Thursday newspaper round-up: Retailers, Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls-Royce
Retailers experienced their worst Christmas for 10 years last month as shops were hit by Brexit worries and a dramatic fall in consumer confidence. Total sales growth dropped to zero in December for the first time since 2008, with all areas of the high street hit by a fall in sales except food, which benefited from intense competition among the major supermarket chains. – Guardian
Jaguar Land Rover is due to give a business update on Thursday that is predicted to include the loss of up to 5,000 jobs. The luxury carmaker employs 44,000 workers in the UK at sites in Halewood on Merseyside and Solihull, Castle Bromwich and Wolverhampton in the West Midlands. There were reports in 2018 that thousands of jobs could be axed as part of a £2.5bn savings plan amid falling sales in China, Brexit and a drop in demand for diesel cars, but that figure was not confirmed. – Guardian
A Berlin-based financial technology start-up that is aiming to challenge the likes of Britain's Monzo and Starling Bank has raised $300m (£234m) in a major funding round as interest in the booming fintech sector shows no signs of waning in 2019. N26, a German start-up that offers a mobile banking app and a see-through debit and payments card, secured the funding from US venture capital firm Insight Ventures and Singapore's sovereign wealth fund. - Telegraph
Rolls-Royce has shrugged off fears about a global economic slowdown with record-breaking sales of its luxury vehicles. Ultra-rich buyers snapped up 4,107 of the BMW-owned company’s cars in 2018 - up more than a fifth on the previous year. It also added 200 staff at its Goodwood factory last year to cope with the expected demand for the new Cullinan SUV, the first few models of which were delivered at the end of 2018. - Telegraph
Employers have such little faith in government reforms aimed at increasing vocational training that they are sacrificing hundreds of millions of pounds earmarked for hiring apprentices, a report warns. Companies who pay the apprenticeship levy say that on average they expect to use little more than half of the money they have contributed for meeting their training needs. They blame the inflexibility of the system, according to a survey by City & Guilds, the education and training group. – The Times
Britain’s productivity problems show little sign of ending after output per hour fell to its weakest level in two years. For the three months to September, productivity was only 0.2 per cent better than the same period last year, the Office for National Statistics said. It was the worst annualised rate of growth since the third quarter of 2016. – The Times