Retail

  Bloomberg The roll-out of the Polish government’s flagship welfare program hit the country’s biggest retailer with a bittersweet result last quarter, lifting sales while also pressuring it to raise wages as it struggles to hire new workers. Sales at Portugal’s Jeronimo Martins SGPS SA’s Polish Biedronka supermarket chain jumped 10.2 percent in April to June from a year earlier ...

  AP If Alfred “Skip” Nichols had been a commercial airplane pilot, he probably would have been grounded long ago. Nichols, the pilot of a hot air balloon that crashed over the weekend in Texas, killing 16, was able to keep flying despite having at least four convictions for drunken driving and twice spending time in prison — pointing to ...

  Bloomberg A startup online lending marketplace began offering retail investors access to individual corporate bonds for as little as 100 pounds ($132) on Monday. WiseAlpha said its online platform provides potential annual yields of 5 percent to 8 percent and is a “compelling alternative” to low-yielding savings accounts, the stock market or peer-to-peer lending, according a statement. The average ...

  Bloomberg Just before the stores open in Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district, buses pull up, unleashing Chinese tourists and their credit cards to snap up televisions, rice cookers and other gadgets. Walk into any department store and there they are, buying mascara, t-shirts and other merchandise. China’s infatuation with Japanese products is now discovering a new source of satisfaction: the ...

  AP Online shoppers want their packages — now. And Amazon is spending heavily to make sure that happens. Amazon’s Prime service has, at heart, always been about free two-day shipping. The $99 annual subscription includes a variety of other goodies, but the near-instant gratification of fast, no-extra-cost delivery was the program’s original draw, and remains central to its appeal ...

  Bloomberg Apple Inc. plans to roll out a redesigned version of its Apple Store mobile app for selling devices that will use a customer’s buying history to recommend further purchases, taking a page from Amazon.com Inc.’s playbook. The updated retail app could be rolled out in the next two weeks, according to people familiar with the intended revamp. It’s ...

  Bloomberg Russian consumer numbers don’t add up. A record slide in retail sales for 18 months has been immune to gains in employment and wages, improving confidence and inflation at less than half last year’s level. Widening wealth disparity may be the key to the unprecedented collapse in demand, according to Alfa Bank and VTB Capital. “We attribute the ...

  Bloomberg Carrefour SA, France’s largest retailer, reported higher first-half earnings and maintained its full-year outlook as European revenue held up despite bad weather. Recurring operating income rose 5.3 percent at constant exchange rates to 706 million euros ($781 million), the eighth straight increase, Boulogne-Billancourt-based Carrefour said on Thursday in a statement. Analysts predicted 683.5 million euros, the average of ...

  Bloomberg The recent calm in global markets owes a lot to the U.S. consumer, with payroll gains and rising retail sales helping to buoy the world’s largest economy in June. Yet there’s one big weak spot: slowing car sales, and it’s not clear which market segment will pick up this slack. Crucially, demand for cars has propped up the ...

  Bloomberg Flipkart Ltd. will buy Rocket Internet SE-backed online retailer Jabong for $70 million in cash to create India’s biggest fashion e-commerce business. Global Fashion Group, the parent of Jabong that’s backed by Rocket and Kinnevik AB, agreed to sell the business to focus on other markets, it said in an e-mailed statement. Flipkart will combine the business with ...