Apple App Store Sales Hit $10bn For 2013

Apple says it sold $10bn (£6.1bn) of apps last year, including $1bn (£610m) in December alone.

The festive sales translate to more than three billion app purchases in one month - a new record for the App Store - and includes downloads to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Developers have now made a total of $15bn (£9.1bn) by producing apps, the California-based company said.

Apple takes a 30% cut from every sale, so has made $4.5bn for its own coffers.

Candy Crush Saga, the hit from UK developer King, was one of 2013's biggest hits, along with the likes of Puzzles & Dragons and Minecraft.

This time last year, Apple did not give a 2012 sales total, but said more than 775,000 apps had been created. That figure has now topped a million.

However, most apps are thought to receive very few downloads, with the bulk coming from a relatively small group of big sellers.

Google's Play Store - which sells apps for Android phones and tablets - has not yet released figures for 2013.

But a Forbes report last year suggested it had already surpassed Apple on quarterly downloads.

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New Look Christmas Sales Heap Pressure On M&S

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

The fashion retailer New Look enjoyed positive like-for-like sales during the crucial Christmas trading period, heaping further pressure on Marks & Spencer (M&S), its embattled rival.

Sky News has learnt that New Look, which is the UK's second-largest women's value fashion retailer, recorded same-store sales growth of in the region of 1.5% during the seven weeks leading up to the end of the year.

Significantly, New Look did not discount widely across its product range until after Christmas Day, whereas M&S held a two-day sale on December 21 and 22, during which it offered 30% discounts on most clothing and other general merchandise products.

"There was a clear attempt to protect the margin, so the results will be seen positively," said one insider.

New Look, which is privately-owned, has not yet decided when to release details of its festive trading performance although one insider said that it could be published on Thursday. The company declined to comment.

If it does decide to disclose the details tomorrow, it would accentuate the contrast between its performance and that of M&S, which is predicted by analysts to have seen like-for-like general merchandise sales decline by approximately 1.5% for the 13 weeks to December 28.

Like-for-like sales is a measurement used in the retail sector which strips out the effects of changes to selling space, but does not give an indication of the profitability of sales.

New Look's Christmas trading nevertheless suffered in comparison to last year's numbers, when the chain recorded a 3.7% increase in like-for-like sales for the 14 weeks to December 29.

The company is owned by Apax Partners and Permira, two private equity firms, which are likely to embark on another attempt to sell or float it in the next couple of years.

Trading across the high street was difficult during the festive period, with House of Fraser, the John Lewis Partnership and Next emerging as clear winners so far.

Among the major supermarkets, J Sainsbury said on Wednesday that its like-for-like sales were flat, bucking the expectations of those who had predicted a modest decline.

Thursday will bring the most important series of statements on Christmas trading in the UK retail sector so far, with M&S and Tesco among those delivering updates.

The big losers to date have included Debenhams, which warned on profits last week, while Mothercare saw its shares slump on Wednesday morning after also being forced into a profit warning.

Simon Calver, Mothercare's chief executive, said its UK stores had "suffered similar Christmas trading pressures to those reported elsewhere. Customer service scores continue to improve year on year but weaker footfall and higher promotional activity led to lower sales and margins."

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Xmas Discounting 'Strongest For Seven Years'

The scale of the discounting deployed by stores to attract Christmas shoppers has been laid bare in a report which identified a "double whammy of good news" for consumers.

According to a survey by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and researchers Nielsen, prices fell at their fastest rate for at least seven years last month.

It found that high street shops and supermarkets resorted to aggressive discounting to boost festive sales - a sign that many chains were concerned about business volumes in the run up to Christmas.

The BRC said overall shop prices fell by 0.8%, dropping for the eighth consecutive month and at the fastest pace since its survey began in December 2006.

Households were offered some welcome respite as food price inflation slowed to its lowest level for more than three years - at 1.7% - while widespread discounting in the wider retail sector saw non-food prices fall by 2.3%.

