If Nomad’s deal with Findus goes ahead, it will create one of the world’s largest frozen-food groups, making everything from fish fingers and frozen vegetables to ready meals, writes The Times (£). The paper says Findus has struggled to manage its debt load since the financial crash and was engulfed in a scandal in 2012, when it had to recall thousands of its beef lasagne products.
The Financial Times’ (£) Lex column estimates the Findus deal, which would “spawn a seafood leviathan with a fish finger in every ocean pie”, to be worth £800m. Though it notes the ever-present danger of merger hungry cash shells, like Nomad, is “is marrying in haste and repenting at leisure”.
The Daily Mail looks at Nomad’s founders, noting: “Hedge fund manager Noam Gottesman is more likely to be found rubbing shoulders with stars like Beyonce than eating a fish-finger sandwich in front of the TV.”
Morrisons’ survival in the FTSE 100 was “greeted with relief” in Bradford, as “staff had been anxiously doing their own calculations to determine whether the company was staying in the psychologically important index”. (The Times £)
Sales in traditional supermarkets will fall for the next five years as the growing popularity of discount chains and online shopping piles pressure on the “Big Four” grocery chains. A five-year forecast by IGD predicted superstores and hypermarkets will suffer a 2.9% fall in sales between now and 2020, a stark contrast to the 82.2% increase in sales for discounters and 92.9% for online. (The Telegraph)
John Lewis has ditched PwC as auditor in favour of KPMG. The retailer follows Tesco and Sainsbury’s in cutting ties with accountancy firm under investigation from Financial Reporting Council. (The Guardian)
Rising traveller numbers gave WH Smith a third-quarter boost as the retailer reported its first increase in group sales for six years. (The Financial Times £)
Ahead of Morrisons’ AGM, The Guardian looks at the “the grim truth that management underperformance is being richly rewarded”. The Chartered Management Institute’s national management salary survey, published today, reveals that this problem is endemic at all levels of management, not just at the top. (The Guardian)
Six decades after a banana-killing fungus all but wiped out plantations across Latin America, a new strain threatens to destroy global harvests. A type of Fusarium wilt appeared this year in Australia’s main banana-growing state after spreading to Asia and Africa. (The Telegraph)
In India, the New Delhi local government has banned the sale of Nestlé’s Maggi noodles for 15 days, saying that 10 out 13 noodle samples taken were “found unsafe” with “lead exceeding the prescribed limits”. Even before authorities announced the ban, shares in Nestlé India fell more than 9 per cent on Wednesday — its largest single-day fall in nearly a decade. (The Financial Times £)
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