Wearing his optimist’s hat, Wolfson says that those consumers still in employment – his core customers – will be enjoying lower mortgage and fuel costs. Stores are reluctant to cut prices further (one reason why core inflation is still stubbornly high) and customers are staying at home. Wolfson expects like-for-like sales in his stores to fall between 6% and 9% in the first half of this year. One day, inevitably, the declining sales densities in Next’s stores (they’ve been falling for half a decade now) will become a problem. So Rio Tinto has a plan B, and it looks exactly like the one that should have been plan A – a rights issue accompanied by a few sales of assets. CurrentUserHasReportedAbuse == “True”} Report abuse {else} Report abuse {/if} {if ! read more

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