Morning Financial Press Review 20/09/19
Below are the key morning press headlines, featuring the The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail & more - see the full Press section here.
is ‘weathering the retail storm’ as it enjoyed a rise in half-year profits, the store’s boss revealed. Lord Wolfson, 51, said his business was adapting well to the online world. The Brexiteer shrugged aside the issue of political uncertainty, saying customers’ buying habits were affected more by the weather. His comments came as a struggling High Street saw retail sales fall 0.2% in August after a healthy summer, the Office for National Statistics reported. Online sales also tumbled 3.2%, the biggest fall since May 2015. An ONS spokesman said: ‘Shoppers spent less on both food and clothing while department stores resumed their downward trend after a brief rally in July.’ But Next – which this week launched a collection by TV presenter Emma Willis – said profits in the six months to July were 2.7% higher than in same period last year at £320million
The competition watchdog said £90m takeover of could lead to “higher prices” and “worse choice” for shoppers, but fell short of explaining its reasons in more detail. On Thursday it said it may examine the merger in more detail unless JD Sports acted on some of its concerns. The retailer now has five days to take up the CMA’s recommendations. JD Sports defended the deal and said there would be “significant operational and strategic benefits” from the union. One industry observer said that buying Footasylum’s 70-odd stores was not significant enough to reduce competition and JD Sports’ £2bn sales dwarfed Footasylum’s revenues of £200m. But one competition lawyer said: “To be honest, the CMA doesn’t really care that one part is smaller than the other [if they’re competitors]. I’ve seen it get agitated before over much smaller deals.”
has admitted its parcels arm broke competition laws by striking a deal with a smaller firm to not approach each other’s customers. The ‘anti-competitive agreement’ between Parcelforce Worldwide and Salegroup, a Nottinghamshire-based delivery firm trading as Despatch Bay, ran from August 2013 to May 2018, said communications watchdog Ofcom. It saw them share details of customers so they would not approach the same ones. This meant some customers who could have been offered a cheaper price for services by one firm or the other were never contacted, leading to less competition and higher prices.
battle to avert collapse has been dealt a blow after lenders asked for an extra £200m injection. A 17-strong banking syndicate led by Royal Bank of Scotland have asked for an additional £200m of additional underwritten funds despite the company being in the final throes of restructuring led by Chinese conglomerate Fosun. The request is understood to have angered those at the company with insiders believing that RBS is forcing the 178-year-old firm towards collapse. RBS rejected such suggestions, saying it had provided “considerable support to Thomas Cook over many years” and was continuing to work with other stakeholders to find a resolution. Thomas Cook delayed a vote on its planned restructuring earlier this week. At the time it had been thought this was after it struggled to get approval from 75% of creditors. However, sources said late on Thursday that the reason for the delay was the additional money request. In August Thomas Cook announced that “substantial agreement regarding key commercial terms” had been reached.
Nearly half of investors have rejected a pay deal for Michael O’Leary that could hand him €99 million. Shareholders voted in unprecedented numbers against Ryanair’s remuneration report at the company’s annual meeting near Dublin yesterday. They were concerned that the targets for Mr O’Leary to win the payoff are not stretching enough. Just 50.5% of votes at the meeting were in favour. Having lost his billionaire status because of Ryanair’s falling share price — his fortune, much of it tied up in Irish racehorses, is reckoned to have shrunk to about €770 million — it was announced this year that Mr O’Leary, 58, had signed a new five-year contract.
“is absolutely not the next Carillion”, the boss of the struggling construction and services business insisted, despite crashing to a £245m annual loss and announcing the chairman’s departure after just two years. Andrew Davies, chief executive of the company that works on infrastructure projects such as Crossrail and HS2 and provides environmental services such rubbish collection, issued the denial amid ongoing concern about Kier’s stability. Carrillion’s collapse last year and Interserve falling into the hands of its lenders in the spring have raised questions about the future of their peers. Kier was already under pressure after a £250m emergency cash call in 2018 resulted in just 38% of investors participating, requiring bankers to bail it out. Mr Davies, who was appointed in April, has accelerated a rescue plan which aims to get the company back on track.
The outgoing chief executive of has said it is too early to consider a break-up of the travel-to-insurance group amid pressure from a US activist investor. Lance Batchelor announced plans in June to step down next year a few months after Saga halved its dividend, warned on profits and revamped its struggling insurance business. The upheaval was followed by a shareholder revolt over executive pay at its annual meeting that month and the emergence in July of Elliott Capital Advisors, the activist shareholder, with a 5.1% position, triggering speculation Saga would come under pressure to break itself up. In its first-half results yesterday, Mr Batchelor, 55, updated investors on the revival, saying the board was “open-minded about the optimal structure of Saga” and there had been “constructive conversations” with Elliott. “We are not religiously wedded to one particular structure. What we want do is create shareholder value.”
Volatile stock markets have boosted trading at as it shows signs of recovering from a clampdown on betting on financial markets. IG reported revenue of £129.1 million in the three months to the end of August, its first quarter, which was flat compared with the same period last year when it was partly affected by a month of stricter European regulation. The company said it had benefited from an increase in the number of active clients and from more client trading activity as a result of the “favourable market conditions” in August. Stock markets were choppy last month, buffeted by an escalation in US-China trade tensions and the bond markets indicating a risk of recession.
Troubled has been sniffing around for a contract to print money in Sudan. The 206-year-old passport and banknote business, which is reeling from the loss of the contract to print British passports, has been chasing Sudanese officials in London and is poised to put itself forward if the government in Khartoum requests formal bids, sources said. The Serious Fraud Office, however, is currently investigating De La Rue over suspected corruption in Sudan’s neighbour, South Sudan. The Basingstoke-based firm – which has a regional manufacturing facility in East Africa – designed and printed South Sudan’s maiden currency when it broke away from Sudan in 2011.
announced the removal of its exit charges today and called for all its rivals to do the same. The move follows the lead of Interactive Investor and Fidelity, which have already scrapped the controversial fees that hinder competition by putting a barrier up for investors who want to switch to another platform. Hargreaves Lansdown’s decision also comes ahead of a potential ban on exit fees, with the financial watchdog having threatened such a move. Hargreaves Lansdown scrapped nine of its charges in a ‘simplification of its fee structure’ including its transfer fees, which were £25 for transferring cash or £25 per holding. Its account closure fee, which was previously £25 plus VAT, has also been removed.
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