Next expects profits to top £1.1bn after bumper festive sales

The high street retailer Next expects its annual profits to top £1.1bn after it rang up much stronger sales than expected over Christmas – but it has warned that 2026 will be tougher amid “continuing pressures on UK employment”.The clothing and homewares retailer said it was improving annual profit forecasts by £15m, its fourth upgrade in eight months, after UK sales rose by 5.9% in the nine weeks to 27 December, far stronger than the 4.1% expected

Trump suggests US taxpayers could reimburse oil firms for Venezuela investment

Donald Trump has suggested US taxpayers could reimburse energy companies for repairing Venezuelan infrastructure for extracting and shipping oil.Trump acknowledged that “a lot of money” would need to be spent to increase oil production in Venezuela after US forces ousted its leader, Nicolás Maduro, but suggested his government could pay oil companies to do the work.“A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue,” the president said.The US energy secretary, Chris Wright, reportedly plans to meet representatives of Chevron, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil at the Goldman Sachs Energy, Clean Tech & Utilities Conference in Miami later this week.Representatives of Trump’s administration are planning to meet executives to discuss increasing Venezuelan production, Reuters reported

Aldi and Lidl grab record Christmas sales share as Asda and Co-op slide

The discounters Aldi and Lidl grabbed their biggest share of Britain’s Christmas grocery market to date, while Asda and the Co-op lost out as shoppers sought out bargains to help offset rising household bills.The German-owned supermarket chains grabbed a 16.8% slice of the market in the four weeks to 28 December, up from 16.3% a year earlier.In total, shoppers spent £13

Jaguar Land Rover sales slump sharply amid US tariffs and cyber-attack

Sales at Jaguar Land Rover slumped in the final quarter of last year as US tariffs hit and production was slow to recover after a devastating cyber-attack.Wholesale volumes – sales via dealerships – fell by 43.3% to 59,200 vehicles in the quarter to December, while retail sales were down 25.1% at 79,600 cars after the hack in late August.The attack forced JLR to suspend production at its factories in the UK, Slovakia, Brazil and India through September and pushed it into a quarterly loss of almost £500m

Taxpayers miss out on millions after ‘phoenixism’ at UK recruitment firms

Insolvent recruitment businesses shorn of their debts then reacquired from administration by the directors or shareholders that presided over their demise are costing the exchequer tens of millions of pounds in lost taxes, a Guardian analysis suggests.The practice of “phoenixism” – the art of liquidating a company and allowing the directors to rise from the ashes with a new entity, free of debts – is estimated by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to have cost taxpayers about £800m a year.Since the autumn, a series of fresh cases have emerged where staffing businesses have been acquired out of pre-pack administrations – an insolvency process agreed in advance – and continued to trade partly under the control of previous owners or management.In September, a recruitment company called Russell Taylor was acquired from a pre-pack administration for £200,000 plus subsequent instalments totalling £550,000, seemingly leaving debts to HMRC of almost £1m that are not expected to be repaid.The transaction was the second time connected parties had resurrected the business from insolvency during the past decade, after Russell Taylor Management was initially acquired from administration in 2015

FTSE 100 CEOs earn more than average worker’s yearly pay by noon on 6 January

The bosses of FTSE 100 companies will have made more money in 2026 before midday on Tuesday than the average worker will all year, according to figures laying bare the yawning income gap.Median annual pay for FTSE 100 chief executives is £4.4m, the High Pay Centre thinktank calculated, 113 times higher than the £39,039 earned by the median full-time worker.That means UK bosses will exceed the average annual pay of staff in less than 29 hours of work, or by about 11.30am on Tuesday if they started work on Friday 2 January