sales increased by 22.7% to £969.8m in the 13 weeks to 23 December 23.
The grocer to the Queen has had another record Christmas, with like-for-like sales rising by 13%, The Times reports. Fortnum & Mason said that much of its sales growth in the five weeks to 31 December had been driven by local customers, rather than tourists, who accounted for 77% of all sales.
Chief executives of consumer goods companies receive pay packets that bear no relation to share price performance, according to analysts who described the lack of connection as “troubling” (The Financial Times). RBC Capital Markets found that the pay of the heads of five companies that had underperformed the sector in the past three years was similar to that of higher-achieving companies. The five were Nivea owner Beiersdorf, tobacco company Imperial, brewer Carlsberg, distiller Diageo and the food group Danone.
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