Four firms are understood to have given presentations to Boots’ management team and potential buyers are expected to submit second round offers ‘around Easter’. Apollo Global Management, TDR Capital and Sycamore Capital Partners are leading the way in the £7bn battle to take control of Britain’s biggest High Street chemist. (The Daily Mail)

Ornella Barra, one half of billionaire couple who own chemist, said Walgreens considered floating Boots in an Initial Public Offering. ‘At the beginning we had the idea of an IPO, but we didn’t start the process because the offers came in,’ she says. So is an IPO off the table? She replies: ’In the style of WBA, everything is on the table’. (The Daily Mail)

Britain’s biggest institutional investor Legal & General has put its weight behind a group of rebel shareholders who have forced a resolution on Sainsbury’s calling on the supermarket giant to pay higher wages (The Times £). Legal & General Investment Management, Nest (National Employment Savings Trust), which is Britain’s largest workplace pension scheme, and several MPs have formed a coalition to push for the change after reports that increasing numbers of supermarket workers are having to turn to food banks to feed themselves and their families (The Guardian).

Retail sales dipped slightly last month as a trio of storms kept shoppers at home, official statistics show (The Times £). Retail sales in Great Britain fell unexpectedly in February as consumers switched spending to eating out more after the economy reopened, while storms also deterred people from hitting the shops (The Guardian).

Retailers are facing an ‘annus horribilis’ as rising inflation eats into people’s pockets (The Daily Mail). British consumers are in a funk. Figures from the monthly GfK survey pinned confidence at a 17-month low and flagged a “wall of worry”. Retail sales fell 0.3% by volume between January and February when economists expected a decent increase, according to data released on Friday. (The Financial Times £)

Grocery app Gorillas is on the hunt for $500 million of new funding that could value it at more than $5bn (£4bn) as the Covid-fuelled boom in rapid delivery continues to guzzle billions in investor cash. (The Times £)

Chips will be fried in rapeseed oil rather than sunflower oil without customers being told, despite the risk of allergic reactions. Manufacturers have been given the green light to replace the ingredient without updating the labels on packaging, as supplies have been disrupted by the war in Ukraine. (The Telegraph)

Britain’s biggest supermarkets stand accused of “bombarding” shoppers with offers of cheap meat, despite pledging to promote more meat-free diets to improve health and tackle global heating. (The Guardian)

Petrol stations have failed to pass on the fuel duty savings announced by the chancellor in his spring statement, new data has shown. According to the AA, petrol prices have fallen just 2.71p, and diesel was down 1.59p. (Sky News)

The price of a pint of beer is set to get even more expensive by Christmas as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sends barley costs spiralling by almost a third, a leading brewer has warned. (The Telegraph)

The pension funds and investments of more than a million people are to be disinvested from the tobacco industry after Scottish Widows announced it would sell shares and bonds worth £1bn in cigarette companies. (The Times £)

Ocado sure its bet on US will pay dividends, writes The Times, as the grocery tech firm aims to defy sceptics with its army of robots, grids — and, for now, people. Kroger’s fulfilment centre in the small city of Monroe officially opened last April, nearly three years after an exclusive deal with Ocado was announced. (The Times £)

‘It is unsustainable’: soaring inflation squeezes budgets of UK dairy farmers. Milk production is starting to fall as sharp rises in cost of fuel, feed, and fertiliser outstrip increases in farm-gate prices. (The Guardian)

Russia was until recently the second largest foreign exporter of fertiliser to the US, providing 10% of the total supply. But it is not the only reason prices are rising – the US Department of Agriculture points to “[Vladimir] Putin’s price hike, a limited supply of the relevant minerals and high energy costs, high global demand and agricultural commodity prices, reliance on fertiliser imports, and lack of competition in the fertiliser industry.” (The Financial Times £)

The FT looks at “a tough test on Russia for the man who turned round Nestlé” after chief executive Mark Schneider has faced public animosity over the company’s response to the invasion of Ukraine. “The outcry over Russia is some of the toughest public scrutiny Schneider has faced since he was appointed from German healthcare group Fresenius five years ago.” (The Financial Times £)

As Russian troops occupy the Chernobyl exclusion zone where that fruit is grown and harvested, unusual spirts group Atomik is making a defiant marketing move by releasing two more “premium drinks” and donating profits to help Ukraine’s refugees. (The BBC)

Marks & Spencer has apologised after some customers were sent other shoppers’ parcel tracking details. (The BBC)

 

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