Mike Watkins, head of retail and business insight at Nielsen, said: "This will have brought a festive cheer to shoppers filling their trolleys with food and drink at supermarkets, especially as Christmas fell later this year.

"With the continuation of price cuts and promotions across all of retailing, and with many shoppers holding back on shopping to the last week, there will have been bargains and some great savings for the savvy Christmas shopper."

But plunging prices are likely to have taken their toll on many retailers, with food chains in particular expected to have seen their profits hit.

The BRC said weak sales in the lead-up to Christmas led to higher than normal promotional activity as retailers fought over market share.

"While inflationary pressure in the supply chain remains benign, deep and widespread discounts have come at the expenses of profit margins," it said.

Trading figures so far from retailers have revealed the pressure to discount in a highly competitive Christmas.

Debenhams last week issued a profits warning after disappointing festive sales forced it to slash prices, while Marks & Spencer also launched a major sale, rolling out its 'Mega Day' on the Saturday before Christmas, with 30% reductions across clothing lines.

The BRC-Nielsen data showed prices fell across clothing and footwear, electricals and furniture and floorings, while the cost of books, entertainment and home improvement products also dropped to attract shoppers preparing for the festive break.

But the non-food price figures were also impacted by the inclusion of Cyber Monday early last month, which led many high street stores to follow the lead of their online rivals with hefty promotions.

In food shops, the best deals were found on alcoholic and soft drinks.

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Co-Op: Regulator Stands By Flowers Decision

A senior City regulator has told MPs he stands by his decision to approve the appointment of disgraced former Co-op Bank chairman Paul Flowers, arguing it was "correct at the time".

Clive Adamson, director of supervision at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), said the Methodist minister seemed to be the right person to control the "unruly" board at the bank, despite him later becoming embroiled in a drugs scandal and displaying a lack of knowledge about banking.

He said that Mr Flowers was "not the same individual" as he seemed at a later meeting before the Treasury Select Committee last year, when gave a stumbling performance and seemed unable to give basic facts and figures.

Mr Adamson was quizzed by MPs on the same committee about a 90-minute meeting he and two colleagues at the now-defunct Financial Services Authority held with Mr Flowers ahead of his appointment in 2010.

At the meeting, it was agreed two deputies would be needed to assist Mr Flowers as chairman because of his lack of banking knowledge.

Mr Flowers gave a stumbling performance when he appeared before MPs

He told the Treasury Select Committee: "I stand by the decision I made at the time.

"I am as surprised as all of us as to the events that surrounded Mr Flowers' apparent misdemeanours."

Following close questioning by MPs, Mr Adamson eventually agreed that the FSA overall made a mistake, but insisted he stood by the decision on Mr Flowers.

"With the benefit of hindsight, yes we did get it wrong," he said.

But committee member Jesse Norman likened it to a doctor saying: "The operation was a success but the patient died."

The Co-op Bank last year had to be rescued after a £1.5bn hole was discovered in its finances.

Regulators have announced the launch of investigations that could see former senior managers fined or banned from working in the industry.

Mr Adamson told the committee he was surprised by the former chairman's answers during his appearance before MPs last year, and that at his own meeting with Mr Flowers he had been "much more cogent".

But committee chairman Andrew Tyrie told him: "It is an extraordinary state of affairs that you are asking us to believe."

He criticised the decision to put Mr Flowers in place to oversee the board, saying: "Your solution was to put a financial illiterate in charge of it."

Mr Adamson said he was disappointed that no one "in public life or indeed his other associations" who may have "known more about some of his misdemeanours" ever alerted regulators.

But he admitted that he had never before approved a chairman with such little experience, telling MPs: "There was no hiding the fact that he didn't have sufficient experience so the decision was around how that could be mitigated."

