Podcasts

The latest retail sales data for November is in and, as widely expected, Black Friday and other retail sales days boosted the numbers. The figures are nearly 6% higher than the same period last year. But do the figures tell the whole story of what’s going on in retail, especially in light of Brexit, and with sterling in flux? Matt Cox found out more from Mintel’s Retail Analyst, Richard Perks.

A study of how small and medium sized businesses are feeling about the future suggests revenue and hiring will accelerate in the next 12 months. That’s been revealed in an SME Growth tracker by Capital Economics. Zamir Cajee, an Amazon Marketplace user and online retailer, was involved in the survey and he joined to discuss the findings.

There has been remarkable growth in property rental prices around the proposed new stations for HS2 and Crossrail 2. Otherwise, national rental growth has slowed. This has been revealed in Landbay's monthly Rental Index, which provides analysis of national rental growth. For more on this, the CEO and Co-Founder of Landbay, John Goodall, joined Share Radio Breakfast.

Scotland's Finance Secretary Derek Mackay has pledged a funding increase of £240m for local services as he set out his draft budget. Mr Mackay also confirmed he will not change income tax rates or bands. Those were two of the headlines from the Scottish Budget, and to bring us up to date with this, Share Radio’s Scotland Correspondent Maurice Smith joined Nigel Cassidy and Sara Sjölin.

High profile executives, including Microsoft's Bill Gates and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, are investing one billion dollars in a fund for clean energy tech and addressing climate change. They're being joined by others such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Alibaba chairman Jack Ma. They hope to increase financing to emerging energy research, and help hit emissions goals set in the Paris Summit. Dr. Charles Donovan is Director of Imperial College London's Centre for Climate Finance, and he joined Share Radio Breakfast to discuss.

Internet giant Yahoo has revealed more than one billion user accounts may be affected by a hacking attack. This marks the biggest cyber hack to date, with the attack dating back to 2013. It’s separate from a data loss in 2014 when 500 million accounts were accessed. The news comes at a critical juncture for Yahoo, who is trying to sell its core businesses to the telecoms and media company Verizon. Matt Cox spoke to Peter Church, Counsel specialising in data privacy at law firm Linklaters, to find out the consequences.

Health and wellness is tipped as one of the big travel trends for 2017, and this is especially the case with luxury travellers. To find out more about this Simon Rose and Sarah Tucker were joined by AyseEbru Aksoy of Rixos hotel group.

This week on The Share Radio Travel Guide Simon Rose was joined travel journalist and author Sarah Tucker. They look at the launch of the world's longest non-stop route, what the travel predictions are for 2017, how you can celebrate New Years Eve twice (for a very hefty pricetag) Also, there'll be an insider's guide to New York.

The appeal of Black Friday and Cyber Monday discounts saw retail sales volumes rise by almost 6% in November, compared with the same time last year. However, higher fuel costs meant the rise was not as strong as in October, when annual retail sales growth hit a 14-year high of 7.2%. Monthly sales in November increased 0.2%, compared to October's increase of 1.8%. Olivia Demetriades spoke to Craig Skelton, retail & consumer partner at PwC. She began by asking about last month's growth.

Time now for our weekly catch up with the team at Moneyweek magazine. This week, Ed Bowsher was joined by Merryn Somerset Webb, editor in chief at MoneyWeek. They discuss: the European Central Bank's monetary policy, and the gift that has the use of a pension - but is much nicer to look at.