Morrisons has blamed the Labour Government for making it harder to run profitable supermarkets as it announced plans to shut 100 convenience stores. The Telegraph has the story.
The grocer is expected to close around 100 of its Morrisons Daily shops within the next few months following a review into its estate, putting hundreds of jobs at risk.
It claimed the “tough but necessary” decision was made because the stores were making a loss, adding: “This situation has been exacerbated in more recent years by significant cost increases resulting from Government policy choices, which have made returning these stores to profitability even more difficult.”
Rami Baitieh, the Morrisons chief, has previously complained about the “avalanche of costs” facing the supermarket.
Morrisons’s statement is the latest sign of tensions between supermarket chiefs and Ministers over recent policy decisions.
Grocers have been grappling with higher taxes – including new recycling levies – as well as soaring staff costs following inflation-busting minimum wage increases and the Chancellor’s decision last year to raise National Insurance contributions for employers.
Allan Leighton, the boss of Asda, said earlier this year that the Government had become “more and more difficult” to deal with, while Stuart Machin, the M&S chief, accused Labour of driving up companies’ energy bills.
Machin said in March that Government-imposed levies on energy bills had “skyrocketed”, adding: “It’s just not sustainable for UK businesses.”
Labour ignited a fresh row with grocery chiefs this week by suggesting it could introduce new price caps for food to try to get a grip on cost of living pressures.
Machin branded the price cap plan “completely preposterous”, claiming the Government should not “be trying to run business”.
Worth reading in full.
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Socialists don’t understand basic economics (or, more worryingly, perhaps they do?).
It’s very hard to negotiate with someone whose only aim is that you lose.
Maybe it is related to Morrisons having been bought out by an American group.
You are getting very warm indeed. The private equity group loaded the company up with debt whilst taking a large slice of their purchase money out.
Hopefully this isn’t Morrisons and this security guard hasn’t lost his job just for doing his job. There’s a lot of forethought gone into this particular shopping expedition and these ladies have clearly dressed for the occasion. Who on earth needs this amount of laundry detergent anyway?? 😮
You know when you see a hamster empty his pouch and you’re like: ”Where the hell’s it all coming from?”
”These women almost emptied the store with their religious costumes. This is a good point to ban the veiling.”
https://x.com/Edenlife9/status/2054969994018963779
This was Morrisons, though. Maybe this is considered acceptable behaviour in Afghanistan;
”The attack was December 5. The sentencing was today. Milad Panjshiri, 22, Afghan asylum seeker. Six-inch knife, Morrisons supermarket in Bradford, elderly shoppers evacuated, smashed wine bottles, threatened staff, shouted “I am mad with King Charles.” Eighteen months in prison. Out in nine on automatic halfway release.
He refused to leave his cell for sentencing. The judge sentenced him in his absence. His lawyer pleaded mental health. The court accepted it. This is the UK justice system. The migrant who terrorized a supermarket gets less time than someone who tweeted the wrong thing about a riot. That’s your current leaders at work. NOW EVERYONE KNOWS.”
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/2057792213015269745
I’m very surprised the security guard wasn’t sacked for “discrimination” because he challenged a Muslim thief. If the scumbag had been wearing a burqa and he’d asked her to to remove it or lift it up to reveal what she was hiding underneath it he’d definitely be on universal credit and quite probably facing prosecution for a “hate crime”.
15 bottles of Lenor and a leg of lamb.😵 How does a person even walk loaded up with all that? Eat your heart out, Mary Poppins. I was half expecting a hat stand..🧐
If Islamic dress code enables someone to conceal stolen goods it can allow them to conceal a knife or bomb. However, as was all too tragically demonstrated in the Manchester Arena atrocity, Muslims can carry a bomb in pretty much plain sight and not be challenged by a security guard who doesn’t want to be accused of being racist/Islamaphobic.
“the Government should not be trying to run a business” Well they have failed to run the country in quite spectacular ways so maybe the deluded morons thought it would be a good idea to ruin/”run” [in their delusional way] business as well.
