Greggs slows sales decline as it battles to win back customers

Bakery chain, which issued two profit warnings this year, has abandoned plans to increase number of stores

The bakery chain Greggs has reported a modest decline in sales, as the company battles to win back customers to its hot pies and sausage rolls.

Like-for-like sales fell 0.5% in the 13 weeks to 28 September, after a hot summer curbed Britain's appetite for baked goods. But this represented a better result than the 2.1% decline in like-for-like sales for the year so far.

Greggs' chief executive, Roger Whiteside, said he was encouraged by the improvement in performance. Whiteside, who was drafted in from Punch Taverns in February, has embarked on a turnaround plan to brighten up the bakeries and broaden the range with a move into new products, such as pizza.

"We are encouraged by the recent improvement in like-for-like performance, although with consumer disposable incomes still under pressure we remain cautious," he said. "Cost inflation is in line with our expectations and the group's cash position remains strong. Our overall outlook for the full year is unchanged."

Greggs has abandoned plans to increase its total number of stores: in the latest quarter it closed almost as many stores as it opened, with 20 new shops appearing and 17 being shut down. The company said it expected to refit 215 shops by the end of the year, around 12% of its entire estate of 1,700 bakeries.

The company has issued two profit warnings this year, the most recent in August, and at various times has attributed its problems to cold weather, hot weather, tough conditions on the high street and "promiscuous shoppers". The company recently abandoned plans to build a second savoury factory in the east Midlands, as well as its Greggs Moment coffee shops which it had been trialling since 2011.

Article Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk

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Royal Mail IPO: ministers to increase amount of public shares

Government is making plans to ensure 'smaller investors get their share', and do not lose out to banks and hedge funds

The government will bow to a mounting outcry and ensure the public do not lose out to banks, hedge funds and other financial speculators in the £3bn selloff of Royal Mail shares.

The Guardian understands that ministers are making plans to increase amount of Royal Mail shares available to the public at the expense of those set aside for banks, following overwhelming demand in the biggest privatisation since the sale of the railways in the 1990s.

Michael Fallon, the business minister in charge of the flotation, said he would do all he could to ensure "smaller investors get their fair share", ahead of Tuesday's midnight deadline to buy stock.

Fallon had promised that about 30% of the shares on offer would be reserved for the public but is now understood to be planning to increase this proportion available for small investors and cut back on the amount going to banks if public demand massively exceeds supply.

He said: "No decisions have been taken on allocation but I'm committed to making sure smaller investors get their fair share."

The government has been under pressure to ensure the public do not lose out to banks and hedge funds, which are hoping to make instant profits from the sale of the 500-year-old postal service.

Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secretary, said: "This is turning into a dream and a bonanza for City speculators and hedge funds, meanwhile the taxpayer … is getting massively shortchanged."

Financial institutions have ordered several times the number of shares available to them, amid reports that the government hugely undervalued the company, and the shares could soar by more than 30% on their first day's trading on Friday.

Stockbrokers have also reported unprecedented public demand for the shares, to be priced at between £3-3.30 each, with some staying open all weekend and until midnight Tuesday when applications close.

Alastair McCaig, market strategist at IG Index, said public demand for Royal Mail's shares has been "even stronger than we saw in Facebook".

IG said excitement over the flotation had sparked a frenzy in the pre-trading "grey market", with investors betting the shares will rise to £4 on Friday – 70p more than the maximum the government has allowed itself to sell them for.

If they do reach £4, the government will have lost out on an extra £400m it could have made if it priced the shares at £4, rather than £3.30.

Panmure Gordon analyst Gert Zonneveld – the only analyst to have published research on the shares – has said he is convinced the government undervalued Royal Mail by more than £1bn. Zonneveld said the shares should have been sold between £3.70 and £4.50, considerably higher than the government's initial range.

Vince Cable, the business secretary, on Monday hit back at Umunna for accusing the government of undervaluing the company and selling it on the cheap.

