General

Retailers will spend the next few months trying to get their businesses running again, often in very difficult circumstances. By September a picture will emerge: who can survive and who will drown? Five dangerous trends say the latter group could be quite large...

Alibaba saw its turnover climb 35 % in the past fiscal year, beating its own forecasts by a landslide. The coronavirus crisis pushed the platform's total sales over a trillion dollars, a record.

Despite a growth in food sales, Marks & Spencer saw its profits drop 21.2 % last year. The coronavirus crisis makes tough measures necessary, but also opens opportunities.

Amazon is rumoured to be interested in acquiring (a part of) American department store chain JCPenney, which has been granted protection against creditors and is currently looking for a solution for its deep financial problems.

German department store chain Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof may close up to half of its stores and cut 5,000 jobs in the wake of the coronacrisis. However, the move proves quite controversial, with fears of abuse looming.

Schwarz Group, the parent company of German discounter Lidl, is launching its own cloud services, which will compete directly with Amazon's Web Services. The distribution group already has Rewe and Siemens as customers, and now wants to turn its IT services into a strategic branch of the company.

The coronavirus has had a real impact on European retail: sales dropped 10.4 % in general, and even 21.3 % for non-food products in March alone.