Market Loop - 🔗Asda commits to convenient future

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7th December 2022

Bite-sized business news from the UK and beyond

Good morning Professors, programmers and journalists beware – you could be out of a job soon. Last week Elon Musk-founded OpenAI released its latest chatbot that has wowed with its impressive writing ability, proficiency at complex tasks and ease of use. The technology could touch everything from forging academic essays, writing journalistic articles, drafting legal documents and even coding.

Today's stories

Asda commits to convenient future
Mining giant agrees $180m corruption payout

RETAIL
Asda commits to convenient future

What happened?
Yesterday Asda announced plans to open 300 convenience stores in the next four years, creating 10,000 new jobs.

How did we get here?
Shopping more locally in neighbourhood stores boomed during the Covid lockdowns when consumers were wary of travelling and mixing in larger, busier stores.

Asda is the UK’s third biggest supermarket behind Tesco and Sainsbury’s and has historically lagged behind its rivals who have hundreds of smaller ‘express’ outlets, compared to Asda’s two.

Earlier this year Asda, owned by private equity house TDR Capital and the billionaire Issa brothers, bought 132 forecourts from the Co-op to give it more exposure to the convenience sector.

Asda express stores will be a similar size to a Sainsburys Local and Tesco Express, offering 3,000 products as well as other brands like the Issa-owned fast food chain Leon.

Zooming out: Opening 300 stores by 2026 will make Asda the #2 UK grocer though still some way behind Tesco, which has almost 2,000 Express stores. However it’s an incredibly crowded market with Morrisons, Waitrose and Amazon also expanding their smaller store presence in recent years competing with incumbents like Budgens, Londis and Spar.

Other stories to keep you in the loop

UK retailers boosted by November sales of winter coats and hot water bottles
Apple launches self service repair in the UK
Morgan Stanley lays off 2% of workers - about 1,600 people
Goldman Sachs on hunt for bargain crypto firms after FTX fiasco
Fenwick to shut 130-year-old New Bond Street department store
London overtakes New York and San Francisco for fintech funding
BrewDog fruit beer ad banned over claim it is ‘one of your five a day’

MINING
Mining giant agrees $180m corruption payout

What happened?
This week British-Swiss mining firm Glencore agreed to pay $180m to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to cover corruption claims between 2007 and 2018.

It’s the latest in a series of scandals that has seen the company pay more than $1.6bn in fines in 2022 alone.

How did we get here?
Glencore is one of the world's largest mining and commodity companies. Listed in London and headquartered in Switzerland, it employs around 135,000 people in more than 35 countries.

It has a chequered past of doing business with rogue states and colourful characters which has landed it in regulatory hot water for decades.

In May, it admitted to paying millions in bribes to officials in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, South Sudan, Brazil and Venezuela. This year it was hit by a joint investigation by the UK, US and Brazil on a variety of accusations that included its oil trading arm hand delivering cash bribes to African nations using private jets.

Zooming out: Glencore is not out of the woods yet and could face even more fines as it’s still under investigation by authorities in the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Despite the huge financial penalties already incurred, this year Glencore expects to triple its profits to $3.2bn. Performance has been boosted by the coal-mining business which has benefited from the disruption to energy markets caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Stat of the day

The average cost of Christmas dinner for four is expected to rise by 9% this year to about £31

Interesting links from around the web

Postcode checker: how has your High Street changed since 2020?
7 TED Talks to think big in 2023
5 strategies to help you cope with a nagging feeling of dread

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Market Loop - 🔗Asda commits to convenient future

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