"It is irresponsible to imply that a share offering looks significantly undervalued," he wrote in a letter.. "I think you should consider the risk that you may be influencing the decisions of retail investors. Equity investment always involves risk, particularly when the company in question is new to the market. In the light of this it is dangerous to imply that there is an easy bargain to be made.

"Panmure Gordon is only one voice and their report notes both near term risks and opportunities. We are alert to value for money criticism and have learnt from the mistakes of previous governments' asset sales. QinetiQ is one key example under the last government."

In 2007, the National Audit Office criticised the float of defence company QinetiQ saying taxpayers lost out to the tune of tens of millions of pounds.

The government's valuation of Royal Mail is based on advice from investment banks Goldman Sachs and UBS after £21.7m in fees was paid to advisers. Applications for shares close at 11.59pm on Tuesday. The minimum public application is £750. If the public apply for more shares than those available they will "scaled back", meaning applicants will not be able to buy all the shares they have applied for. Big applications will be scaled back at a greater rate than small applications.

Up to 62% of the company will be listed on the stock market on Friday. A further 10% will be given to Royal Mail's 150,000 employees.

The final price the shares sell at will not be decided until the company floats on the stock market on Friday.

Trading places

One of the accusations levelled at the Thatcher and Major governments was that they sold off Britain's nationalised industries too cheaply. A look at how the shares fared on their first day of trading lends weight to this argument, although long-term returns give a clearer picture of a company's value.

British Telecom was the Thatcher government's first big privatisation. Its shares jumped 35% on the first day of trading in 1984, but when two later tranches were offered the price rose only 5% each time. British Gas followed in 1986, helped by its "Tell Sid" campaign. Its shares rose 10% on the first day. Powergen and National Power both soared by about 22% on their first trading days but when further batches of shares were sold later the price rose less than 5% in both cases.

In 1987, British Airways' shares leapt by two thirds on their first day of trading. But later that year BP's privatisation was launched at the time of Black Monday when shares plunged in New York and London on 19 October. Underwriters were left holding shares priced at 330p that were trading at 262p.

Article Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk

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Autumn brings a chill for BlackBerry

Bleak results, rushed out early, and another huge round of layoffs signal that the mobile pioneer's time is running out

With the fall of Nokia looming over him, this weekend will be an uncomfortable one for Thorsten Heins, chief executive of BlackBerry. While the Finnish firm sold its mobile phone business to Microsoft for €5.4bn (£4.5bn) this month, questions are swirling as to how long BlackBerry – which signalled its distress in August by putting itself up for sale – can survive, and in what form.

Things are so bad that on Friday night, market rumours forced Heins to announce the top-line quarterly results a week early. And they are grim: an operating loss of up to $995m (£620m), including $960m of inventory writedowns on its new Z10 handsets released in January, a net loss of more than $250m, revenues half what analysts expected at $1.6bn, and phone shipments of 3.7m – which Apple will comfortably exceed with its new iPhones this weekend alone.

For a company that once dismissed the iPhone for having no keyboard (a key selling point for BlackBerry phones), it's a humiliation. The low shipment figure exposes Heins's claim in April that the new Q10 phone – the first keyboard-equipped model using its new BB10 software – would sell "tens of millions". It might have sold a million.

Now the question is turning to how long BlackBerry has to go. On Friday, the company said it will cut 4,500 jobs, roughly 40% of its 11,000 total worldwide, adding to 7,000 jobs cut in the two previous financial years. It will reduce its future phone portfolio from six to four.

One former insider asks: "How would BlackBerry win? There's no answer to that at the moment. A buyer? I don't see how they would make the case."

This weekend was meant to be a new start for the company, with an attempt to turn back the clock to when it was the star of the tech world by offering its famous BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) software free for iPhones and Android phones. But rivals such as WhatsApp are already on both, with more users, while BlackBerry's base is dwindling both among consumers and businesses. BBM's arrival on the other platforms is two years too late, says the insider.

Friday's bad news drove the stock down by 20%, to a market cap of just $4.5bn. Broken up, BlackBerry might be worth more: last quarter, it valued its patent portfolio at $3bn, and says it has $2.6bn of cash and no debt. The services business has around 35m business customers, who could fetch up to $4.5bn.