Mr Adamson said Mr Flowers' 1981 conviction for gross indecency was disclosed but it was not considered relevant and he was not questioned about it. He said a separate drink-driving conviction was not known.

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JPMorgan To Pay Over $2bn In Madoff Scheme

JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay more than $2bn (£1.2bn) to settle claims related to Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

The bank will pay $1.7bn to settle criminal charges and a $350m civil penalty for what the Treasury Department called "critical and widespread deficiencies" in its programmes to prevent money laundering and other suspicious activity.

JPMorgan was Madoff's primary bank in the later years of a fraud that spanned decades.

The scheme ended in 2008 when Madoff revealed to the FBI that his investment advisory business was a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.

The settlement includes a deferred prosecution agreement that requires the bank to acknowledge failures in its protections against money laundering but also allows it to avoid criminal charges.

No individual executives were accused of wrongdoing.

Madoff, 75, pleaded guilty and is serving a 150-year prison term.

George Venizelos, head of the FBI's New York office, said JPMorgan failed to carry out its legal obligations while Madoff "built his massive house of cards".

"It took until after the arrest of Madoff, one of the worst crooks this office has ever seen, for JP Morgan to alert authorities to what the world already knew," he said.

US Attorney Preet Bharara said: "JPMorgan connected the dots when it mattered to its own profit, but was not so diligent otherwise".

In a statement, JPMorgan said it recognised it "could have done a better job pulling together various pieces of information and concerns about Madoff from different parts of the bank over time".

"We do not believe that any JPMorgan Chase employee knowingly assisted Madoff's Ponzi scheme," the bank said.

"Madoff's scheme was an unprecedented and widespread fraud that deceived thousands, including us, and caused many people to suffer substantial losses."

JPMorgan said it was making "significant efforts" to strengthen its anti-money-laundering practises and believed "the lessons we have learned will make us a stronger company".

Its shares fell 55 cents to $58.45 in morning trading on Tuesday.

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Treasury Takes Step Towards £19bn Lloyds Sale

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

The agency which manages taxpayers' £19bn stake in Lloyds Banking Group has asked Britain's biggest high street lender to work on plans for a share sale to the general public.

Sky News has learnt that UK Financial Investments (UKFI) wrote to the Lloyds board during the Christmas break to ask it to write a prospectus that would accompany a major retail offering.

The development underlines the Treasury's intention to sell a large chunk of its remaining 33% shareholding in Lloyds this year, although an insider said the timing had not yet been decided.

A formal announcement from the Treasury about a new share sale will not take place until after Lloyds' full-year results at the end of next month.

Antonio Horta-Osorio, its chief executive, is likely to signal then that he has been given regulatory approval to resume dividend payments to ordinary shareholders.

George Osborne, the Chancellor, believes that a sale in which the public can participate could be politically useful as well as delivering a financial boost to the Treasury.

He is understood to be undeterred by the controversy surrounding the privatisation of Royal Mail, which saw some private investors excluded from buying shares.

Shares in Lloyds closed on Tuesday at 82.51p after a trading session in which the stock reached a new 12-month high.

The bank now has a market value of £57.17bn, having risen by more than 63% during the last year and meaning that the Government's remaining 33% stake is worth roughly £19bn.

Analysts believe it will be possible to sell a substantial chunk of Lloyds at a premium to the 73.6p taxpayer break-even price, especially after Mr Horta-Osorio sets out a generous dividend policy.

Mr Osborne has made plain his interest in a sale of Lloyds shares to the public and reiterated that ambition in his autumn statement last month, although he stopped short of spelling out details such as the timing or size.

Institutional investors will also be asked to participate in the sale of the remaining stake given its sheer scale.

The Government offloaded a 6% stake in Lloyds in September in a deal which the National Audit Office concluded had resulted in loss to the taxpayer of more than £200m but which nevertheless represented good value.

That transaction, which yielded £3.2bn for the Government, saw the taxpayer's stake reduced from 39% to 33%.

