On Friday, after receiving court approval for the takeover, now the companies are working to successfully complete the acquisition.

With the on-going takeover process, the shares of Booker are currently delisted from the London Stock Exchange. However, Tesco has offered 0.861 new Tesco shares and 42.6 pence in cash for each Booker share.

Chief Executive of Booker, Charles Wilson will become the CEO of Tesco’s retail and wholesale operations in the UK and Ireland. He will report into group CEO Dave Lewis. Also, Stewart Gilliland, the former Chairman of Booker, will be appointed as the non-Executive Director of Tesco.

Talking about the merger, Lewis said: “I’m delighted that the shareholders of both companies have supported the merger.”

“This merger is about growth, bringing together our complementary retail and wholesale skills to create the UK’s leading food business,” he added.

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The Hertfordshire based retailer that is also the largest in Britain has employee strength of more than 310,000.

Leigh Day, a London based law firm that deals with human rights, employment & discrimination law, said that thousands of the female employees at Tesco work in a male-dominated environment and are paid lesser than the male employees having the same job role and position. It is also said that the female employees are getting paid lesser even when their performance is better than their male colleagues.

Leigh Day said that the discrepancy could be seen as a male distribution worker earns £5,000 more a year than a female worker doing the same number of hours. Shop assistants have said that they are paid up to £3 an hour less than their male warehouse workers.

Pertaining to the gender discrepancy, the law firm has started a legal action against Tesco.

Paula Lee, from Leigh Day said: “We believe an inherent bias has allowed store workers to be underpaid for many years.

“In terms of equal worth to the company there really should be no argument that workers in stores, compared to those working in distribution centres, contribute at least equal value to the vast profits made by Tesco, which last year had group sales of £49.9bn.

“In the week where we have marked the 100-year anniversary since women began to get the vote, the time has come for companies and public organisations to have a long hard look at themselves, to see the inequality which is still deeply entrenched in their organisations.”

But Tesco has made a different statement and demanded that the company pays all its employees ‘fairly and equally’.

A Tesco spokesman said: “We are unable to comment on a claim that we have not received.

“Tesco has always been a place for people to get on in their career, regardless of their gender, background or education, and we work hard to make sure all our colleagues are paid fairly and equally for the jobs they do.”

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Former chief executive John Varley is one of the four ex-staff who will face Westminster magistrates on July 3. Barclays says it is considering its position and awaiting further details.

The court proceedings could be a fascinating showdown between one of the UK’s biggest banks and the SFO; with neither side appearing to be prepared to compromise.

Prior to the general election, Prime Minister Theresa May outlined her intention to abolish the SFO; which may still be smarting from failing to convict two Barclays traders in April for Libor manipulation.

This case could turn out to be a defining one for the future of the SFO. The events of 2008 that led to Barclays striking a deal with Qatar were an extraordinary set of circumstances. Now we have another extraordinary situation where an organisation whose future has been under threat is looking to take on one of the biggest banks.

No one doubts that arrangements between Barclays and Qatar were made. But while the SFO believes the arrangements that Barclays entered into were illegal, it appears that Barclays completely denies this.

This year has already seen Rolls-Royce and Tesco admit wrongdoing and be granted a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA), which involves them meeting certain conditions in exchange for not being prosecuted.

The fact that there is no hint of a DPA in this case – and that both the bank and individuals have been charged – indicates quite clearly that Barclays is in no mood to admit any wrongdoing.

The SFO’s prosecution of both the bank and individuals that worked for it is surprising. When it came to the cases of Tesco and Rolls-Royce, the SFO accepted that those two companies had undergone such changes to their senior personnel that they were no longer the same companies.

Barclays has undergone a similar change but this, so far at least, has not counted for anything with the SFO.

Both the bank and the four former employees who have been charged will now be working on the most robust defence cases possible. This may mean many arguments in court from all sides about whether the allegations surrounding Qatar were the responsibility of the bank as a corporate entity, the four men charged or, as the SFO believes, both Barclays and the individuals.

