FINANCE 16 BUSINESS EXTRA

Fuelled up

ASDA became Britain’s first retailer to publish diesel and petrol prices charged at its local forecourts online after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found that the chain’s fuel prices had tripled since before the pandemic. The sector had increased these to unnecessarily high levels, the CMA said.

Nicely played

CASILLAS WORLD, founded eight years ago by Iker Casillas, former goalkeeper for both Real Madrid and Spain’s national side, earned €350,287 euros in 2022, 88 per cent more than in 2022. The company, based in the leafy Madrid suburb of Pozuelo de Alarcon, handles the footballer’s image rights.

New face

SARAH BREEDEN was named the Bank of England’s deputy governor and will also serve on the Monetary Policy and the Financial Policy committees. A senior executive, she led Bank’s response to the Northern Rock crisis in 2007 and takes over from Sir Jon Cunliffe, who has held this role since 2013.

Not you

EL CORTE INGLES sold its holding in the Only You hotel chain and will instead focus on its future hotel in Madrid’s Goya district, leaving the Matutes family’s Palladium Hotel Group as Only You’s sole shareholder. The sale went through in July 2022 but was not made public until early August.

Downsizing

HOUSE OF FRASER revealed that it could close more stores, after shutting eight in the past year. Michael Murray, the chief executive of Mike Ashley’s retail empire, which rescued the chain in 2018, said its department store portfolio was “continually under review” and some outlets were “still too big.”

STAT OF WEEK €8.9 billion

in revenues for the Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) bottling plant during the first half of this year, an 8.4 per cent increase on the same period in 2022.