Insiders said that a team of executives at Lloyds were beginning work on a prospectus and that it was likely to be "broadly ready" within weeks.

Lloyds declined to comment on Tuesday.

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Minimum Alcohol Pricing: Criticism Over U-Turn

Health experts have accused the Government of "dancing to the tune of the drinks industry" after an investigation found ministers met representatives dozens of times before scrapping plans for minimum alcohol pricing.

Figures obtained by the British Medical Journal revealed the Department of Health held regular meetings with members of the industry, including twice after a public consultation on minimum pricing had ended.

In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, a group of 22 health professionals including Sir Ian Gilmore, special adviser on alcohol at the Royal College of Physicians, accused the Government of "deplorable practices".

They wrote: "Today, the public learns of the deplorable practices that were instrumental in the Government's decision to reverse its commitment to save thousands of lives by implementing a minimum unit price for alcohol.

David Cameron had previously backed minimum pricing

"An investigation conducted by the British Medical Journal shows that ministers met drinks industry representatives to discuss alternative measures to minimum pricing at a time when the principle of this policy was not up for public debate.

"We call on the Government to stop dancing to the tune of the drinks industry and prioritise public health."

The Government ditched plans to introduce minimum unit pricing for alcohol last summer, even though the Prime Minister David Cameron had previously given his backing to it.

It led to claims  that he had been influenced by his party's election strategist, Australian lobbyist Lynton Crosby, whose firm is reported to have represented drinks giants.

A Department of Health spokesman said: "Minimum unit pricing is still under consideration.

"As you would expect from a government department seeking to effect public health change through a voluntary deal with industry, a wide group of officials have many different meetings with a vast range of stakeholders, and we utterly reject the allegation of anything untoward in the small proportion of those that took place with the alcohol industry."

But shadow health secretary Andy Burnham accused the Government of being in "disarray" over public health policy.

"After the tobacco industry last year, these revelations raise yet more concerns about the influence of big business on this Government's policies," he said.

Labour has previously questioned whether Mr Crosby tried to influence policy on cigarette packaging, saying that his company is used by tobacco giant Philip Morris.

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Mothercare Shares Slide 30% After Dire Xmas

Some of the biggest names in UK retail have reported varying fortunes for Christmas trading, with Mothercare's shares taking a massive hit after it issued a profits warning.

Mothercare, which operates in 60 countries, said group sales fell 6.1% in the 12 week period to January 4 compared to the same period the year before.

Underlying sales in its loss-making British business, where it is in the middle of a turnaround plan, were 4% lower.

The company blamed the promotional nature of the festive period and lower seasonal footfall.

"As a result of lower UK sales and margin and the international currency impact, full year profits are likely to be below the current range of market expectations," chief executive Simon Calver said in a statement.

The Co-op's food business grew over Christmas

The company's share price lost almost a third of its value in the first half hour of trading on the London Stock Exchange in the wake of the glum trading update.

The retailer has suffered in the UK particularly in recent times - largely a result of strong online and supermarket competition - but its international business has gone from strength to strength.

Meanwhile, Sainsbury's said it enjoyed its busiest trading week ever in the run-up to Christmas, helping like-for-like sales in its latest quarter climb by 0.2% - with total sales, including fuel, rising by 2.5%.

Chief executive Justin King said the 14 weeks to January 4 had been a "very tough sales environment" but the supermarket managed to maintain its record of growth - after some had forecast it to fall after 35 successive periods of expansion.

Mothercare said heavy UK discounting hurt its bottom line

Mr King said the seven days prior to Christmas was the group's busiest ever trading week, with more than 28 million transactions.

The group, which trails market leader Tesco and is battling Asda to be the UK's second biggest grocer, is believed to have been hurt - along with its major rivals - by the continuing growth of discounters including Aldi and Lidl though its overall sales were boosted by convenience stores showing 18% growth.

