Media Bites 18 June: Alibaba, Black Sheep Coffee, Beyond Meat
Alibaba will hive off its fresh groceries business, Freshippo – known as Hema in Chinese – into a stand-alone business as part of a shake-up of its business units and top executives (Financial Times £). The move leaves it ripe for a separate listing, the newspaper says.
Black Sheep Coffee has raised £13m in a new funding round that values the independent coffee shop chain at £109.2m. It wants to grow its international presence (Financial Times £).
Beyond Meat’s dizzying upward stock market trajectory has prompted questions on Wall Street with some professional investors feeling distinctly queasy, says The Times (£). The newspaper says comparisons have been drawn with bitcoin and Tilray and the dreaded word “bubble” is being uttered in some quarters.
The BBC wonders whether KFC’s vegan burger, the “Imposter Burger”, could wean people off chicken. KFC says the time is right to test the idea but it is early days.
Krispy Kreme has declared itself ready for Brexit after stress testing its UK business against several possible scenarios (Evening Standard). UK revenues climbed 9.4% to £83.1m last year. Pre-tax profits moved up marginally to £8.5m.
Amazon has rejected New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s claim it pays its staff “starvation wages” and says she is “just wrong” (The Independent).
Household sentiment climbed from 42.8 in May to 43.8 in June, IHS Markit has found (The Times £). People expect their personal finances to improve over the coming year despite the political uncertainty and higher living costs.
Tesco has launched an investigation after an anonymous Facebook post by someone who said they liked to switch the cardboard sleeves on vegetarian and meat lasagnes in the supermarket “just for fun”. The post went viral and prompted outrage (Mirror).
The British Chambers of Commerce has warned the political impasse over Brexit threatens to “suffocate” business investment across the UK (The Independent). The economy is grinding to a halt as a temporary boost from stockpiling in case of a no-deal Brexit comes to an end.
A Bloomberg survey has found the UK economy will probably flatline in the second quarter.
A man has successfully sued Brewdog for sex discrimination after the Brewdog bar in Cardiff refused to serve him the Pink IPA drink which was advertised for £4 as part of its campaign to highlight the gender pay gap. The drink was launched last year with the aim of selling it for a discount to customers who identified as female (Mirror).
A large part of the value of a brand is endurance but old brands are under stress, says the Financial Times (£). Amazon has shattered the Google-Apple duopoly to reach number one in the Top 100 global brands ranking for the first time. China and the new tech generation have shaken old notions of good branding.
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