M&S may exit Retail Sales Monitor
Retailer fears figures reveal too much
November 22 2003
Marks and Spencer is considering withdrawing its sales figures from the Retail Sales Monitor, the monthly snapshot of retail performance produced by the British Retail Consortium.
The UK’s biggest high street retailer has been forced to consider its position following the decision by Arcadia owner Philip Green to stop providing figures last month. M&S, which has seen a series of leaked sales figures appear in the press, believes that without the Arcadia figures, the monitor makes it easy for people to gauge its clothing sales.
M&S believes it is potentially in breach of stock market rules on the issue of price sensitive information, as well as providing competitors with potentially useful data.
Without the Arcadia brands – Top Shop, Top Man, Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins, Wallis, Burton, Evans and Outfit – M&S makes up nearly 40 per cent of the monthly BRC clothing figures.
The Financial Times reports that the M&S board, which has stopped giving weekly figures to the BRC, will consider next week whether to stop providing monthly data.
M&S told the newspaper: “We are talking to the BRC and we want to be able to resolve this. But we have to find a way forward that does not mean us breaching the rules of the disclosure of price sensitive information.”
The issue puts another question mark over the BRC index. Supermarket chain Morrisons is not a member, which means the BRC would almost certainly lose Safeway’s figures once the planned takeover is complete.
Some observers have suggested the BRC figures would be of more value if combined into a single index with the monthly retail sales data compiled by the Confederation of British Industry.