But who would buy it now? Silver Lake, the private equity company that facilitated the recent $24.8bn buyout of Dell, appears uninterested – and Michael Dell has said his company won't go back into smartphones. Reuters reported last week that while Canada's Fairfax Financial Holdings, a 10% shareholder, might try to stage a buyout, interest from other private equity players is muted.

So where did BlackBerry go wrong? Was it the PlayBook tablet, unveiled 18 months after Apple's iPad in September 2011 with the slogan "Amateur Hour Is Over"? That has devoured $750m in write-offs, but the insider says its software was essentially that used in BB10. So, costs aside, it wasn't a distraction.

Instead, Mike Lazaridis, who devised the first BlackBerrys, and Jim Balsillie, who ran the company with him, failed to grasp how quickly the change ushered in by the first iPhone in 2007 would overwhelm the smartphone industry. According to the former insider, BlackBerry underestimated the speed at which businesses would start letting staff connect their own smartphones to company servers for email and more. "BlackBerry didn't move fast enough on that, nor get BBM out soon enough," the insider says.

The key failing was that BB10 was two years too late. Lazaridis and Balsillie saw that BB7, which powers older BlackBerrys, was outdated, but the new version was not released until January this year.

Heins was installed in January 2012 after the board ejected the two founders, but he does not escape criticism either. He was the chief operating officer and so "had the reins of the smartphone business", says the insider. That means the delay in releasing BB10 can be laid in part at Heins's door.

Yet if BB10 had taken off, it would have cut the company's throat. That's because phones using that software don't generate any service revenues from sending emails, data and web pages – which amounts to between a fifth and third of revenues, and rather more of profits.

All eyes are on BlackBerry now. But the message is not a positive one. The turmoil in the smartphone industry is brutal; more casualties may follow.

Article Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk

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Whale of a fine: after blowing $6bn, JP Morgan's trader costs another $920m

Chairman Jamie Dimon sends letter to staff warning of 'more to come' after regulators hit bank with fine

Last spring the City of London was rife with rumours about a trader at the vast JP Morgan investment bank who was making such huge bets on the highly complex – and deeply risky – derivatives markets that he was known as "the London Whale" or "Voldemort". After racking up losses of $6bn (£3.7bn) from his reckless trading, the London Whale blew another hole in the bank on Thursday – landing the Wall Street firm with one of the largest fines ever levied against a single bank.

The Whale was a French-born trader, Bruno Iksil. When stories of his dangerous dealings and the scale of the potential black hole first surfaced, JP Morgan's chairman Jamie Dimon, then Wall Street's most respected banker, shrugged off the losses off with a phrase that will haunt his career: "It's a complete tempest in a teapot," he insisted.

On Thursday, however, the bank agreed to pay some $920m in penalties to US and UK regulators over the "unsafe and unsound practices" that had allowed the bank's losses to balloon to $6.2bn. The near record fine comes as former JP Morgan bankers face criminal action in the US and it has all but sunk Dimon's once promising political career. It is also just one of a series of costly and damaging scandals that are rocking the financial institution.

The US's biggest bank must now hand over $300m to the US office of the comptroller of the currency, $200m to the Federal Reserve, $200m to the securities and exchange commission (SEC) and £137.6m to the UK's City watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). One other US regulator, the commodity futures trading commission, did not sign off on the fine and is still investigating whether the bank is guilty of market manipulation.

JP Morgan admitted wrongdoing as part of the settlement – an unusual step for a financial firm in the crosshairs of multiple legal actions. This week, in a letter to staff, Dimon warned them that, even after the fine, there was "more to come".

The opinions of the regulators were uniformly damning. "JP Morgan failed to keep watch over its traders as they overvalued a very complex portfolio to hide massive losses," co-director of the SEC's division of enforcement, George Canellos, said. Senior management "broke a cardinal rule … and deprived its board of critical information," he said. The bank was accused of "unsafe and unsound practices".

