Store closures help Mothercare trim losses
©Bloomberg Cutting the number of its high street stores helped Mothercare narrow losses in its UK division as the retailer attempted to yank its struggling home market into profitability by…
SSE successor faces unenviable task
Ian Marchant has timed his well-pensioned retirement from SSE fortuitously. Controversy comes with the territory when you are chief executive of a big energy company. For example, on Wednesday shadow…
National parks boost economy, says report
©The Hadrian’s Wall Trust Thursday is the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Hadrian’s Wall Path National Trail England’s 10 national parks offer great economic benefits, contributing £6bn a…
Best Buy: money munching machine
A company, in a pure investment sense, is just a machine that produces money. So the true measure of profitability is not margins. What really matters is return on invested…
Penguin pays $75m to resolve ebook claims
Penguin has agreed to pay $75m plus costs to resolve all US antitrust claims in relation to ebook pricing, helping pave the way for the completion of its merger with…
Amazon plans giant biosphere in Seattle
©NBBJ Amazon wants its staff to work in three giant spherical greenhouses in downtown Seattle, as its instinct to keep a low-profile is overpowered by the kooky futurism of its…
How the hotel tide turned for Abu Dhabi
©Alamy Beached: Abu Dhabi’s green glass wave-shaped former Rocco Forte Rocco Forte, the chain of luxury hotels, chose Abu Dhabi for its first hotel in the Middle East. That decision…
Britvic to slash 15% of workforce
Britvic is to cut up to 400 jobs – 15 per cent of its workforce – as part of efforts to bolster its fortunes as a standalone company should competition…
Marketing the unpleasant truth
Cutting rather than cuddly: Corsodyl’s explicit advertisement for its mouth wash In a recent British television advertisement for the mouthwash Corsodyl, an attractive model is filmed in modish, sepia tones…
Weak consumer spending hampers Target
Target added to signs that US consumers remain on tight budgets by reporting an unexpected fall in sales following similarly disappointing results from Walmart last week. The mass market retailer,…
Pandora: this charming brand
Former Norwegian footballer Björn Gulden has helped Pandora regain some of its charm. Shares in the Danish jewellery maker have tripled since he became chief executive in March last year,…
Mothercare revival tested by tough target
Based on its share price alone, the turnround at Mothercare has been a roaring success. Shares in the ailing retailer have more than doubled since chief executive Simon Calver and…
Third time unlucky for G4S CEO
It’s the third strike. The undoing of Nick Buckles at G4S was neither the collapse of a £5.2bn merger that scared investors, nor the high-profile Olympic security fiasco that saw…
Move from volume to value hits Bwin.party
Bwin.party’s tactical shift of its customer database from quantity to quality contributed to a 17 per cent fall in the online gambling group’s first quarter net revenues. Other factors contributing…
M&S loses online ads battle to Interflora
Marks and Spencer has lost a long-running court case after a judge ruled that the retailer had infringed Interflora’s trademark by using it to promote M&S flowers on the internet.…