Please see below M&C Report's round up of this weekend's papers:
Lunch hour worth £3.5bn
British workers spend £3.5bn a year on sandwiches, with chicken salad topping the poll of the most popular lunchtime food. The survey of 1,000 office workers found 34% buy food rather than making a packed lunch or eating in a staff canteen.
Telegraph, Saturday
Lincoln is top for business growth
Lincoln has been named as the number one hotspot for business growth, with more than 100 new companies starting up in the city in the past six months. A study by Royal Mail found a 2% rise in the number trading in recent months, taking the total to 8,000. Swansea was second in the business growth league, followed by Sunderland and Durham. Four of the top 10 cities attracting new businesses were in the north-east.
Financial Times Weekend
Booze hikes cost us £95
Mammoth tax hikes on booze and fags will cost everyone £95 extra a year, the Sun can reveal. The rise in levies announced in last week’s Budget has put up inflation across the board by 0.37%, according to official statistics. That ups the cost of the average shopping basket by £1.84 a week – even if they do not smoke or drink.
The Sun, Saturday
ECB ready to raise rates and risk recession
The European Central Bank is poised to start raising interest rates this week despite fears that doing so could tip some countries back into recession. After nearly two years with rates at a record low of 1%, the ECB is expected to announce a quarter-point rise on Thursday. The Bank of England monetary policy committee (MPC) will announce its rates decision the same day and is expected to hold at 0.5% for the 25th month.
The Sunday Times
Soho House in £300m takeover approach
Soho House, the chain of private members’ clubs, could be put up for sale after receiving a number of takeover approaches in the past week. The Sunday Telegraph has learned that the club’s owners – restaurateur Richard Caring, who owns 80%, and founder Nick Jones, who owns the remaining 20% - have received a number of approaches from private equity houses, one valuing the business at as much as £300m. To date, the approaches have been rebuffed and a formal process has not begun.
The Sunday Telegraph
From Kiss Me Kate to I Will, Britain celebrates with ale
The Royal Wedding this month could cost £30bn in lost productivity as workers take time off between the extra bank holiday and its proximity to Easter, but the beer industry will not be too worried. Breweries have been hard at work producing special celebration ales with which to toast the health of Prince William and Kate Middleton – from Castle Rock’s Kiss Me Kate and Marston’s Perfect Union to Something Blue from Durham Brewery and I Will from Wold Top.
The Mail on Sunday
Beer duty case fails
Two of the biggest brewers in Britain, Carlsberg and InBev, have lost a £30m tax case about rounding down duty owed on beer. When beer duty is calculated, sums owed are rounded down to the nearest penny. The two groups wanted to calculate their bills on the basis of individual cans of beer sold, rounding down every half-penny owed on each can, rather than just the half penny owed on all the beer they sold in a month. The brewers’ calculation method would have saved Carlsberg £10m and InBev £18m.
The Mail on Sunday
SAB hunt for Brazil brewer
SAB Miller is facing a battle to buy one of Brazil’s top brewers. The FTSE 100 maker of Peroni and Grolsch lagers is considering a bid for Schincariol, Brazil’s second-largest brewer. The privately owned firm has been put up for sale for about $2bn ((£1.25bn). However, SAB is likely to face stiff competition from its Dutch rival Heinken, which is also keen to expand in a region where the population’s thirst for beer is growing rapidly. Schincariol produces about 2.5bn litres of beer a year.
The Sunday Times
Ramsay needs a doctor
Restaurant guru Gordon Ramsay has had to hire a business expert dubbed “The Doctor” to help nurse his own empire back to health. In an echo of his hit show Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, which sees him take over failing restaurants and pull them back from the brink, the fiery TV chef has recruited Geoff Eades to help with the day-to-day running of his business. Eades, 52, has a reputation for rescuing struggling companies. Ramsay’s decision to appoint him as interim finance director comes months after he sacked his own father-in-law Chris Hutcheson as the boss of Gordon Ramsay Holdings following a bitter row over the way he was running the company.
Sunday Mirror
‘Tax junk food ingredients to cut soaring obesity rates’
Common ingredients in fast food, ready meals and drinks should be taxed as a public health measure to curb soaring rates of obesity and diabetes, according to a leading epidemiologist. The scheme, proposed by Sir Nicholas Wald, director of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine in London, would raise the cost of less healthy products to discourage shoppers and put pressure on manufacturers and retailers to embrace healthier options. Rather than targeting junk food in general, the tax would be applied to salt, alcohol, sugar and saturated fats, the four major ingredients that contribute most to public health problems. The tax would not apply to the ingredients sold separately. Most affected by the scheme would be fast food, ready meals, soft drinks and alcohol beverages, but also less obvious products. The salt in bread, for example, contributes a significant amount of salt to the diet. Levying the tax at a penny a gram for sugar, saturated fats and alcohol, and a penny a tenth of a gram for salt, would see the cost of a Big Mac rise from £2.49 to £2.88, while the cost of a healthier portion of Chicken McNuggets would rise from the same amount to £2.58.
The Observer
