Top marks for effort as the old sparkle returns

MARKS & Spencer is motoring. After several stumbling years, the company appears swiftly to be regaining its position as Britain's favourite retailer.

Today's figures are punchy by any measure. Clothing sales in particular show a group that has recovered its former ability to give the nation what it wants at a price it can afford.

Chairman Luc Vandevelde has learned his lesson, however. When he joined M&S, his mistake was to promise too much too soon. Today he is Mr Caution.

He warns stakeholders that a 16.5% increase in clothing sales was helped by strong consumer spending, weak comparatives and an early Easter. He warns that there is still a long way to go before M&S returns to the £1 billion-plus annual profits achieved in the late 1990s and he warns that next year's figures will suffer from a raft of negatives.

As for this year, sales from the outgoing international businesses are down and, more worryingly, financial services turnover has fallen. Vandevelde is right. The battle is not yet won. The latest sales figures show, however, that M&S is moving powerfully in the right direction.

Salary check
WHEN Matt Barrett became chief executive of Barclays on 1 October 1999, the bank was valued on the stock market at £29.7bn. Today its capitalisation is £35.5bn.

A large part of that increase is attributed to Barrett's stewardship. In this context, carping about his £3m-a-year pay package could be deemed rather mean. Nonetheless, a group of institutional investors feels sufficiently exercised to call a meeting with Barclays tomorrow to discuss it.

Most big shareholders accept that executives tend to be greedy but make allowances as long as directors' interests are aligned with those of investors. Barclays also took care to see some institutions before finalising Barrett's package and cut his contract from a proposed three-year term to a more-realistic one year as a result. So the bank feels pretty relaxed about tomorrow's session.

Investors say they do not intend to be aggressive, but they are mightily displeased with the bank's handling of Barrett's pay. They want to know how the package was created, whether he is properly incentivised and whether the remuneration could have been more sensitively communicated.

Barclays' other stakeholders will be wondering more simply why Barrett needs to be paid quite so much.

Leahy's lead
THREE months ago, dull but dependable Tesco delivered sales figures significantly worse than the City expected. Not only that but Christmas takings grew more slowly than those of arch-rival Sainsbury's. Tesco shares lost ground and chief executive Sir Terry Leahy was talked about as a has-been. Today's results should help put an end to that suggestion.

Research shows trading is robust enough to dispel worries that the company is losing its sparkle. Sainsbury's is more combative now but Tesco is holding its ground. Overseas the group remains ambitious and the performance of its 102 hypermarkets is on target.

Leahy lacks the flamboyance of Sainsbury chief Sir Peter Davis or his opposite number at Safeway, Carlos Criado-Perez. But he has turned Tesco into Britain's most profitable retailer and the one best able to compete effectively on the world stage. That is no mean achievement.