The FCA, levying its largest fine to date, said: "The firm's failings were extremely serious. The losses were caused by a high-risk trading strategy, weak management of that trading and an inadequate response to important information which should have notified the firm of the huge risks present."

The Whale's losses are not JP Morgan's only problem. The bank emerged relatively unscathed from the financial crisis, leaving Dimon as the only untarnished king of Wall Street, but the recovery has been less kind. JP Morgan has already faced vast fines for what became known as robosigning – automated procedures which forced thousands of US homeowners out of their houses without following the correct procedures.

On Thursday the bank also agreed to pay $389m to settle allegations that its credit card customers were duped into purchasing services they did not want. At least eight federal agencies are investigating the bank on issues ranging from its mortgage lending practices to its role in fraudster Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme. Regulators are reported to be pressing for a $6bn penalty to settle allegations that the bank mis-sold $33bn of bonds backed by sub-prime mortgages to US government-controlled mortgage companies in the run-up to the financial crisis.

In an indictment unsealed in federal court this week Javier Martin-Artajo, who oversaw trading strategy at the bank's London office, and Julien Grout, a trader who worked for him, were charged with securities fraud, conspiracy, filing false books and records, wire fraud and making false filings to the SEC.

Dimon has learned from his "teapot" comment and is now expressing contrition for the bank's debacle. "We have accepted responsibility and acknowledged our mistakes from the start, and we have learned from them and worked to fix them," he said. This year the bank has hired 3,000 staff to work on "compliance" – or working within the rules.

But reaction to the fine was mixed. John Coffee, professor at Columbia Law School, said: "The victims of this enormous loss were the shareholders of JP Morgan and the remedy is for those shareholders to pay $900m plus in fines. It's not just adding insult to injury, it's adding injury to injury."

No senior bank official has been charged with wrongdoing and Coffee described those indicted so far as "relatively small fish". He added: "Ideally the regulators should fine actual individuals who are responsible. But time and again the SEC settles for large penalties and gives virtual immunity to some officers."

Article Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk

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Barclays loan customers could be in line for windfall after paperwork errors

Bank could face costs of £100m to repay interest to customers whose statements did not comply with Consumer Credit Act

As many as 300,000 Barclays personal loan customers could be in line for a windfall after the bank uncovered "errors" in its paperwork.

Barclays said it was "implementing a plan to return interest payments to customers as swiftly and efficiently as possible" after reviewing the documentation sent to customers in past years.

The bank did not disclose the size of the bill but could face costs of £100m to repay interest to customers who should not have been charged during the period because their statements did not comply with the Consumer Credit Act.

The error appears to be similar to one that led to the taxpayer having to pick up a £270m bill for windfalls to 152,000 people who have, or had, a personal loan with Northern Rock. That blunder was disclosed in December 2012.

The Barclays disclosure was contained in the prospectus accompanying the bank's £6bn cash call. The bank said that a provision of an undisclosed size had been made for these costs and also revealed that it was now reviewing all its businesses – Barclaycard, Barclays Wealth and Barclays Corporate – to assess them for similar problems.

A Barclays spokesman said: "Barclays has proactively reviewed information it has historically sent to its customers relating to interest charges where we have found technical documentary errors. As a result, Barclays has identified certain issues with the information contained in some statements and arrears notices relating to consumer loan accounts."

He added that as a result of these errors, interest was not due on some accounts during the period that the bank made this mistake.

"While no one has been mis-sold to, customers are entitled to have their interest payments returned. No customer will pay more than they were ever contractually expected to," said the spokesman.

"Barclays has notified the Office of Fair Trading, which is responsible for consumer credit issues, and is implementing a plan to return interest payments to customers as swiftly and efficiently as possible. Barclays is undertaking a review of all its businesses where similar issues could arise to assess any related issues."

Any affected customer would be contacted by the bank and customers do not need to take any action, said the spokesman.

The Northern Rock error involved some customers with certain types of loan not being given all the information in their statements they were entitled to by law. As a result, interest payments on these loans were not legally enforceable.

