Any other Business

Shoppers stay home as rates and floods rise — but there’s a bit of better news for M&S

Shoppers have spent these past few weeks sheltering from incessant rain, rising interest rates and renewed threats of terrorism. Fuel- and flood-hit food prices are on an up-trend too, so we must brace ourselves for a spate of High Street gloom. At Marks & Spencer, like-for-like sales were up only 2 per cent in the April–June quarter, compared to a rise of more than 8 per cent in the same quarter of 2006. Still, that was slightly less bad than the stock market expected, and there was one bit of better news for M&S this week: George Davies is thinking of leaving.

Davies was hired in 2001 to create a new range, ‘Per Una’, to help M&S shed an increasingly frumpy image. He did just that and the group has been duly grateful, buying out his equity interest for £125 million and paying him a bigger bonus than that of chief executive Stuart Rose.