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You are here: Home | | Retail round up - The Sunday Papers
Britain's high street chains are named by sweatshop probe, Shoppers dig deep in big Christmas binge before price rise gloom descends, Superdry group expected to beat profit expectations, Morrisons Beats Harrods To Become King Of The Crackers, Dorling Kindersley opens its own app shop , China's soaring inflation could hit UK shoppers, X Factor final is ITV's ?25m 'Super Bowl' moment, Punch directors face anger over possible ?2.6bn bond default to cut debt burden, Cyber attacks by WikiLeaks' defenders hit online traders badly, Bolland hand-picks pilot Paris store for M&S's new European strategy, Burberry soars on rumours of suitors,
The Guardian
Some of the biggest names on the British high street use Indian sweatshops which pay poverty wages and break labour laws to keep costs to a bare minimum, according to a new report.
Marks & Spencer, Next, Monsoon, Debenhams, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge are all named as having used factories which exploit their workers.
The allegations – levelled in a report by anti-poverty campaigners War on Want and Labour Behind the Label – will come as a particular embarrassment to M&S, which is running a glitzy, multi-million pound TV advertising campaign under the slogan "Don't put a foot wrong this Christmas". It is the second time this year the company has faced sweatshop allegations. Full article here.
Retailers hope to take £2.5bn this weekend as Britons treat themselves before an austere new year begins with VAT going up to 20%. And the surprise big seller is… curtains 
There may be trouble ahead. But while there's Christmas to celebrate, shoppers across the country this weekend are set to spend more than £2.5bn on a final binge ahead of an austere new year that promises costly increases in taxes, prices and household bills.
Although the Christmas shopping season has been disrupted by heavy snow, high-street retailers are reporting a modest rise in takings compared with 2009 as consumers treat themselves to furniture, household appliances, warm clothing and, unexpectedly, curtains.Some shoppers are deliberately timing purchases ahead of the increase in VAT from 17.5% to 20%, which takes effect on 4 January."There may be an element of 'to hell with it, let's have a good Christmas and worry about it in the new year'," said Howard Archer, chief UK economist at research firm IHS Global Insight. Full article here
Fashion business SuperGroup, the firm behind the Superdry clothing label and the most successful stock exchange flotation of 2010, reports its first set of half-year profits as a listed company this week and another set of expectation-busting sales and profit numbers is expected.
The Cheltenham-based business, whose trademark products include checked shirts, £95-a-go hoodies and Osaka brand T-shirts, has seen its share price rocket from 500p to more than £16 since March. It is expanding rapidly in Britain and abroad. Last year the group trebled its profits to £22m and analysts expect more than £40m this year, from sales of more than £210m. Analysts at Goldman Sachs recently set a target price for the shares of £21.
At the time of the listing, the business was valued at £400m. Founder and chief executive Julian Dunkerton cashed in shares worth £80m and retained a stake worth £130m at the time. At the current price the firm is valued at £1.3bn and Dunkerton's stake at nearly £420m.
Sunday Telegraph
Christmas crackers costing just 42 pence each from Morrisons have finished top in a consumer test above those from Harrods costing £3.74 each.
They are a low-budget option for an austerity Christmas – but the combination of a child-friendly appearance and an earth-shattering bang meant Morrisons' crackers finished on top in a Sunday Telegraph consumer test.At a cost of only 42p per cracker, our expert panel rated them more highly than a luxury offering from Harrods costing nine times as much. Of the 10 crackers examined, only Asda's was cheaper, at 33p. The Harrods Vintage cracker, at £3.74, managed 4th place, behind the runner-up, House of Fraser, and third-placed Waitrose. Full article here.
Dorling Kindersley, the educational and children’s publisher, is to launch a new website this week that will allow customers to download a selection of digital products from its own stable and that of others. The publisher, owned by Pearson, is aiming to sell the digital products linked to some of its best-selling books, including books by parenting expert Miriam Stoppard and its DK Eyewitness travel guides. But at the same time – in what is thought to be a first for the publishing world – the shop will also sell the products of other publishers, as well as helpful applications for most types of mobile phones on all networks and most operating systems.
China's inflation surged to a two year high last month despite government efforts to increase food supplies and end fuel shortages, prompting fears that British consumers will soon face paying more for Chinese made products. The 5.1pc annualised inflation rate, up from 4.4pc in October, was driven by a 11.7pc jump in food prices, the Chinese National Statistics Bureau (NSB) said. Economists said the higher-than-expected rate, which they expected to result in an “aggressive tightening” of China’s money supply, would weigh on investor sentiment when global stock markets re-open on Monday. Fred Neumann, co-head of Asian Economic Research at HSBC in Hong Kong, said, “Higher Chinese inflation could feed through to higher prices for manufactured goods in UK shops in the next year or two, just as this year Chinese demand for raw materials, like cotton, had already increased the cost of clothing”.
ITV is expected to collect a record-breaking £25m from advertising during this weekend's final of The X Factor. The broadcaster is understood to have sold some 30-second advertising slots during the final between Rebecca Ferguson, One Direction and Matt Cardle for more than £250,000. Advertisers on last night's show included Waitrose, BT, Apple and Nintendo, whose ads featured acts from last year's competition.
Observer
Investors in Britain's largest pub company, which has seen shares fall by 95% in three years, want it to default on two loans securitised against 5,300 pubs. Directors at Punch Taverns, Britain's largest pub company, will come under fire at its annual meeting this week when shareholders demand action to reduce debt of more than £3bn. The new chief executive, Ian Dyson, a former finance director at Marks & Spencer, has promised a strategic review of the company that overstretched itself during the credit boom, when it made a number of highly leveraged acquisitions. But Dyson's report will not be ready for a while and investors are becoming impatient about the lack of progress at the firm, which lost £160m last year.
Online retailers have been reporting worrying shortfalls in their orders this week after hackers wreaked havoc with credit card systems. In one of the busiest weeks pre-Christmas, attacks on MasterCard, PayPal and Amazon, the freezing weather and unrelated issues at the processing intermediary Sage Pay have left many online merchants far short of expected sales.
Independent
Marks & Spencer is in talks to open a store on the Champs-Elysées as part of its latest European strategy put in place by its new chief executive.Marc Bolland has hand-picked a Paris store to test the idea of expanding into wealthy European city-centres. It will sell only fashion, and will be smaller than previous attempts at European sites. His team has travelled to Paris to look at the store, and is now in talks with Esprit, the German retailer which occupies 100 avenue des Champs-Elysées, to take on the 1,000 sq metre (10,000-sq-ft), three-storey shop.
Shares in Burberry soared to a record last week on persistent rumours that a bidder is circling the luxury retailer. Burberry, famous for its check design and trench coats, saw its share price leap above £12 on Wednesday amid rumours of interest from Chinese investors. Burberry's share price has rocketed 96 per cent this year on the back of excellent sales growth but also on speculation that a number of global suitors are eyeing up the group. The PPR, the French owner of Gucci, and Coach, a US fashion and leather company, have been mentioned as predators but PPR denied it is interested. Burberry's shares closed down at £11.08 on Friday.
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