The M&S jamboree comes up trumps again

Forget the Libor-rigging trial at Southwark Crown Court this week and the UK budget announcement today: the biggest event in the capital in July is Marks & Spencer’s annual general meeting.

This once-a-year jamboree gives Middle England the chance to eat free sandwiches while chiding the retailer's chief executive, Marc Bolland, and its chairman, Robert Swannell, about the demise of county cricket, St George and M&S women's wear.

Although it is not timed to coincide with Wimbledon, it ends at lunchtime, allowing visitors to slip off for a bit of tennis. And, unlike budgets and corporate crime prosecutions, it rarely disappoints.

The AGM is so well-attended that M&S, which has 17 stores in the Republic, hires Wembley Stadium to host it. It’s not a date the M&S board traditionally looks forward to. For the last few years Bolland and Swannell have been panned, with M&S’s unfashionable ladies’ fashion offering bearing the brunt of shareholders’ ire.

Despite a promising start to 2015, this year was no exception. Back in May, Bolland and Swannell might reasonably have thought the style critics would have to eat their words – or at least hold their tongues – this year. After years of falling sales, M&S said on May 20th that general merchandise sales (mainly clothing) rose in the first quarter of 2015 – the first time they had done so in 14 consecutive quarters – contributing to a 6.1 per cent increase in annual profits.

Sadly for the board, either bad weather or bad taste in nylon knickers and garish prints – depending on whom you believe – has derailed sales.

Decline

In the quarter to July, the first of the M&S fiscal year, underlying sales of general merchandise fell 0.4 per cent, not as much as the consensus analyst forecast of 1 per cent, but a decline that – had it not been masked by a whopping 38.7 per cent rise in sales by M&S’s online offering – would have looked awful, or in Bolland’s words “completely different”.

To put M&S’s woes in context, spring-summer 2015 has been difficult for the many retailers thanks in large part to an unseasonably cold May and June, which prompted earlier than usual discounting on the high street. Bolland certainly stuck to this script, saying “it’s hard to say we are disappointed in a very difficult quarter”.

But nobody at the AGM looked happy when one shareholder described M&S’s clothing lines as looking like “someone has got out of bed, had a bad dream, and thrown their thoughts on a canvas”.

The patrician but usually smooth Swannell took his frustration out on one loquacious investor demanding “can you get to the question?”

“I’m trying to, but you keep interrupting,” the shareholder batted back, unrepentant.

“Have you surrendered the high street crown to Next?” asked another questioner.

Unequivocally not, replied Swannell, although the financial markets begged to differ, sending M&S shares down 1.94 per cent to close at 536.41 pence.

The jury remains out, but for yesterday at least M&S shareholders seemed mollified by their M&S lunch and a £150 million share buyback.

If Bolland and Swannell can't solve the problem of how to stock clothes that fit and suit their customers, the chancellor may be on hand to help. Much of what George Osborne will unveil in his post-election budget today – from benefits capping to inheritance-tax giveaways – has been heavily trailed. Of particular interest to retailers is a proposal to abolish England's Victorian Sunday trading laws.

Currently shops in England and Wales bigger than 280sq m are barred from opening for more than six hours on Sundays: smaller stores are allowed to open for as long as they like. Osborne wants to devolve central government licensing powers to local authorities, moving to the system already in Scotland where shops can legally open as long as they like on a Sunday, albeit that few, particularly in rural areas, actually bother to do so.

Liberalisation

Shops in London’s West End will almost certainly take advantage of any liberalisation, with visitors to the capital and time-pressed Londoners sure to do the same.

Big retail welcomed the plan with near unanimity yesterday. Bolland – whose Sunday-opening Simply M&S food stores are already the stars of his retail empire – said a number of larger London-based stores would take advantage of any relaxation in licensing laws.

While there were the expected squeals from unions, as well as from the Association of Convenience Stores, which represents small shop-keepers, they were a loud minority.

There is no reason to expect a repeat of the last Tory attempt to reform Sunday Trading, which resulted in Thatcher’s only Commons defeat as prime minister.

Helen Power is a freelance journalist