The statements had failed to include the original amount borrowed. The Consumer Credit Act requires such statements to contain the sum borrowed, plus the opening and closing balance. Borrowers are not liable for interest relating to a period when a lender has not provided the information.

In the case of Northern Rock, most people had their loan account balance "corrected" to reverse the consequences of them being charged interest during the period when the paperwork did not meet the legal requirements. However, if the loan had already been paid off, they received a cash refund.

Article Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk

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IT glitch hits Lloyds and TSB on morning of bank split

TSB spokeswoman blames 'unexpected volumes of traffic' for temporary crash as the promise of a seamless transition fails to materialise

TSB was hit by teething problems on its launch morning as technical issues caused the bank's website to crash, meaning customers were unable to access their accounts online.

A surge of traffic to the website and those of other banks in the Lloyds Group caused the problems, undermining the promise of the chief executive, António Horta-Osório, of a "seamless" transition as TSB was relaunched.

Customers at Lloyds and Halifax were also affected by the glitch, which left some unable to even load the websites and others unable to log in. Only the Bank of Scotland website was unaffected.

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A spokesperson for the group said: "We are experiencing an issue with our internet banking service this morning, which has affected the ability of some customers to log on successfully.

"We are working to resolve this as quickly as we can and we apologise to customers for the inconvenience this will have caused. Our branches, telephone banking and cashpoint facilities have not been affected in any way."

On Saturday night the websites were closed as final technical work was done ahead of Monday's official return to the high street of the TSB brand, which came with the opening of the first rebranded stores. Other branches will follow in the first three days of the week.

Article Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk

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UK economy upgraded by OECD

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development gives vote of confidence, revising growth forecast from 0.8% to 1.5%\

Paris-based thinktank the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has lifted its forecast for UK growth in 2013, in the latest vote of confidence for the fledgling recovery.

In May, when it last released projections for the world's major economies, the OECD was expecting 0.8% growth in the UK for 2013. On Tuesday, it said recent survey evidence suggested GDP would expand by 1.5%, grouping the UK with the US and Japan as economies where, "activity is expanding at encouraging rates".

The upgrade from the OECD comes after a string of positive indicators for the UK, including stronger-than-expected growth of 0.7% in the second quarter, falling unemployment, and survey evidence suggesting the strongest growth in manufacturing output for almost two decades.

Alongside revising up its forecast for the UK, the OECD used its interim economic assessment to warn that while a moderate recovery is underway in many major economies, global growth remains sluggish, and there are still risks to the upturn.

The OECD's economists single out the impact of the Federal Reserve's plans to phase out its massive programme of quantitative easing as creating particular problems for some economies.

"In many emerging economies, loss of domestic activity momentum together with the shift in expectations about the course of monetary policy in the United States and the ensuing rise in global bond yields have led to significant market instability, rising financing costs, capital outflows and currency depreciations," it said.

Countries including India, Indonesia, Brazil and Turkey have been battling to control a potentially destabilising decline in their currencies since the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, announced his plans to "taper" QE in May.

The OECD's experts warn that the slowdown in emerging economies – which have been major drivers of world growth in recent years – would offset the improvement in advanced economies, so that the global recovery would continue to be, "sluggish".

In the US, the OECD expects growth to be 1.7% in 2013, slightly down on its May estimate of 1.9%. It also warns that the crisis in the eurozone is far from over, saying: "The euro area remains vulnerable to renewed financial, banking and sovereign debt tensions. Many euro area banks are insufficiently capitalised and weighed down by bad loans."

Article Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk

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'Investment calculator' offers investors transparency on fees

A new tool launched on Wednesday promises British investors a way to cut through what its authors call the "smoke and mirrors" used by investment firms to charge hidden fees and get a more realistic valuation of their investments.

The True and Fair Calculator works out the cost of investments in pounds and as a percentage, giving an estimate of returns after all costs and fees.

It is based on data streams from investment research firm Morningstar and was devised by True and Fair, a campaign to boost transparency in the industry spearheaded by Alan and Gina Miller, founders of wealth management boutique SCM Private.

