Amazon slays High Street

Amazon’s dominance of online shopping is the biggest threat to everyone on the High street. only those UK retailers, most notably next and perhaps argos, part of sainsbury’s, which fully embrace the online challenge and manage to integrate it with bricks and mortar have a cat in hell’s chance of prospering.

In the UK, department store chains Debenhams and House of Fraser are hanging on by their fingertips, not helped by the debt build-up which came with private equity and Icelandic ownership.

There is no such excuse for mothercare with its once envied unique place in the new born and childrenswear market.

same- store, online and international sales all fell. shares plunged by a quarter and have almost joined the 90pc club inhabited by banks and housebuilders during the financial crisis. But there is no safety net for retailers as there was for finance and new homes.

If the Us is any guide, breaking the stranglehold of amazon is a titanic task. In the five weeks from the Thanksgiving holiday amazon claimed 89pc of the online market in america.

Rivals Best Buy, Target and Walmart maintained share by arranging pick-up of web purchases at nearby stores, a strategy being pursued by next, John Lewis and m&s, but this is in its infancy.

as store portfolios are shrunk, retailers need to move more purposefully to prevent amazon asserting the same dominance here.

This ought to be an opportunity for ocado in food and also explains why the shares of asos, Boohoo and other web fashion retailers sell on such high pricetoearnings ratio. Britain is in the middle of a shopping revolution and casualties are certain to multiply.

Stern stuff

THE Federal Reserve has a new chairman in Jay Powell. The search for the next governor of the Bank of England, to replace mark Carney, starts this year, and manoeuvring to replace mario Draghi, president of the European Bank, in 2019 also is under way.

Draghi did everything in his power to save the euro after it almost fell apart in 2010. In 2015 he embarked on a large scale programme of quantitative easing which pulled the eurozone back from stagnation and unconscionable levels of joblessness.

Top jobs in the EU are about sharing the spoils rather than who is best qualified. Because the ECB is based in Frankfurt there has been a reluctance in the eurozone for the job to go to a German because of concern it will be dominated by Bundesbank orthodoxy.

But after the leadership of Holland’s Wim Duisenberg, France’s Jean-Claude Trichet and Italy’s Draghi it may be Germany’s turn with Bundesbank head Jens Weidmann campaigning for the post.

He wants to end printing money by september 2018 and is demanding eurozone banks shed their bad debts before a regional deposit insurance plan is implemented.

Weidmann will have to be careful not to frighten the horses.

Golden haul

FoX news has had problems with allegations of sexual harassment.

But Rupert murdoch and his merger partners at Disney had plenty to cheer at the sombre Golden Globes.

Fox searchlight grabbed no fewer than six wins, including best movie for Three Billboards outside Ebbing, missouri.

21st Century Fox investors may have the case for a higher exit price.

Peter Preston

as a former economics writer, Washington correspondent and financial editor of the Guardian, I must record my huge sadness at the death of the paper’s enigmatic former editor Peter Preston.

He took enormous interest in my work at the paper providing me with wise counsel during the banking and economic crises of the 1970s, which culminated in Britain’s application for an ImF loan in 1976.

as editor he risked sending me to Washington in 1979 and was a regular visitor during my decade there, showing great interest and knowledge in Us politics and the ReaganThatcher free-markets revolution. soon after my return to London I was installed as financial editor and City commentator, preparing me for my role at the mail since 2000.

most significantly he helped steer the Guardian from financial weakness and insecurity to a safe and prosperous future. He was a brilliant newspaper man who will be much missed.