Card Factory issues shock profit warning during peak Christmas period

Card Factory has delivered an unwelcome early Christmas surprise for investors by issuing a shock profit warning during the greetings card retailer’s peak trading period, which sent shares plunging by more than a fifth.The retailer, which also owns the online card and gift brand Funky Pigeon, said economic pressure on shoppers has hit confidence in its most important trading period of the year.“Over recent months, the pressures facing the UK consumer have been well publicised,” the company said in a trading update. “It is an inescapable fact that these pressures have impacted consumer confidence and shopping behaviour, contributing to soft high street footfall.“Those conditions have persisted as we moved into our most important trading period, leading to a UK store sales performance which is lower than our previous expectations

Nationwide fined £44m by watchdog for financial crime control failings

Nationwide has been fined £44m by the City watchdog over “weak” financial crime controls that culminated in a serious case of Covid fraud that cost UK taxpayers £800,000.The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined the building society for failures stretching over nearly five years. It said the lender had been aware that some customers were using personal accounts for business activity, in a breach of its own terms.Nationwide did not offer business accounts at that point and so did not have the right processes in place to monitor potential financial crime risks, the FCA said.This resulted in a case where Nationwide failed to catch a customer using personal current accounts to receive 24 fraudulent Covid furlough payments, totalling £27

UK economy shrank unexpectedly before budget, data shows

Britain’s economy shrank unexpectedly in October as consumers held back on spending before Rachel Reeves’s budget, and car manufacturing struggled to recover from the cyber-attack on Jaguar Land Rover.Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed gross domestic product fell by 0.1%, after a 0.1% drop in output in September. City economists had predicted a 0

New laws may be considered after ‘harrowing stories’ from ex-Vodafone franchisees

The government may consider new laws to correct the power imbalance in franchise agreements in response to the “harrowing stories” of small business people running Vodafone stores.The move follows allegations of suicide and attempted suicide among shopkeepers who had agreed to deals to run retail outlets for the £18bn telecoms company, which were revealed by the Guardian on Monday.During Thursday’s business questions in the Commons, Justin Madders, a former minister, said: “I’m sure the department will have been aware of the coverage this week of some of the harrowing stories of the treatment of Vodafone franchisees … [The department] will no doubt recognise the power imbalance in that relationship and will they consider looking at some measures to redress that imbalance perhaps by a statutory code of practice or a national arbitration system?”Chris Bryant, a minister of state at the Department for Business and Trade, said: “I am happy to sit down with him and discuss whether there are specific proposals that we could bring forward which would address that issue of imbalance.”Outside the chamber another former business minister, Labour’s Gareth Thomas, added: “This case continues to raise disturbing echoes of the Post Office scandal and raises the question as to whether the law around franchising needs to be toughened up to ensure small-business owners are better protected.”On Monday, the Guardian revealed allegations that Adrian Howe, a former Vodafone employee who had agreed to become a franchisee in 2018, had taken his own life after becoming convinced his deal with the multinational company would prove financially disastrous

‘Squeaky bum time’ as Great Britain’s new rail timetable goes live this weekend

Billions of pounds of investment, years of engineering works – and now, the moment of truth. On 14 December a revamped railway timetable goes live across Great Britain, with the biggest fanfare and radical changes for the east coast mainline, where passengers are promised more train services, faster journeys and a new era of reliability.But the spectre of a previous, disastrous timetable change from May 2018 still looms over the railway. So will Sunday’s revamp be a great gift for passengers that the industry expects – or usher in a bleak midwinter ahead?LNER, the leading intercity operator on the line from London to Scotland, will have 60,000 extra seats a week in total, and cut the fastest journey times from the UK capital to Edinburgh to shortly over four hours, and to Leeds to a little over two, with six instead of five trains an hour out of Kings Cross most of the day.More TransPennine Express trains will run north of Newcastle upon Tyne and there will be more East Midlands services between Nottingham and Lincoln

Health and safety rules holding UK infrastructure back, says writer of government report

Overbearing health and safety rules are stopping Britain building new infrastructure, according to the economist whom Keir Starmer has cited as an inspiration for his growth strategy.John Fingleton, who recently wrote a report for government on how to encourage developers to build new nuclear power plants, told the Guardian regulators needed to change their attitude to risk if the country was to end its long economic stagnation.Starmer last week accepted Fingleton’s recommendations and said he wanted to use his approach to inform the government’s wider industrial strategy.Fingleton told the Guardian: “We need to have a more mature relationship with risk. Projects often do not go ahead because of concerns about safety but often all you are doing is moving the risk somewhere else