The number of visitors to Britain’s high streets over the past six weeks is ‘significantly’ down on last year, raising fears of a disaster for some of Britain’s struggling shops. Figures provided to The Mail on Sunday by data firm Springboard, give the first clear picture of the festive shopping season so far. They show that the number of visitors to retail parks, shopping centres and high streets fell by 3.5% in the six weeks from November 1 to the end of last week. The number of visitors to high street shops alone was down 4.5% in the period. The drop appears to have accelerated since the beginning of autumn. The 12-month average across all locations – high street, shopping centres and retail parks – to the end of September was down 1.7% compared with the previous year.
Marks & Spencer Group (MKS) has raided rival Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) to fill a key role at its food division as it prepares to further ramp up its ambitions. M&S grocery boss Stuart Machin has poached Sainsbury’s logistics director Chris Marrow, who has worked at the supermarket chain for almost 14 years. Machin has galvanised plans to reduce prices and develop new ranges in recent months ahead of its home delivery partnership with Ocado Group (OCDO). He wants to target more family shoppers and offer a full range in more stores. But he told suppliers he wants to ‘protect the magic’ of M&S too, which means ‘looking after the things our customers love most about M&S food’. M&S is braced for its busiest period, when it typically sees its UK food market share double in the week before Christmas.
Bosses at beleaguered advertising group M&C Saatchi (SAA) want to appoint four new board members by next month after bringing in a top City headhunter. It follows last week’s shock when three non-executive directors and co-founder Lord Saatchi resigned in the midst of an accounting scandal. Remaining bosses – who include co-founders chief executive David Kershaw and chairman Jeremy Sinclair – expect a PwC report into its accounts to complete by Christmas. They have appointed Carol Leonard, of the Inzito Partnership, to find new non-executive directors. They would then be expected to launch their own review into what has gone wrong at M&C Saatchi, best known for its political advertising campaigns.
Go-Ahead Group (GOG) will today launch Norway’s first privately run railway service. The group will operate its first route between Stavanger and Oslo. Go-Ahead, which runs Southeastern as well as bus services across the UK and has nearly 30,000 staff, won the eight-year contract last year to run the new Norway South rail franchise. The firm already has foreign operations in Ireland, Germany and Singapore. Chief executive David Brown said: ‘Working with the Norwegian authorities to bring our international rail expertise to deliver Norway’s first contracted rail service is another step forward.’
Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) has launched an internal investigation into a leak that reveals a mountain of compensation claims at the bank. Documents seen by The Mail on Sunday show Lloyds owed about £770million to an astonishing 4.37million people at the end of August – equal to around one in seven of its 30 million customers. This was on top of payouts earmarked for mis-sold payment protection insurance. The figures dwarf official complaints data, which show Lloyds received one million new gripes in the first six months of the year. The bank said it had since paid compensation to the ‘vast majority’ of those affected. However, a spokesman refused to reveal how many new redress cases have been added to the pile over the past three and a half months.
