Below are the key headlines from today’s updated papers, featuring the Financial Times, The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail & more - see the full Press section here.
Standard Life Aberdeen wins out in £100 billion Lloyds battle. Britain’s biggest fund manager Standard Life Aberdeen (SLA) won a £100 billion funds row with Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) on Tuesday, paving the way for a multi-million pound payout. The FTSE 100 fund manager, which manages £550 billion, won a crucial legal case against Lloyds over the bank’s decision to terminate a fund management contract, depriving Standard of around £330 million in fees over three years. Lloyds ditched the deal last February saying the newly-merged Standard Life Aberdeen (SLA) was a “material competitor” to its Scottish Widows division, led by Antonio Lorenzo. SLA said Lloyds had no right to terminate and a three-person arbitration panel agreed , scuppering Lloyds’ plans to withdraw. In a worst case scenario for Lloyds, SLA could hang on to the money until 2022 when the contract expires.
Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) has promised price cuts of £1bn a year for shoppers and committed to selling off stores in a last-gasp effort to convince the competition watchdog to approve its £12bn merger with Asda. The supermarket said in a stock market update that it strongly disagreed with the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) provisional report into the merger, which warned the deal could be blocked unless the pair sell off significant stores or even one of the brands. Sainsbury’s said the CMA’s report contains “significant errors”, both legal and economic.
Ocado upbeat despite devastating fire. Sales at Ocado Group (OCDO) have taken a hit from the giant fire at its Andover facility and could suffer further in the second quarter but the online grocer said that its draft findings following the blaze showed that there was no long-term problem with its warehouses or model. In an update that cheered the City, the company said that revenue had jumped by 11.2% to £404 million in the 13 weeks to March 3, which it said was a “resilient” response given the scale of damage to the warehouse in Hampshire. The fire completely destroyed the facility, which accounted for 10% of the online grocer’s total capacity. Ocado said that this had caused it to lose 1.2% of sales in the quarter. As the fire only occurred in the final four weeks of the first quarter, however, the impact on sales in the second quarter is expected to be greater and could rise to 3% of sales.
Antofagasta (ANTO) topped the FTSE 100 after the copper mining giant announced a higher than expected dividend. The miner said that it would pay a final dividend of 37 cents a share, ahead of market expectations and taking its total dividend for 2018 to 43¾ cents. “We take this as a statement of confidence from management over the tightness of the copper market and the strong cash flow generation that its portfolio can generate in such conditions,” analysts at Peel Hunt said
Asos warns of teething problems in US expansion push. ASOS (ASC) on Tuesday admitted it had got off to a faltering start in its efforts to crack America, as it struggled to meet demand across the pond. Asos chief executive Nick Beighton said demand from shoppers after the opening was at levels he had not seen for nine years and far exceeded expectations. But warehouse problems meant Asos had to freeze advertising and marketing campaigns in the US while it grappled with the orders influx.
The Gym Group eyes shops left vacant after CVAs for smaller branches. The Gym Group (GYM) on Tuesday unveiled plans to open sites half the size of its present fitness centres, as it looks to pounce on shops becoming vacant when retailers restructure. The budget fitness chain will open its first “small box” site this year, “and commence a roll-out thereafter”. Chief executive Richard Darwin said these branches would be between 5000 square feet and 8000 square feet and targeted at smaller membership numbers. “This move allows us to get into some locations where we struggled to get space before, and take advantage of properties coming onto the market via retail and restaurant CVAs,” said Darwin.
Bonmarche Holdings (BON) investors ran for the hills on Tuesday morning after the cut-price womenswear chain admitted its annual losses would be steeper than feared. In its third profit warning in just six months, the struggling firm, which has 300 UK stores, said it expects to rack up losses of up to £6million, owing to a ‘significant’ sales slowdown at the start of March. Bonmarche previously predicted losses of up to £4million. The firm insisted that sales had bounced back in January and February after it resorted to heavy discounting to shift stock, but its performance stagnated again at the start of this month. Blaming the weather, the company said: ‘We believe that the recent downturn in trading is a consequence of the demand for transitional ranges, between winter and spring, having been satisfied during January and February. ‘Although sales of spring season stock benefited from the spell of warm weather in late February, this is not yet a large enough part of the sales mix to compensate for the lower demand for transitional stock.'