THE DAILY BRIEFING
PAY CLAIM Employees at Next are looking to launch a £30m equal pay claim against the High Street retailer. More than 300 shop floor workers, mostly female, say they are paid an average of £2 an hour less than their warehouse colleagues – the majority of whom are men.
CHIEF NAMED US drugstore giant Walgreens Boots Alliance has appointed James Kehoe as its global chief financial officer. He joins the retailer, which owns Boots in the UK, from Japanese firm Takeda.
JOBS GO Electronics retailer Maplin has made 63 head office staff redundant after it fell into administration last week. Accountants PwC has been unable to find a buyer for the chain, forcing it to make cuts.
FASHION ROLE Luxury fashion house LVMH has recruited Pierre Louette as president and chief executive of media subsidiary, Les Echos-Le Parisien Group. He joins from telecoms firm Orange.
AIR DEAL Qatar Airways is to run a new route to Qatar from Gatwick Airport from May. Gatwick said 3m customers travelled through in February, up 0.7pc on last year.
LIFE INVESTMENT A £ 50m investment scheme has been launched to back pharmaceutical start-ups. NCL Technology Ventures’ fund intends to support Britain’s thriving life sciences industry.
CULL PLAN Social media giant Snapchat is preparing to cull more than 120 jobs, according to reports.
Snap, the picture messaging app’s parent, is said to be restructuring its engineering department to reduce costs.
Last month almost £1bn was wiped off Snapchat’s value after socialite and reality TV star Kylie Jenner said she had lost interest in the app.
PHARMACY SWOOP US health insurer Cigna is buying pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts in a £48bn mega- deal. Express is a middleman between drug firms and corporate customers. It comes as America’s pharma industry looks for deals to cope with surging medicine prices amid fears tech giants such as Amazon will invade the market.
SAVINGS HIT Investment firm Alliance Trust took a £23.5m hit to its savings business last year, blaming spiralling costs from integrating a rival firm it bought in 2015. The dundee firm said its £2.5bn share portfolio achieved returns of 9.8pc from April to the end of the year.