biz-blogger.net

Christmas shoppers will spend as much this festive season as last year despite the UK remaining in recession, Deloitte has predicted. However, the accountancy firm said that the impact of job losses and higher taxes would mean spending is likely to be squeezed at Christmas next year. People were cutting back on daily indulgences such as snacks, and taking more care over their shopping, it said. A separate report suggested Christmas shoppers were turning to the internet. The research, carried out by the Centre for Retail Research for comparison site Kelkoo, found that 20p in every £1 would be spent online this Christmas – a rise of 24% on the previous year. The Deloitte report found that people were not reining in their spending too much this Christmas owing in part to the savings they have been making on their mortgages at times of low interest rates.

Arsenal director Stan Kroenke has moved to the brink of the threshold where he would have to make an offer for the entire stockholding of the club.
The US billionaire has bought another 200 shares in Arsenal’s holding company, at £8,500 each, taking his shareholding to 29.9%. Mr Kroenke bought 100 of the shares from Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood. He is nearing the 29.99% threshold, beyond which he would be forced to make an offer for the remaining shares. The Denver-based businessman’s latest acquisition cost him £1.7m ($2.8m). Mr Kroenke, who owns the NBA’s Denver Nuggets and Colorado Rapids MLS football team, has been gradually increasing his stake in Arsenal this year through a number of share deals.

New car sales recorded their biggest increase so far this year in October, helped by the scrappage scheme. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said 168,942 new cars were registered last month, an increase of 31.6% compared with October 2008. The SMMT said the “cash for bangers” incentive scheme had accounted for more than 20% of the new car sales. Demand was also helped by customers wanting to avoid the VAT increase due in January, it said. ‘Encouragingly, there has also been an increase in demand in the fleet and business sectors, which will be critical in sustaining recovery next year,” said SMMT chief executive Paul Everitt.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has fined Swiss banking giant UBS £8m for failing to stop its employees making unauthorised transactions.
The FSA said four UBS employees had carried out the transactions using customer money on at least 39 accounts. The unauthorised activities took place between January 2006 and December 2007. The FSA also said the trades involved foreign exchange and precious metals. Earlier this week, UBS reported a loss for the July to September quarter. According to the FSA, an internal UBS investigation found that as many as 50 unauthorised transactions a day were taking place at the operation’s peak. It criticised the bank not only for systems failures that led to the trades, but also for not responding to “several warning signs” that the systems were not working.

The Bank of England’s rate-setters have decided to pump an extra £25bn into the economy in their quantitative easing (QE) programme.
They also kept interest rates unchanged at 0.5% for an eighth month. The Bank has already spent £175bn on QE, which involves printing money to buy assets from banks and other companies to stimulate the economy. The extra £25bn will be spent over the next three months, which is a slower rate of spending than before. In the previous three months the Bank had spent £50bn. “It would be interesting to learn why the committee has gone for a smaller expansion of asset purchases than previously,” said Philip Shaw, economist at Investec.

I Was watching the news this morning and the government minsters including Tony Blair are announcing that early 2010 Britain will be out of recession but the unemployment rate will just keep going up. So how do they solve it?

My theory is out of the 2.8 M I L L I O N people unemployed there must be 30 to 40 % of them willing to set up and run there own business with a little guidance, so aren’t the government thinking outside of the box and trying to help the lesser fortunate at the minute.

My girlfriend being one. G R R R R R.

Katie Price or Jordan, whatever you want to call her, there is no question that where she gos, the tabloids and drama seems to follow. She is one of those people that the nation seems divided about, particularly since her recent messy split with Peter Andre. When she and Peter were together she appeared to have changed her crazy ways and turned into a loving wife, but since, her behaviour seems to have returned to that of the former Jordan. This behaviour has resulted in some heavy backlash for the glamour girl but at the end of the day this a woman who is now one of the richest women, certainly in the UK, she couldn’t have achieved that without a serious business mind.

One of the key things needed to have a successful business is a successful marketing campaign, but what is the best way to do this? There are so many issues to contend with and you have to get it right as the wrong marketing strategy can destroy a product before it’s even had time to take off. So where to start? I suppose deciding on your target audience, and then really finding out what engages the mind of that consumer, what is going to make your campaign stand out and encourage your target market to go out and actually spend their money on it and put money in your pocket.

Once you’ve decided on a business plan; what your product is going to be and which market you are going to target, the next thing to do before taking the product to the marketplace is to decide on a retail price which will enable you to make a profit. Now not having had much experience of business, this being my first venture into the world of fellow entrepreneurs, this was probably one of the more testing decisions for me and especially with the product being a small commodity it seems to make it more difficult. I thought the only way to work it out was literally to price up all of my individual ingredients and then find a price which was reasonable for the consumer but enough for me to take something away. I’ll have to see how my costs go down with the punters.

Following on from my last blog, I now had to try and match my product to the right market hopefully finding a niche for me to showcase my cakes. The baking I do is not fancy or frilly it’s just homemade classics done well, gooey chocolate brownies, victoria sponge cakes, flapjacks etc so where is the best place to sell? There is the internet, but there is a ridiculous amount of competition out there for someone starting up, and then of course the option of renting premises but that would be a huge gamble, the market that seems to best match my product and a good place to start are small farmers markets where people are looking for homemade local products. I’m going to go and see how I get on at a regular local market down the road and see if I can make any profit, fingers crossed.