Conviviality investors are mulling suing the board amid claims the directors misled them about the health of the sprawling drinks business’s finances, reports The Times (£). Investors, if they decide to press ahead, are likely to claim that stress signs were becoming evident to the board well before the first profit warning last month as its aggressive approach to bidding for contracts put pressure on wafer-thin margins.

The North American brewing giant that makes Carling and Cobra lagers has emerged as a contender to buy all or part of Conviviality Retail, the stricken owner of the Bargain Booze chain (The Times £). Separately, the paper writes that Endless, whose investments include Theo Fennell, the jeweller, is understood to have teamed up with Steve Thomson, who led Matthew Clark for a decade until it was acquired by Conviviality in 2015. Among the other companies interested in Matthew Clark is C&C, while Anheuser-Busch Inbev is also considering a possible bid for the wholesaler to safeguard its position (The Times £).

The FT analyses the collapse of Conviviality, suggesting that it was undone by the scale of its ambition and the group ”might not have come a cropper if it had stuck to corner shops”. (The Financial Times £)

High streets suffered over the Bank Holiday with shoppers opting to visit indoor malls where they were protected from the typical Easter weekend weather, or to stay at home, reports The Times (£). Springboard figures show the number of shoppers on high streets fell 9.6% on Good Friday compared with the same time the previous year. Footfall on Saturday fell 6.9%. Sunday’s total footfall was 1.9% higher but Easter Monday rain resulted in a 6.4% fall by 5pm. The Guardian says it was billed as the most promising weekend since Christmas before the weather struck.

The efforts of motorway services group Westmorland, which has three sites, look like they are starting to pay off because of chair Sarah Dunning’s appetite for risk, says the Financial Times (£). Turnover is almost £100m a year, up from £40m in 2013. The business took on former Asda retail director Rob Swyer as chief executive last April.

The trade dispute between the US and China escalated yesterday when the White House promised to “fight back” against Beijing’s import tariffs. The Times (£) says imports of US fruit, nuts, wine, ginseng and seamless steel pipe are now subject to tariffs of 15% per cent, worth around $1bn (£711m). A second tier of levies, worth about $2bn, imposes 25% tariffs on products including pork and aluminium. The world is lurching closer to a full-blown trade war, says The Daily Mail.

More than 21,000 jobs have been cut or put at risk in the first three months of the year, a Press Association analysis shows, reports The Guardian. Some 21,413 staff have been made redundant or had their role threatened, including at Conviviality where 2,600 jobs are in jeopardy, and at Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Tesco, which are cutting 5,200 roles between them.

Ahead of this Friday’s implementation of the sugar tax on soft drinks, The Guardian says the industry has found ingenious ways to get levels down from “restructured sugar” to artificial sweeteners, but asks whether it will make their products any healthier. The FT quotes an analyst commenting: ”The Treasury’s estimates of lower returns from the tax shows how effective it has already been.” (The Financial Times £). However, instead of cutting out sugar, Coca-Cola is mitigating the cost of the tax by reducing the size of its bottles – as well as putting prices up (The Telegraph)

As the sugar tax comes into force this week, the next frontier in the battle against obesity looks set to be junk food advertising. (The Times £)

Amazon continues to take a battering from US president Donald Trump who once again took to Twitter, saying the US Post Office loses money to Amazon and that the domestic retail environment is “not a level playing field” because of the tax treatment the company gets Financial Times (£). “Only fools, or worse, are saying that our money losing Post Office makes money with Amazon. THEY LOSE A FORTUNE, and this will be changed. Also, our fully tax paying retailers are closing stores all over the country…not a level playing field!” Trump tweeted.

Walmart is expanding its money transfer operation to 200 countries, as it continues its “slow but steady” push into financial services, reports the Financial Times (£). People will be able to deliver money from Walmart’s nearly 5,000 US stores to locations abroad within 10 minutes, as part of a partnership with MoneyGram, the owner of Asda said.

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