Anheuser-Busch InBev, the maker of Budweiser and Stella Artois, has launched a process to replace chief executive Carlos Brito, the Brazilian who led its transformation into the world’s largest brewer through a series of takeovers during his 16-year tenure (The Financial Times £). The brewer is seriously considering outside candidates for the role, with only one internal candidate, Michel Doukeris, who heads its North America-based Anheuser-Busch business, said three people with knowledge of the matter.
Retail veteran Charles Wilson, who runs Tesco’s cash-and-carry business Booker and had been tipped for the top job at the supermarket, will step down in February (The Telegraph).
The highly-regarded businessman has led Booker, the wholesale business that Tesco bought for £4bn in 2018, for 15 years and plans to leave in February (The Times £).
Amazon has announced that its vice-president of fashion for Europe will take over as the online retail giant’s UK boss. John Boumphrey will succeed Doug Gurr in two months when the latter moves to become the new director of the National History Museum (The Mail).
Morrisons is hiring thousands more permanent staff as it expands its online delivery service and steps up in-store cleaning, building on a dramatic workforce expansion since the pandemic took hold (The Guardian).
The government should levy a windfall tax on companies that shift profits offshore to minimise their corporation tax bills, according to Morrisons chairman Andrew Higginson. He said a one-off hit on tax avoiders should be Rishi Sunak’s “weapon of choice” as he seeks to repair the public finances (The Times £).
Restaurant and takeaway meals could shrink by a fifth by 2024, under government calorie-reduction goals aimed at tackling obesity. The voluntary targets, published yesterday by Public Health England, set maximum calorie counts for foods such as pizza and chips (The Times £).
Public Health England has unveiled a series of targets for calorie reduction that it expects both supermarkets and out of home food outlets to deliver within four years (The Guardian).
Ministers have denied preparing to tear up commitments made to the EU last year if the two sides fail to strike a free trade agreement within the next five weeks (The Times £).
The EU’s leadership warned the UK on Monday that any future trade deal would be conditional on full respect of last year’s Brexit divorce agreement, as the prospect of UK backsliding shocked capitals and threatened to destabilise future-relationship talks (The Financial Times £).
Business groups that oversee trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK have reacted with dismay following reports that the government is planning to renege on commitments made to the EU as part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement (The Telegraph).
A slide in the value of sterling helped UK stocks to bounce from the near four-month lows that they fell to last week (The Times £).
Primark predicted its full-year operating profit would be “at least at the top end” of previous forecasts as its sales recovered after stores reopened following weeks of lockdown measures (The Financial Times £).
Sales at Primark bounced back in the fourth quarter and beat expectations, as shoppers flocked back to its stores post-lockdown to buy larger baskets of clothes (The Telegraph).
The cheap fashion group beat its sales expectations in the last quarter amid ‘reassuring and encouraging’ signs that shoppers still have an appetite for inexpensive fast fashion (The Mail).
City centres are “not remotely dead” according to Primark, even though sales at its four largest stores in central London, Birmingham and Manchester have slumped to half last year’s level since they reopened (The Guardian).
The slow return of UK workers to their normal place of work will come too late to save hard-pressed city centre stores from going under, the British Retail Consortium has said (The Guardian).
Furlough just prolongs the inevitable for doomed jobs, says Bank of England’s chief economist Andy Haldane (The Times £).
Labour has warned that many pubs and bars will be forced to close unless the government agrees to extend the furlough wage support scheme, which is due to be withdrawn next month (The Guardian).
Consumer spending rose last month for the first time since the start of the coronavirus crisis as people flocked to bars and pubs, ordered more takeaways and chose to holiday in the UK, according to new figures from Barclaycard (The Times £).
Consumer spending grew 0.2% in August, compared with the same month last year, up from a 2.6% contraction in July and the first expansion since February (The Financial Times £).
As many as 1,100 jobs will be lost after PizzaExpress’s landlords approved a key part of its corporate restructuring that will close 73 branches, as the pizza chain is forced into drastic action to survive the coronavirus pandemic (The Financial Times £).
The closures span Aberdeen to Torquay, including its original site in Wardour Street in Soho, London, which opened in 1965 (The Mail).
Almost 90% of all PizzaExpress creditors voted in favour of the proposed company voluntary arrangement (The Telegraph).
The company, owned by Hony Capital, the Chinese private equity firm, said that the arrangement would strengthen the business, address the challenges brought by Covid-19 and secure more than 9,000 jobs in the UK (The Times £).
A European property investor has made a big bet on the future of bricks-and-mortar retail in Britain with the acquisition of six retail parks (The Times £). M7 Real Estate bought the parks for £157m from RDI Reit, a listed landlord.
US retailers have raised the prospect that stores will dangle tinsel and play festive songs before Halloween, as stores sketch plans to start holiday-season discounts weeks earlier than usual because of the Covid pandemic (The Financial Times £).
Demand for shares in a famous Chinese bottled water company outstripped supply by more than 1,000 times ahead of their Hong Kong debut, underscoring surging appetite for new stock offerings in the city (The Financial Times £).
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