Your commercial news round-up: positive UK economic turn, Burberry job cuts, footballers’ personal data, cyberattacks

Reading time: three minutes

The country sees a surprise surge in the economy in recent statistics, while footballers fight to protect their data and moral positions. Meanwhile, the quintessential British fashion house Burberry makes job cuts, and the cyberattack saga continues for M&S. Read on to find out more!

• The Office for National Statistics has reported a 0.7% growth in the first quarter, between January and March 2025. This surpasses the 0.6% growth figure predicted by economists, placing the country in a promising financial position and in line with government priorities. Chancellor Rachel Reeves is taking the figures as a political win, saying the UK economy has grown faster than many economically strong countries, and that "today's growth figures show the strength and potential of the UK economy”. She added: "Up against a backdrop of global uncertainty, we are making the right choices now in the national interest." Despite this growth, experts suggest that this “might be as good as it gets for the rest of the year”. Paul Dates at Capital Economics explained that the rise was "unlikely to be repeated as a lot of it was due to activity being brought forward ahead of US tariffs and the rise in domestic businesses taxes".
   
• British luxury designer fashion brand Burberry has announced proposed job cuts, which would see its workforce reduced by almost a fifth, following a £66 million financial loss reported in the last financial year. The company is hoping to make savings from operating expenses, working with peak store traffic and reorganising staff rotas. Although cuts will be felt globally, they’ll be focused on the UK. Chief Executive Joshua Schulman said: "While we are operating against a difficult macroeconomic backdrop and are still in the early stages of our turnaround, I am more optimistic than ever that Burberry's best days are ahead.

• A growing group of professional footballers and sportspeople in the UK are challenging how their personal data and performance statistics are being collected, used and ultimately monetised. In the most recent development in the ‘project red card’ scheme, the Global Sport Data and Technology Group has recently submitted several ‘stop processing’ requests. The scheme, which was launched five years ago, is an ethical campaign that represents 850 professional football players. The scheme works on behalf of a collective of footballers and sportspeople, bringing legal action against entertainment companies, betting companies and the sharing of data, for breach of data protection laws. Under GDPR, personal data must be processed lawfully and transparently. However, so far consent hasn’t been a legal requirement for organisations wanting to use and monetise player data generated by match statistics and data harvesting. Former football player and lawyer, Udo Onwere, said: “It’s not just about money. It’s about how a player’s personal information is being used by companies they might have strong moral objections to.”

• The Marks & Spencer (M&S) cyberattack has continued into its third week. In recent developments, M&S has stated that some of its customers’ personal data was stolen in this incident. The company alleges that this data doesn’t include payment information or passwords, but customers will be encouraged to create a new one when they next use the site. Meanwhile, the retail company’s share price has fallen by 14.6% since the start of the attack. The company has stated that it’s “taken steps to protect our systems and engaged leading cybersecurity experts” and has reported the incident to the relevant authorities.

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