Gails is up for sale. Sky News reports that the upmarket bakery chain has hired Goldman Sachs to explore a potential £500m sale to enable a partial or full exit for private equity backer Bain Capital Credit and EBITDA Investments, following a previous fundraise. Since then the number of bakeries operated by Gails has almost doubled to 130, almost exclusively in London and the South East.
The Asda turnaround could take three to five years according to Allan Leighton, the new executive chairman admitted in an exclusive interview with The Guardian. After addressing store staff, Leighton said of his return that “bizarrely it feels like I have never been away. I feel totally back home.”
The Telegraph says that ’Asda bosses have been fiddling while Rome burns’, and that far more important than who’s in charge is how quickly the supermarket can strengthen its stretched finances.
McVities boss Salman Amin has joined the growing chorus of business leaders denouncing the budget. In comments at the CBI conference yesterday, the Pladis CEO said the UK was “uninvestable”, The Times reported. Having been “super bullish” about the UK, ”it’s becoming harder to understand what the case for investment is”.
Ex-Waitrose boss Mark Price also weighed in, singling out the National Insurance reforms as “extraordinarily penal”, The Standard reported.
And The Grocer’s report on the bungled business rates reforms is picked up by the Telegraph, which says Chancellor Rachel Reeves has ’given a tax boost to Aldi and Lidl in their battle with UK supermarkets’.
In related news, shop price Inflation has increased for the first time in 17 months, Sky News reported, citing new data from the BRC/Nielsen IQ. The Times used the news to warn that shoppers would face “inevitable” price rises in the wake of the Budget, citing additional comments by British Retail Consortium CEO Helen Dickinson. The Guardian said inflation could hamper shoppers in the run-up to Christmas.
Incoming US president Donald Trump has vowed to introduce new tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada, Reuters reports, a move that sent markets scrambling.
Walmart has ’dumped diversity, equity and inclusion in woke crackdown’, The Telegraph reports. It’s the highest profile corporate retreat yet and follows pressure from activist Robby Starbucks, who threatened a DEI boycott, Bloomberg reports. Walmart told the ‘anti-woke’ activist that it will stop considering race and gender for supplier contracts, according to the Financial Times.
Coca-Cola is extracting the largest amount of water from UK springs, The Guardian reports. An investigation, following a freedom of information request, found that ‘foreign firms’ were taking billions of litres from UK acquifers to make bottled water. Coca-Cola has a licence to extract 1.59bn litres of water a year from boreholes in Sidcup, Kent for its soft drinks. In addition it has a licence in Morpeth to use up to 377m litres for its bottled water brands Glaceau Smartwater and Abbey Well.
And finally, there are lots of stories about Black Friday.
John Lewis is locked in a row over Black Friday deals, The Telegraph reports, with the department store accused of ‘misleading’ shoppers by exaggerating price cuts.
There’s a warning to shoppers over parcel theft in the run up to Black Friday in The Times. Data reveals that £376.6 million worth of packages were stolen over the past year as ‘porch pirates’ target blocks of flats.
And The Standard reports that nine in 10 Black Friday deals were either cheaper or the same price at other times of the year.
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