It builds on a similar tool created by the United States' Securities and Exchange Commission in 2005, which was used by more than a million consumers in its first three years.

The investment industry has come under mounting scrutiny in recent months as the public and regulatory backlash since the 2008 financial crisis spreads beyond the banking industry.

Britain's financial watchdog has already called for an end to hidden fees levied by asset managers.

"We hope this drives new levels of cost transparency which results in greater competition among product providers, gives information to aid better decision making by consumers and their advisers and provides a foundation for more realistic investment expectations," said Gina Miller.

Profits raised by the Calculator will be donated to charities for financial education and care for the elderly, True and Fair said.

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Article source: http://uk.reuters.com

Crossrail tunnelling machines inch forward deep under central London

Chief executive Andrew Wolstenholme says Crossrail will tranform the capital's landscape above ground as well as below

In under six years' moment, 1,500 passengers will be whizzed via this kind of dank area each and every five minutes. For now, a tiny locomotive draws a couple of tradesmen, vats associated with grout and fat, items of tube wall structure and the Protector down the expanding tube through Westbourne Recreation area in west Greater london to the no-through One.Five miles away. Amongst the actual rattle and also roar as well as the cumul dripping straight down in the gloom 30 metres (100ft) beneath Hyde Park near Speaker's Corner, any pleasant glow finally looks forward. It could only be Phyllis.

Phyllis may be the identify Crossrail offered towards the first of the 148-metre-long, state-of-the-art uninteresting equipment to be carry out below Birmingham. This particular moving factory, carrying approximately Something like 20 miners as well as engineers, cuts through the earth and features tunnel walls while spitting out London clay-based and lounging brand new observe under with regard to works locomotives to tug upwards within with increased materials. At the front, the task is actually loud, unclean and also restricted to one of the most skilled staff. Each 160cm associated with excavation results in a new ring associated with tunnel wall produced by a leg from the equipment that is painful in the Several.5-tonne cement segments and also clicks them into place.

The first of what will eventually be eight Crossrail tunnelling machines is cutting its way east below Hyde Park.

Any controller, monitoring numerous sections with regard to utmost precision, runs on the tiny joystick to start out inching the particular leading edge forward again, the gas biceps and triceps pushing off from the actual freshly extra tunnel walls.
The scene will be duplicated almost all the time about several additional huge equipment around Birmingham, together with 3 a lot more to adhere to. Eventually they will seek out sufficient earth to be able to fill up Wembley arena 3 times over. Crossrail, for decades the sort of far-off, questionable undertaking which high-speed train structure HS2 seems these days, has become undoubtedly here, the channels and tunnels being useless underneath Londoners' feet.
The particular £14.8bn project, the 73-mile extend associated with observe with Twenty-five miles associated with canal, brings commuter trains underneath the center of the money along a west-east axis connecting Heathrow airport towards the Western side End, the City and past. Next month, the tunnelling equipment may reach Canary Wharf, exactly where structure block construction has impeded the vista from your 26th-floor office of Crossrail's chief executive, Andrew Wolstenholme.
He stresses that Crossrail will also affect the landscape over as well as beneath floor: "This is much more than the usual railway."
And that he doesn't just mean the new workplaces, structures and also small theme parks prepared above the areas through Connection Road in order to Canary Wharf when he talks about the undertaking being major regarding Birmingham.

"There's a huge stimulus. We will be upskilling lots of people as well as leaving behind world-class national infrastructure to be able to activate long-term growth.Inch Property ideals, he says, happen to be brought up through £5.5bn across the Crossrail route.

Crossrail is anticipated to join up to with HS2 in a fresh Aged Pine Typical interchange when ideas for the task tend to be ultimately accepted. It's regarded as the near future quickly hyperlink to Stansted airport with regard to high-speed people, following plans to have an HS2 inspire were omitted within the national headline a week ago. Wolstenholme is definitely an HS2 believer however notes: "The benefit we've about Crossrail is the financial circumstance is extremely clear as well as the benefit to be able to Greater london is properly described.

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