Ocado Group (OCDO) has said its product range will be 50% bigger and offer lower prices and better quality products when it switches from Waitrose to Marks & Spencer Group (MKS) next year. The online grocer’s finance chief, Duncan Tatton-Brown, said it will stock 6,000 M&S products, compared with the 4,000 it sells as part of its supply deal with Waitrose, which ends in 2020. The alternatives on offer would be the “same price or lower, and of the same quality or better” than the Waitrose ones, he said. “Marks & Spencer has a lot more products than Waitrose so customers should find matching products from the existing range at the same or a cheaper price – and a few things they didn’t know they needed,” said Tatton-Brown.
The hedge fund owned by the billionaire investor and anti-Brexit donor George Soros has made a £16m bet against shares in the owner of the Daily Mail newspaper. SFM UK Management, the London arm of the New York-based Soros Fund Management, this week took out a short position representing 0.9% of the shares of Daily Mail and General Trust A (Non.V) (DMGT), according to filings to the Financial Conduct Authority published on Thursday. DMGT, which also owns the Metro newspaper, bought the i newspaper and website at the end of November for £46.9m. However, its crown jewel is the Mail titles, including the Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail and Mail Online, which have been intensely critical of Soros because of his donations to liberal causes.
Superdry (SDRY) has warned of a difficult Christmas for retailers as the fashion chain fell into the red and confessed to a near-£4m accounting error. The company flagged an “isolated error totalling £3.9m” related to stock handling costs as it reported a first-half loss of £4.2m, down from a £26.4m profit a year ago. Sales slumped 11% as Superdry, best known for its brightly coloured hoodies and T-shirts emblazoned with Japanese script, stopped using price cuts to tempt shoppers. To bolster its fashion credentials, the company hired Phil Dickinson as its creative director at the start of this year. However, the former Nike executive clashed with the financial press at a presentation in the City designed to trumpet his work on new ranges. He said talking to business reporters about fashion was like “talking to a brick” and told one female journalist not to touch the arm of his £600 Superdry varsity jacket with her “sweaty journalist palm”.
BHP Group PLC (BHP) has bucked shareholder pressure to quit the Minerals Council of Australia and will remain a member of the lobby group despite disagreeing with it over the importance of putting a price on carbon emissions. After a review of its membership of industry associations, first revealed by Guardian Australia, BHP has decided not to leave any of them. The move comes despite almost 30% of shareholders last month voting in favour of a resolution that would have forced BHP to quit the Minerals Council and other industry bodies that hold positions on global heating at odds with the company’s. Australia’s biggest super fund, AustralianSuper, has also attacked the Minerals Council’s position as “not strong enough”. “We will continue to work with the MCA to ensure that, where it is undertaking advocacy, this remains consistent with its stated policy,” BHP said in its review of industry organisations, released on Thursday.