The trial is certain to produce many arguments regarding the issue of an organisation’s corporate liability as opposed to the liability of individuals working for that organisation.

Aziz Rahman is a serious fraud solicitor at Rahman Ravelli

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The company, however, expects to create 500 jobs.

The revamp of Tesco’s logistics involves the closure of distribution centres in Welham Green, Hertfordshire and Chesterfield. Welham Green’s grocery operations will move to the Reading distribution centre while the majority of general merchandising will move to one distribution centre at Middlesbrough.

Tesco is also withdrawing from a warehouse shared with logistics firm DHL in Daventry, Northamptonshire. Clothing operations there will move to the nearby Tesco Daventry distribution centre.

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Suparna Goswami Bhattacharya

May 26, 2015: A couple of months ago, Tesco hit the headlines when it opened the world’s first virtual supermarket store in South Korea’s Seoul subway station. The pillars and platform screen doors of the subway station have been plastered with images of life-size store shelves filled with goods such as bananas, milk, sugar or chocolates which each carrying a barcode. Shoppers have to download a related app on their smartphone and make purchases by taking photos of the barcodes. In fact, if the barcode is known, consumers do not even have to stop by the subway station. For instance, if they want to replace a jam bottle, all they need is scan the barcode and the products are delivered later at home or office.

Though the above may not be a mass trend soon, since the web grocer model still has to mature and develop as a profitable one, the retail industry is surely at the cusp of change as the consumer’s path to purchase is experiencing a fundamental change.

For one, mobile devices are now a necessary part of purchases — on-device, online and in-store. “Our 2015 State of the Market Report predicts that nearly 86 million consumers will make a purchase on their device in 2016 as growing consumer confidence in the technology fuels the drive towards buying on smartphones and tablet computers,” says Theo Theodorou, general manager EMEA at xAd, mobile location based targeting platform, which allows retailers to map consumers nearby and attract them into stores with relevant and targeted ads.

In particular, apps which recognise a consumer’s location at any given time represent a large and growing subset of the mobile application marketplace. “These apps are changing the way we shop, travel, eat and connect.  With an understanding of consumer movements, impulses, preferences and purchases, brands have the knowledge to meet the expectations of a generation of consumers who are looking for instant service access at any time, from anywhere.”

Though mobile will continue to drive change as it witnesses a rapid growth in international markets, many more changes in the retail space are expected to take place over the next couple of years. And Tesco’s virtual supermarket store is still only the tip of an iceberg. “We’ll see many more exciting changes in retail over the next couple of years. Consumers will expect to personalise their shopping, leisure and marketing experiences to a granular, person-by-person level and will continue to interact with stores via multiple channels, often at the same time,” says Giulio Montemagno, SVP of International at RetailMeNot, an American multinational company headquartered in Austin that maintains a collection of coupon websites.

And for retailers to survive in this competitive world, factors like reduced time to market, less inaccuracies, no manual latency will play a differentiator role. “We’re entering an era of change in the way retail companies look at IT. It has become a critical differentiator in how leading retailers operate – a real strategic asset. Retailers who combine an industrial mindset with strategic process automation to make back office work less tedious, risky and time-consuming will gain a definite competitive edge and be on the front foot to react to market changes and implement new technologies,” says Neil Kinson, VP EMEA at Redwood Software, a leader in enterprise process automation, offering solutions across the financial and retail space.

And thanks to the many channels available today, customers often demand and expect a seamless and a continuous, uninterrupted experience between store, online and call centre. This is challenging for retailers since for them it becomes all the more important to remove infrastructure-related bottlenecks.

“See, it is mostly retailers who think in channels, shoppers think about brands and they don’t care so much about where they shop. If a virtual store delivers a satisfactory shopping experience, is faster than an online order and less of a hassle than a purchase at a regular supermarket, they will most likely come back,” remarks Montemagno. If on the other hand it is just a concept to stir some buzz and offers no real advantage, shoppers will be less inclined to follow.

