All Newsletter briefing articles
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Newsletter
Grocery Briefing: Aldi and Lidl are limited assortment no more and is anyone left at the Co-op?
Size matters: As of the end of last week, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) now, provisionally at least, considers Aldi and Lidl to be ‘large grocery retailers’ and thus subject to the same land agreements as their supermarket competitors. Since the watchdog’s 2010 Groceries Market Investigation, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, ...
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Newsletter
Tech & Digital Briefing: Amazon hits major milestone; Zalando’s investment in AI pays off; and more
AI continues to dominate tech news as each day there’s a story about an AI start-up considering a float, hackings due to AI “going rogue”, or new rules imposed on how the public receives AI-generated content. One that caught my eye this week was about Amazon’s stock market value exceeding ...
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NewsletterIntelligence Briefing: Late-night shopping, warehouses, and Next’s earnings streak continues
I just spent four days in Istanbul, staying just off the main shopping boulevard Istiklal Street. While the city’s Ottoman-era retail destinations, the Spice and Grand Bazaars, are definitely essential visits, something really stands out about modern shopping culture in the city. If you step onto Istiklal at 10pm, you’ll ...
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Newsletter
Grocery Briefing: Sainsbury’s parts ways with Argos, no such thing as peak Greggs
Another week, and another big story in the world of grocery. Namely, the announcement that Sainsbury’s has parted ways with general merchandise business Argos to a new company, Swift Partners, formed from a dream team of retail heavy hitters for £120m. Many of the headlines were dominated by the massive ...
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Newsletter
Tech & Digital Briefing: A safer and more transparent AI; Argos sold for pennies; and more
On Sunday, the EU’s new rules on the transparency of AI systems came into effect. In simple terms, as put by the European Commission, the new rules will “help people recognise when they are interacting with AI or are exposed to AI-generated content” so they can protect themselves from “misinformation ...
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NewsletterIntelligence Briefing: Burnham gets to work; 90-inch TV bonanza; Frasers M&A-nia
He has definitely been busy. New PM Andy Burnham has blitzed through a series of policy announcements since he took office at the start of last week. Most of the big ones have some note for the retail sector, despite none of them being a direct benefit. Cutting business rates ...
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Newsletter
Grocery Briefing: Ocado drops M&S final payment while Brits buy winter warmers to beat the heat
What’s £190.7m between friends? That question appears to have been answered this week, with the news (originally in The Times) that Ocado has dropped its long pursuit of the final instalment of the money it was owed for its joint venture with Marks & Spencer. Despite having spent years threatening ...
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Newsletter
Tech & Digital Briefing: Andy Burnham bets on AI; Beauty retailers continue to be at the fore of innovation; and more
It’s certainly been a busy week as we welcomed our seventh prime minister in 10 years. Andy Burnham has hit the ground running with an announcement of a £2 bus fare cap across England; he’s pledged to slash business rates by 20% for pubs, clubs, and live music venues, and ...
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Newsletter
Intelligence Briefing: Inflation drops again as grocery benefits from long England World Cup run
If you asked Rachel Reeves at the start of the year whether she would be happy with a CPI figure of 2.6% in July, I’m sure she would have said yes. The odd reality that it is all landing in, however, is that it comes with no prospect of ...
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Newsletter
Grocery Briefing: Tears and beers as World Cup ends, and the King of the North comes south
Hello darkness, my old friend. Another World Cup cycle, another four years of hurt for England fans. It all seems like ancient history now, but it was only this time last week that I loftily predicted the Three Lions would be bearded in their den(s) by France in the final, ...
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Newsletter
Tech & Digital Briefing: World Cup gives online retail a boost; latest partnership update; and more
Well, it didn’t come home. Instead, England had to settle for third this time, but congratulations to Spain. While the team suffered another defeat, the online economy was given a big boost throughout the tournament. AO saw a double-digit increase in TV sales, Boots and Asda extended their respective Deliveroo ...
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NewsletterIntelligence Briefing: Four days till Burnham, June sales, and heatwave data
It is now almost certain that Andy Burnham will become prime minister on Monday after he was backed by the vast majority of Labour MPs, making it impossible for any other challenger to get the necessary number of nominations to enter the contest. The British Retail Consortium has ...
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Newsletter
Grocery Briefing: Have yourself a merry little Christmas, potential grocery consolidation and a long, hot, British summer
The UK may be currently sweltering through another week of record temperatures, but it’s now nearly mid-July and, in retail – and food retail most of all – that means one thing: everyone’s already looking ahead to Christmas. Yes, right about now, despite the Mediterranean temperatures outside, every grocery test ...
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Newsletter
Intelligence Briefing: Console price rises, heatwaves, and England fight on
I am an on-and-off video gamer, but having the latest console has been less important as I’ve got older. While I quickly bought the PS2, I held off for a couple of years before buying the Xbox 360, and later still, the PS4. This is partly a result of having ...
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Newsletter
Grocery Briefing: Ocado paves way for Steiner succession; Co-op locked in bot battle; Weight-loss pills hit the high street
Hello dear subscribers, and welcome to the maiden voyage of the new-look grocery newsletter. And the top story this week is fit for just such an auspicious occasion. After the best part of two weeks of furious media speculation, pureplay grocer and fulfilment technology provider Ocado yesterday laid out a ...
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Newsletter
Tech & Digital Briefing: Prime Day performs; Delivery robots cause controversy; and more
To no one’s surprise, Prime Day performed well yet again. Amazon’s annual four-day event rarely disappoints, and in the UK sales grew 11.4% year on year to £2.3bn as consumers sought out deals typically only seen over Black Friday. The retail behemoth also focused its efforts on AI with the ...
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Newsletter
Intelligence Briefing: Burnham and the high streets; Heatwave hits Topps; Germany has cheapest shop
Our seeming prime minister-in-waiting, Andy Burnham, set out his priorities in a speech at the start of this week, and retail got a big shout-out amid other announcements like the movement of some of the prime minister’s operational team to Manchester (unexpectedly bringing JD Sports and the Co-op close to ...
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Newsletter
Tech and Digital briefing: Beware of rising tech prices; Highlights from our Digital Transformation Summit; and more
I’m here to give you a bit of respite from Downing Street as the UK gears up to bring in its seventh Prime Minister in a decade. Well, I say respite, but I’m opening with a bit of gloomy news for consumers. AI data centres have sparked a surge in ...
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Newsletter
Intelligence Briefing: UK retail vs Amazon capex; Starmer out; supermarket spending
This morning, I am speaking at the Retail Week Digital Transformation Summit about AI and the retail sector. I have been covering AI since I started at Retail Week in late 2024, and one thing that has always been clear is that so much of what UK retailers are reacting ...
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Newsletter
Tech & Digital Briefing: Social media to be banned for youths; AI investment continues to ramp
One of the most controversial debates among parents, teachers, teenagers, retailers, and pretty much everyone in the UK at the moment is the potential social media ban for those under 16. It follows the same ban in Australia, which was implemented in December 2025, but research from the Molly Rose ...