Aldi and Lidl post-2008 financial crisis really drove down supermarket shelf-prices and thus profits, which are around 2% net post-tax.
What the economic illiterati don’t understand is capital has a cost, it has an opportunity cost and investors need an incentive to invest. Reduce profits enough and businesses close.
We now have “Government” obsessed with regulating more and more – economy and society – unaware or just don’t care that that imposes an increased cost burden, which just piles up. And wanting to rejoin that empire of regulatory incontinence, the Fourth Reich.
That cost to businesses is mitigated by higher selling prices, reduced payroll expense (fire people, don’t hire, freeze wages), and reduced services, ultimately reduced investment.
In difficult times, suppliers have to slash prices to keep enough consumers buying, at least to cover operating costs if not contributing to profit. Telling them to sell at a loss and expecting nothing untoward will happen, is just maniacal.
Increased prices means that consumers have less to spend, so buy less which further reduces economic activity. Added to this is Government shovelling borrowed and printed therefore valueless money into the economy, causing monetary inflation, causing price inflation and by… Read more »
All of those things, the people pushing these ideas need to be dethroned and defenestrated from the top floor ideally
Exactly – all this talk of raising prices – in reality the value of hardly anything has gone up, it’s just there is vastly more currency being printed, and therefore what you have is worth less. Classic western government trick for the last 50-60 years, accelerating in recent 10-15 though to mad levels…
Could be a long hot summer for Labour. They seem to be doing everything to increase the pressure/pain on the electorate. They are deliberately pushing up unemployment (by taxing jobs), energy bills (through subsidies of renewables) and are now scrabbling around for further tax rises.
Why anyone votes for them is a complete mystery. Even the bloated public sector are going to find life a lot harder very soon.
Labour should stick to what they do best – squabbling amongst themselves over small differences. And leave the rest of us to get on with our lives.
‘Why anyone votes for them is a complete mystery.’
Not really.
If you’re workshy, public sector, want to earn £40k on benefits, woke, hate Israel, a fan of open borders, it’s the logical choice.
It’s not all bad! Rachel Thieves has been all over the media, offering us peons a few little scraps like free bus rides for children in August, and reduced VAT on kids’ meals.
Wow. That gets my vote! (</s>)
Someone needs to Photoshop Thieves’ head onto a still of the Fonz, jumping over a shark.
Must be some of Rachel Reeves’s “profiteers.”
Or did she mean the government, whose lust for more tax profits with no attempt at financial prudence is destroying the economy?
Killing jobs.
Incompetence or deliberate?
Lack of understanding of economics and no one in government who has ever worked in the private sector.
It does seem deliberate, as Irishman Dalton Phillips managed to do the following in only 5 years at the helm (2010-2015):
“In January 2015, Philips was ousted as chief executive of Wm Morrison after several years of poor performance, a HALVING OF PROFIT and a series of strategic U-turns at what was PREVIOUSLY one of Britain’s most successful supermarket chains.[9] ”
” As of February 2021, Morrisons employed 110,000 employees and served around 11 million customers each week. The company was was acquired by private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) in October 2021. MANY CHANGES WERE MADE AFTER THE TAKEOVER, and the company is STRUGGLING FINANCIALLY.”
The Lebanese Rami Baitieh was appointed in 2023 as Morrisons chief…
I’ve been in one of our local Morrisons a year back and it was a dive, messy, half empty shelves, staff not giving a s**t, all sorts of weird, cheap crap offers all over the store making it seem some sort of bazaar… only been once, had no choice, however ever since Covid and how they treated their staff, we’ve vowed never to use them again if humanly possible.. and now under PE ownership… what could possibly go wrong?
Ken Morrison and his family ran this firm brilliantly. He once said he would rather employ more checkout girls than employ a financial adviser from the City of London.
No where in this article does it address the key fact of Morrison decline – debt! Debt that was never in place when the Morrison family ran the store.
But when private equity gets involved they load up a company with debt whilst taking a large proportion of their money out of the company.