Retail

  Bloomberg Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and other brick-and-mortar chains are counting on heavier discounts and a bigger online selection to help keep up with Amazon.com Inc. this holiday season. As Black Friday ushers in the year-end shopping rush, chains are touting larger price cuts than in 2015 — a gamble that maintaining market share is worth squeezing margins. ...

  Bloomberg Pilots for the Air Transport Services Group Inc. unit that hauls packages for Amazon.com Inc. and DHL Worldwide Express were ordered back to work by a federal judge, halting a strike that threatened to disrupt holiday deliveries. US District Judge Timothy Black in Cincinnati gave a nod to the holiday shopping rush in granting ABX Air’s request for ...

  Bloomberg ABX Air, which flies packages for Amazon.com Inc. and DHL Worldwide Express, asked a federal judge to force striking pilots back to work and thwart a threat to disrupt deliveries during the holiday shopping season. About 250 pilots employed by ABX Air, a subsidiary of Air Transport Services Group Inc., are striking to protest alleged staffing shortages at ...

  Bloomberg Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. will spend more than 2 billion yuan ($290 million) buying about a third of Sanjiang Shopping Club Co., picking up a slice of a regional Chinese discount supermarket chain with more than a million members. Shares of Sanjiang surged by its daily 10 percent limit on Monday, giving the Ningbo-based company a market value ...

  Bloomberg Marmageddon, Toblerone-gate, shrinking fish fingers. Get ready for more food fights. The 12 percent slump in sterling following Britain’s vote to leave the European Union is feeding through to food. Prices may be as much as 5 percent higher this time next year, and some grocers are already feeling the pinch from higher costs for milk, cheese and ...

  Bloomberg Hong Kong conglomerate Swire Pacific Ltd. is nearing the acquisition of Coca-Cola bottling assets in China from a unit of state-owned food giant Cofco Corp., people with knowledge of the matter said. Swire is close to an agreement to purchase stakes in Coca-Cola bottlers from Cofco’s China Foods Ltd. subsidiary, the people said, asking not to be identified ...

  Bloomberg Market leader Tesco Plc continued to lead a counterattack by Britain’s supermarkets last month as German discounters Aldi and Lidl recorded the slowest sales growth since 2011. Tesco’s sales rose 2.2 percent in the 12 weeks ended November 6, researcher Kantar Worldpanel said. The growth was the fastest in three years and sent the shares up as much ...

  Bloomberg If you shop at Wal-Mart, you might be buying packaged produce unlike any ever sold in a U.S. store. The sliced apples or cut broccoli — the merchant won’t say what’s involved exactly — are being used to test blockchain, a new database technology. If successful, the trial could change how Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which serves some 260 ...

  Bloomberg UK retail sales surged far more than economists expected in October as cooler weather boosted spending on winter fashions lines, sending clothing and footwear sales to the biggest increase in more than 2 1/2 years. The volume of goods sold in stores and online jumped 1.9 percent from September, when they rose 0.1 percent, the Office for National ...

  Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc. is turning to merchants who sell on its marketplace for extra warehouse space, a less-costly way to expand inventory available for quick delivery. Inventory available for delivery within two business days expanded by 6 million items under the Seller Fulfilled Prime program, the company announced on Thursday. Amazon earlier this year introduced the program, which lets ...