Christmas spending, rail fares, full-fibre broadband: your commercial news round-up

It’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve published our last commercial news round-up and in that time it seems as if a lot has happened – from the escalation of the tensions between the US and Iran, to the worsening of the Australian wildfires which have so far destroyed over 32,000 square miles of land, killing millions of animals. While the outlook for the beginning of a new decade has already been marred by these events, there’s plenty of business-related stories you should also know about. Here’s our summary:

• ‘Tis the time of year for supermarkets and high street brands to share their Christmas results, and while Aldi boasted its best Christmas spending period ever with sales topping £1 billion, other stores didn’t fare quite so well. Sales at Tesco fell slightly during the festive period, while M&S this morning reported that although its sales rose over Christmas, its share prices have fallen sharply. And it’s bad news again for John Lewis employees (or ‘partners’) who have been told that due to a poor sales performance over Christmas, they may not receive their annual staff bonus this year.
• As train fares across the UK rose by an average of 2.7% at the beginning of 2020, transport secretary Grant Shapps last week announced that train operator Northern is soon to be stripped of its rail franchise. Shapps described the service on the line as “really bad” and referred to the new timetables introduced in May 2018 which saw up to 310 trains being cancelled a day. Managing director at Northern, David Brown, blamed the late delivery of major infrastructure upgrades that are “outside the direct control of Northern”.
• Britain’s telecom regulator, Ofcom, yesterday announced its plans to “supercharge” the roll out of full-fibre broadband across the UK by distinguishing regulation between urban and rural areas. This means that they will encourage more competition between providers in cities, and support BT to roll out faster speeds in rural areas. “We’re removing the remaining roadblocks to investment and supporting competition, so companies can build the networks,” said Ofcom interim chief executive Jonathan Oxley.
• And finally: could you name the best performing stock of the 2010s? That crown was presented to streaming giant Netflix which delivered a 4,000% return from 2010 to 2019. This article by CBNC runs through the ups and downs faced by Netflix this decade, but it’s fair to say that the company has come a long way from its conception in 1997 when it posted DVDs in red envelopes to its subscribers.

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