Two of its competitors also released details of their performances - the Co-op seeing like-for-like growth of 1% in the 13 weeks to January 4 compared with the same period last year.

Waitrose said it had enjoyed its most successful Christmas on record, with like-for-like store sales, excluding fuel, for the twelve trading days ending December 31 up 4.1% on a like for like basis.

Domino's continued its brisk UK growth over Christmas

Mother and baby products retailer Mothercare did not enjoy such brisk business.

It warned that annual profit would be below current market forecasts, hit by Christmas discounting in its British stores plus weak economic conditions and currency deflation overseas.

Two other chains to update the market on their festive trading on Wednesday were Domino's Pizza and Majestic - the wine retailer.

Domino's, Britain's biggest pizza delivery firm, posted a surge in fourth-quarter sales, rising 10.9% on a like-for-like basis in the UK in the 13 weeks to December 29.

Majestic enjoyed UK store like-for-like growth of 2.8% over the 10 weeks to January 6.

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Shock Pay Statistic On 'Fat Cat Wednesday'

A campaign group suggests top executives who returned to work on Monday had earned more money by mid-morning on Wednesday than the average worker does in a year.

The High Pay Centre has dubbed January 8 "fat cat Wednesday", based on average remuneration figures for FTSE 100 bosses compared with the wider average UK worker.

It found chief executives of firms in the FTSE 100 were paid an average of almost £4.3m in 2012, equivalent to an hourly wage of well over £1,000, compared with the country's average annual wage of £26,000.

The study said executive pay increased by 74% over the past decade, while wages for ordinary workers remained flat.

High Pay Centre director Deborah Hargreaves said: "Fat cat Wednesday highlights how insensitive big company executives have become.

"When top bosses take home more in two-and-a-half days than the average worker earns in a year, there is clearly something wrong with the way pay is set for both bosses and workers."

TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady added: "Soaring pay inequality, with top bosses now taking home more in a few days than most workers earn in a year, is damaging our economy.

"Workers need better pay rises so that the recovery is built on growing incomes, rather than falling savings and mounting household debts. But Britain's fat cat bosses are hoarding earnings owed to staff for shareholders and themselves.

"That's why we need workers on remuneration committees to knock some sense into top bosses' pay."

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Energy Consumers 'Worse Off' After Bill Cuts

A consumer group claims households will remain worse off after the last of the major energy firms confirmed reductions to bills after the Government's green levy shake-up.

npower said dual fuel households would receive a £38 discount, expected to affect approximately 2.6 million customers, effective from February 28.

It also confirmed that 500,000 electricity only customers would receive an additional £12 rebate as part of the Government's Warm Homes Discount scheme.

Chief executive Paul Massara said: "This reduction is a reflection of the recent review of two government policies and their impact on household energy bills and it is a welcome start.

SSE will not reduce its prices until late March

"The natural next step would be to review all the impact of all policies that add to business and household energy bills."

The big six announced average price hikes of 6.6% but the recent price reversals would reduce this to 4.4%, according to data from U-Switch.

The price comparison site claimed that despite the bill reductions announced in recent weeks, households would still be out of pocket.

It calculated that average household energy bills soared from £1,212 to £1,281 ahead of Christmas and will fall to £1,264 once all the price changes take effect - leaving consumers £53 worse off.

On Tuesday, SSE confirmed its plans to cut its dual fuel prices by 3.5% from March 24 - taking the levy changes into account.

ScottishPower had previously confirmed a 3.3% decrease from January 31 though firms are facing pressure to implement the cuts to bills immediately.

British Gas has already reduced prices, announcing in early December that it would lower bills by 3.2% on New Year's Day, effectively reducing hikes that saw prices go up by 10.4% for electricity and 8.4% for gas in November.

EDF and E.ON took the levy changes into account in the recent round of price rises, increasing tariffs on average by 3.9% and 3.7% respectively - far less than the increases announced by rivals.

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