M&S TO CUT CLOTHING PRICES IN NEW INITIATIVE - Marks and Spencer says that from tomorrow it is indefinitely reducing prices across its clothes, furniture and homeware ranges. The company, which employs 3,500 people and by the end of next week will have 20 stores in Ireland, says it is making the move because of pressure from its customers.
Jonathan Smith, who runs the Irish business of Marks and Spencer, says the company recognised that retail trading conditions in Ireland are tough at the moment and its Irish customers had made it clear that they wanted better value for their euro. Mr Smith said that M&S had been working very hard to get its internal costs down and has worked very closely with its suppliers. He said that M&S has also taken advantage of the better sterling/euro exchange rate and is now in a position to reduce prices across all of its clothing and homeware products from tomorrow morning.
The M&S Ireland boss said the retail chain had been steadily reducing prices during the year, especially in its food offerings. He says the 12% cut move is a 'really big gesture' to the company's customer base and he predicts that the move will be a hit with customers.
Marks and Spencer is a landlord in Dublin's Grafton Street area and Mr Smith says that the company's property division works constantly with both tenants and its other landlords to try to get the best value for them and M&S. He says that it is in negotiations with some of its tenants on the issue of rents and is working hard on trying to get some of the rental costs down.
Mr Smith says that M&S currently takes 15% of its Irish food supply from Irish suppliers and adds that the company is aiming to increase that to 30% over the next five years. Some of M&S's Irish suppliers are now also supplying the UK market and he says that recently Keelings of north Dublin supplied 75 tonnes worth of strawberries into the UK shops.
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MORNING BRIEFS - The fall in the value of assets and rising household debt saw the financial assets of Irish households drop by 42% from their peak of €140 billion in 2006. According to Central Statistics Office figures, the average net financial worth of an Irish household at the end of last year was €51,500, down from €95,000 in 2006, mainly because of a fall in the value of stock markets over the year.
*** British Airways has asked its staff to work for nothing. The airline e-mailed an appeal to more than 30,000 workers in the UK, asking them to volunteer for between one week and one month's unpaid leave, or unpaid work, to help the airline survive. Last month, the airline reported a record annual loss of £401m sterling. Its chief executive Willie Walsh has already agreed to work unpaid in July. A month's salary for Willie Walsh is about £61,000.
*** US president Barack Obama will today spell out details of his plan to restructure how banks and other firms are regulated in the hope of preventing more future financial collapses. He is likely to call for a council of regulators to be set up, chaired by the Treasury secretary, to work alongside the Federal Reserve monitoring system-wide risk.
*** General Motors is selling its Saab brand to Swedish sports car maker Koenigsegg. The deal will be part funded by the European Investment Bank and guaranteed by the Swedish government. Already the Opel and Vauxhall brands have gone to Canada's Magna. However, doubts have been raised Koenigsegg's ability to run Saab. It employs 45 people and makes 18 cars a year, while Saab sold 93,000 cars last year and directly employs 3,400 staff.
*** Job cuts will be made at social networking site MySpace, after its boss said the firm's employee level was bloated. Almost one third of its staff will go - that translates into 400 jobs. The company needs to cut costs to compete with increasing competition from the likes of Twitter and Facebook. My Space, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, says it wants to return to the culture of a start-up company. It has about 125 million users.
*** On the currency markets, the euro is trading at $1.3860 and 84.43 pence sterling.