What is certain though is that the lines between the different channels are blurring and will continue to do so. Consumers are ordering online and retrieving their products at the store, or they may order the product online directly from the store when the product or size they’re looking for is not available online. “Going forward, retailers will certainly use digital channels more to bring shoppers into their stores where they can get not only the products they’d come for but also buy additional items they’ll discover while they’re there,” says Montemagno.

Dwight Hill, partner, with McMillan Doolittle, LLP, an international retail consulting firm  feels that going forward most stores will be a combination of both online and offline. Though brick-and-mortar models developing ‘in-store digital’ experiences is common, there are online players who are setting up offline stores as well. “We are seeing pure-play e-commerce retailers opening stores like Warby Parker, Bonobos and Suit Supply. We are at our infancy in seeing how these efforts will play out,” says Hill.

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A story surfaced in the Malaysian media last September suggesting that the ESB was planning to issue an Islamic-compliant bond, or sukuk, as part of its future funding arrangements.

Sukuk are structured to pay profits or rent, rather than traditional coupon interest, which is forbidden under Sharia law, and are typically underpinned by physical assets with clearly identifiable income streams.

With the ongoing credit squeeze from the debt crisis and uncertainty still stalking capital markets, many firms are eyeing up the Islamic liquidity pool as an alternative source of finance.

Supermarket chain Tesco recently issued a sukuk for its Malaysian unit as part of its conventional debt-raising activity, underscoring the strength of its brand in the region.

As it turned out, the ESB had applied to local regulators in Malaysia for permission to issue a bond, with the aim of raising billion.

The energy group had also hired Islamic finance specialist Amanie Advisors to advise on how best to position itself in Malaysia’s rapidly growing sukuk market.

Had the issuance gone ahead, the ESB would have become the first Irish company, and one of the non-financials in Europe, to issue a Sharia-compliant bond.

However, the company, perhaps for reasons linked to timing, pricing and the return of relative calm to markets, decided to defer the move indefinitely.

Nonetheless, leaks of the company’s plans reportedly prompted a stream of enquiries from prospective investors, testifying to the appetite for investment in asset-rich companies like the ESB.

The UK’s Islamic Finance Secretariat puts the value of Sharia-compliant assets globally at trillion. While this is only a fraction of the global financial system, the market is growing rapidly.

A 2013 report by rating agency Standard & Poor’s predicts global sukuk demand will jump from billion in 2012 to billion by 2016, with demand significantly outstripping supply.

Ireland already commands a disproportionate share of pie when it comes to fund management, with some 20 per cent of Europe’s Sharia-compliant funds domiciled in Dublin’s Irish Finance Services Centre (IFSC).

The Government identified Islamic finance as a “growth opportunity” in its International Finance Services Industry Strategy document 2011-2016, and wants to pitch Dublin as a European hub for the sector.

Keynote address
Last week, the Department of Finance secretary general, John Moran, gave the keynote address at a major Islamic finance conference in Dublin, hosted by Amanie, and attended by some of the most senior figures in the industry.

He spoke of the need for Europe and Ireland “to enter into a new paradigm in terms of financing the economy” and of lessening the over-reliance on banks to fund growth.

“The reputation of Ireland as an international bond issuer has been restored, and the job was now to look at how we can diversify our funding sources by tapping into alternative models of finance.”

Mr Moran said Islamic finance was a key part of the IFSC strategy for the Government, which wanted to showcase Ireland as a place for the Muslim world to invest in and do business with in Europe.

He said the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) was “particularly focused” on the possibility of funding the country’s future infrastructural needs through sukuk finance.

“It’s an inevitability that non-bank funding will play a much greater role in terms of how we work this economy.”

Source: aibim.com

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