For a change, you decide to pop to the shops rather than dial up your order on your latest palm-sized computer. You pause, thinking back to when your nearest organic butcher and greengrocer would have provided all the inspiration and ingredients you needed, remembering ruefully the day they shut down In fact, most of the shops nearby have closed down. These days the high street is all mini-casinos and European-style caf? You sigh as you set off, in your car - of course - to your nearest Tesco. If this is what shopping in Britain is destined to be like in 2015 then Jim Dowd, the Labour MP for Lewisham, wants to know. He is chairing an inquiry into the retail sector by an all-party group of MPs to determine whether the latest bout of supermarket sweep being played out by Tesco and Sainsbury's is bad news for consumers.The 74-strong group of MPs has quizzed scores of interested groups, from Tesco to the Women's Institute, on their vision of what a shopping trip in Britain in 10 years' time might comprise. It plans to present its findings to Alan Johnson, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, in December.Yesterday was the turn of small shopkeepers to fight their cause against what Mr Dowd has dubbed the "creeping centralisation" by retailers such as Tesco of the UK's high streets, in the first of four hearings. Let us fast-forward 10 years. It's Saturday morning and you have some friends coming round for dinner.
Watch out for any legislative changes, due next year, that might change that, though.In the meantime, the growing acceptance of IVAs, and Accuma's own strength through market share growth and acquisitions to come, make this a share worth buying.. For now though, IVA arrangers compete only for indebted consumers, and the creditors are presented only with a take-it-or-leave-it-deal, so there is no price competition. It seeks people who can no longer service debts of more than £15,000, works out what they can afford to pay, persuades creditors to write off most of the rest, and takes a £7,000 fee for administering the arrangement over five years.Clearly that fee is large and it seems inevitable that creditors will one day find a way to bring it down to size. Buy.Accuma looks good for those with a debt wishThe UK consumer is creaking under the weight of unprecedented debt So much, so well known. Investors looking for a way to profit from this phenomenon are often guided to short-sell consumer stocks such as retailers or lenders who face increasing levels of arrears and bad debts. There is a positive investment recommendation to be made, too: buy the new debt-advice companies which specialise in "individual voluntary arrangements", IVAs, an increasingly popular half-way house for debtors which means they can avoid bankruptcy.The Manchester-based Accuma floated in March, having raised £4.1m to fund television marketing for its IVAs.
This is the incontrovertible fact that should help investors in the building sector sleep even as the headlines vacillate between boom and predicted bust. It also means that the sector is grossly undervalued, Bellway in particular at 865p, barely six times annual earnings. "We want American parents to know the kind of company they are being asked to entrust their children to. We are going to take the campaign to another level."He said the SEIU would prefer to enter a "partnership" with FirstStudent, the group's US subsidiary, so that competition between yellow bus companies would centre on efficiency, the quality of its management and safety, rather than which employer could pay the least.He conceded that his union's membership at FirstStudent was "very limited" but argued that was because of the company's "anti-union" attitude. Union agreements at FirstStudent existed only where US businesses had been taken over by the company, he said.A spokesman for FirstGroup said the American union's campaign - in alliance with the Teamsters' union in the US and the Transport and General Workers' Union in Britain - was an attempt to win negotiating rights above the heads of employees. Andrew Large, the other deputy governor, is known to hold concerns about inflationary pressure and voted with his three internal colleagues in August against the decision to cut rates.Analysts said there was enough evidence of falling inflation from the figures for the other five members to justify a vote to cut rates.The fall in clothing and footwear prices accelerated, while food and furniture prices also dragged the index down.
