Retail

  Bloomberg Mondelez International Inc agreed to sell its gum business in some of its major markets to European rival Perfetti Van Melle SpA. The deal values the business at about $1.35 billion, the companies announced. The sale includes brands such as Trident, Bubblicious, Chiclets, Dentyne and some European candy. Perfetti will own the portfolio in the US, Canada and ...

  Bloomberg Swatch Group AG Chief Executive Officer Nick Hayek said he doesn’t see the need to regulate the $20 billion market for second-hand luxury watches, contradicting moves by Rolex SA and H Moser & Cie. “Why should we mix ourselves into the market of used watches,” Hayek said in a Bloomberg TV interview. “This is a market that is ...

  Bloomberg Canadian retail sales edged lower in November after higher gasoline prices boosted spending in October. Receipts for retailers dropped 0.5% last month, according to an advance estimate by Statistics Canada. That erased some of the 1.4% growth in October — the largest increase in five months that was led higher by sales at gas stations and supermarkets. The ...

  Bloomberg When Serge Brunschwig arrived in Rome almost five years ago to become Fendi’s chief executive, he was confronted with a conundrum: the company was struggling to find skilled workers. The problem left the 62-year-old McKinsey alum taken aback. After all, Italy has always been known for its artisans, from the violin-makers, textile designers and painters of the Renaissance ...

  Bloomberg British retailers are drumming up new credit offers to encourage shoppers to spend more during one of the most challenging Christmas periods for business in years. For the first time in a decade, department store John Lewis Partnership Plc, a favourite of middle-class Britons, has lowered the threshold for interest-free loans to £500 ($608) from £1,000. High Street ...

  Bloomberg Woolworths Holdings Ltd. agreed to sell Australia’s oldest department store chain David Jones to Anchorage Capital Partners, ending an expensive misstep for the South African retailer. The deal will remove about 17 billion rand ($965 million) of liabilities related to the David Jones store portfolio, Woolworths said in a statement. Management expects to get more than the carrying ...

  Bloomberg German labour union Verdi called on Amazon.com Inc warehouse workers to go on strike across the country during the holiday season, seeking to press the company for higher pay and to join collective bargaining agreements. The timing and location of individual walkouts won’t be announced in advance, the union said in a statement. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to ...

  Bloomberg Avon Products Inc was ordered by a California jury to pay $10.3 million in punitive damages to a woman who blamed her cancer on talc in its cosmetics, in the first such case the company has lost in US litigation. The Los Angeles Superior Court jury that punished Avon for hiding the risks that some of its talc-based ...

  Bloomberg Baristas at an experimental Starbucks-Amazon Go store in New York narrowly rejected union membership, the latest setback for the US labour movement. The workers, who legally work for Starbucks Corp, requested a union election because they said the tie-up between the coffee chain and Amazon.com Inc doubled their workload with no additional pay. The vote was very close, ...

  Bloomberg UK retail sales unexpectedly fell in November as Black Friday failed to deliver its usual boost, deepening the cost of the living crisis engulfing the sector. The volume of goods sold in shops and online fell 0.4%, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. Sales excluding auto fuel fell 0.3%. Economists expected a 0.3% gain on both measures. ...