Deliveroo makes annual profit for first time

Deliveroo has made an annual profit for the first time, after a bumpy few years since a disastrous stock market listing that earned the takeaway delivery company the nickname “flopperoo”.The 12-year-old company, a member of the FTSE 250 index of mid-sized companies, made a profit of £3m in 2024, compared with a loss of £32m in 2023, it said in a statement on Thursday.The profit came alongside its first year of cash generation, after years of losing hundreds of millions of pounds as the company expanded from a startup to becoming a rare technology company to float on the London Stock Exchange in 2021.Deliveroo said the annual profit came despite an “uncertain consumer environment”, as it pushed beyond takeaways to grocery deliveries, which accounted for 16% of sales in the second half of the year. Its share price fell 8% after analysts flagged “soft” expectations for future profits

Nearly one in four Britons have witnessed shoplifting, study shows

Nearly a quarter of Britons have witnessed shoplifting in the past year and seen physical or verbal abuse of shop workers as criminals become “bolder and more aggressive”.A survey carried out for the British Retail Consortium (BRC) by the market research firm Opinium found Nottingham to be a UK hotspot for retail crime where 32% of residents said they had witnessed shoplifting. London was close behind on 29%.Southampton, Leeds and Manchester were all above the national average, while Liverpool, Brighton and Sheffield witnessed less shop theft than other major cities during the year.On average, 24% of respondents to a survey of 2,000 people had witnessed shoplifting and 23% had witnessed the physical or verbal abuse of shop workers

Trump’s senseless tariffs will extend the economic malaise felt by so many in Australia – and around the world | Nicki Hutley

Earlier this month, outgoing Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau called US president Donald Trump’s tariffs “very dumb”. Given the large hit to share markets this week in response to the escalating prospect of all-out trade wars and recession, some might say Trudeau’s comment was an understatement.Because the truth is, while much of the early economic analysis of the potential impact of tariffs has focused on country-level inflation and growth, the story is much more complicated, and the ripple effects are already travelling far and wide.In its latest Statement on Monetary Policy, the Reserve Bank of Australia had a fairly optimistic view of the likely economic impact on Australia of Trump’s tariffs, expecting growth to be shaved by only the narrowest of margins over the next two years, although admitting there were downside risks. We don’t yet know just how many more exports may be in the firing line

UK drops down list of affluent nations after decade of stagnation, NIESR finds

The UK has tumbled down the league of affluent nations after almost a decade of welfare cuts and stagnant incomes, according to a report that found the poorest districts in Britain now rank below the lowest-income areas of Malta and Slovenia.In a warning for ministers to protect welfare spending before Rachel Reeves’s spring statement later this month, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) said the UK’s reputation for high living standards was under threat.Districts in Birmingham were ranked as the poorest in the UK, according to the study, and below the poorest areas of Finland, France, Malta and Slovenia, it found.Between 2020 and 2023, a combination of welfare cuts and near-zero real income growth meant the bottom 10% of earners in the West Midlands saw their living standards fall below the level in parts of Slovenia, researchers said.“UK regional income growth has been among the slowest in Europe, whilst real incomes in the majority of European regions have grown at a faster rate than those in UK,” the report said

Poor results at Puma and Zara owner fuel fears of slowing US consumer demand

Unexpectedly poor results from the sports brand Puma and the fashion group Inditex, which owns Zara, have fuelled fears about slowing consumer appetite in the US amid uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs.Shares in Puma dived by more than a fifth as the company warned that sales growth this year would be slower than hoped as “geopolitical tensions and macroeconomic challenges will continue, especially trade disputes and currency volatility, which is expected to weigh on consumer sentiment and demand”.Piral Dadhania, a retail analyst at the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), said: “There are some concerns around brand heat, increasing competition and North America distribution.”Inditex shares were down by 8% on Wednesday as the company said underlying sales grew by 4% in the five weeks to 10 March, well behind analysts’ expectations, and slower than the 10.5% increase rung up for the year to 31 January

Timid FCA has retreated too far on its ‘name and shame’ proposals

Lobbying victories for the City do not come much more comprehensive. Last year, the Financial Conduct Authority, the industry regulator, put forward a proposal that it should be able to name firms under investigation more frequently.Greater openness at an earlier stage, argued the FCA, could deter bad behaviour and protect consumers. A “public interest” test on disclosure would be better than the existing “exceptional circumstances” rule that was so stifling that the FCA was silent even as British Steel pensioners, in a well-publicised scandal in 2017, were fleeced by unscrupulous financial advisers who gave them terrible advice.But the uproar from City firms and lawyers over the FCA’s proposals was loud and persistent