Retail property manager Hammerson (LON:HMSO) reported strong growth in the first quarter of the year, despite the “challenging” High Street environment. UK retail sales fell 2 percent, as severe weather and subdued consumer confidence weighed on performance, but net asset value grew 1.8 percent as the group retained earnings and improved valuation gains. Leases signed across the group rose to £7 million, up 59 percent compared to the same period a year ago, reporting ‘good progress’ on its existing projects, including the Brent Cross extension. Portfolio occupancy improved from 96.6 percent to 97.1 percent at 31 March 2018. David Atkins, Chief Executive of Hammerson, said: “Whilst we recognise the difficult trading environment and challenges felt by many retail and restaurant formats in the UK, there continues to be good demand for space across our centres. The Easter trading weekend again demonstrated that not all retail is equal with our centres delivering positive footfall growth of 5% compared to average reported Easter footfall across all shops of -2.4%. “The positive momentum of the business is a mark of the quality of our portfolio and the skill of our team which are delivering continued income growth and will drive future shareholder returns.”

Logistics company Wincanton (LON:WIN) recorded strong performance in the first half of the year, with full year results likely to be in line with expectations. Its consumer and retail division reported good volume growth and an “excellent” performance during the Christmas period, with the second half of the year boosted by contracts with Wickes, to manage its delivery of bulky goods to customers, and Ikea, to provide two-man home delivery services across the South East of England. Industrial and transport also performed well over the second half, winning contracts with Aggregate Industries and Phillips 66. Wincanton is a British logistics company with its origins in milk haulage, providing transport and logistics services including specialist automated high bay, high capacity warehouses, as well as supply chain management for businesses.

Vauxhall are set to continue production of its new Vivaro van at its Luton plant, despite ongoing “Brexit uncertainties”. The French car manufacturer announced it will increase production in Luton, in spite of on-going Brexit-related uncertainties facing the U.K economy. In a boost to the UK’s automotive industry, the commitment will protect the 1,400 jobs. The decision will see plant’s capacity increase to 100,000 a year. As it stands, approximately 59,000 vans year are currently manufactured at Luton. Should demand for the Vivaro prove strong, additional roles may be created at the plant. Group chief executive Carlos Tavares said: “This is a major milestone for the future of the Luton plant and a key enabler to serve our ambitions in the commercial vehicle market.” Business Secretary Greg Clark commented on Wednesday’s announcement: “Today’s decision is a vote of confidence in Vauxhall’s high-skilled workforce and the UK’s world leading automotive sector.” The commitment came after successful talks with the Unite union, alongside a government contribution thought to be in the region of £9 million. Reports indicated that Vauxhall had considered the option of moving production to Poland or Germany, however, neither bases were deemed well-equipped to proceed with production of the vans. In the UK, Vauxhall has 3,400 employees across its Luton and Ellesmere Port plant.      

Vitesse Media (LON:VIS) are set to launch 12 new diversity events across 2018 and 2019, as the company looks to address gender inequality in the workplace. The digital media and events firm announced on Wednesday it intends to “accelerate” the progression of its gender diversity and ‘Women In’ conferences. The series of international events aim at tackling the issue of gender inequality across a range of industries. This includes sectors such as finance and technology, fields which have been traditionally male-dominated and difficult to women to break into. Alongside existing events in UK and the US, the diversity series is also set to expand across Europe and Asia. This follows the launch of the ‘Women in IT USA’ awards event last month in New York, which saw 550 leaders in business and technology come together to address diversity issues. Simon Stilwell, Chief Executive of Vitesse Media, commented: The announcement coincides with the upcoming midnight deadline for UK businesses to report on their gender pay gap figures. Newly implemented government legislation requires companies with 250 employees or more to publish their figures, in a bid to expose gender inequality in the workplace. Of the 9,000 businesses affected, thus far 8,870 companies have thus far submitted their figures. Home Secretary Amber Rudd commented on the looming deadline: “There is absolutely no excuse for businesses in the private sector not to be transparent about their gender pay gap before the deadline set down in law” “Businesses should see reporting gender pay gap data as just the first step on the road to creating fairer and more equal workplaces across the UK.” “They should be putting action plans in place to break down the barriers to women’s progression in their organisations,” she added. Among the biggest recorded overall gender pay difference, the construction, finance and mining sector recorded the highest median pay gap. Businesses are required to submit gender pay gap figures by midnight on April 4th, according to the government deadline.

Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air (LON:WIZZ) announced a 25.2 percent increase in year-on-year passenger numbers in March on-year, after adding several new routes. The carrier said it had flown 2,476,153 people in March, with its load factor rising by 1.1 percentage points to 91.5 percent. Total flying capacity increased by 23.7 after the addition of several new routes. The group had previously announced including added nine new routes to Austria and a single route to Bosnia and Herzegovina. On Tuesday, Wizz Air announced that it would be taking advantage of extra capacity at Wroclaw airport in Poland, adding five new routes including Bari, Vilnius and Athens. Ryanair (LON:RYA) also announced an increase in passenger numbers on Wednesday, with customers rising 6 percent in March to 10.0 million up from 9.4 million a year earlier. Load factor improved to 95 percent from 94 percent “on the back of lower fares”.

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is planning to replace Intel’s (NASDAQ: INTC) processors in Macs with the company’s own chips from as early as 2020. In a big move that will affect both companies, Apple is reportedly working on new chip designs that will be used in laptops starting with the 12-inch MacBook. The news was reported by Bloomberg, saying that the development of plans is still “in early developmental stages”. News of the group’s plans resulted in Intel taking a hit, with share prices dropping six percent over Monday. The switch in chips is not one taken lightly and will require lots of work from Apple. Apple developers will need to fully rewrite many of the software programs, as well as the company shipping an emulator that could run older code at reduced speeds. Shannon Cross, an analyst at Cross Research, said of the change: “We think that Apple is looking at ways to further integrate their hardware and software platforms, and they’ve clearly made some moves in this space, trying to integrate iOS and macOS.” “It makes sense that they’re going in this direction. If you look at incremental R&D spend, it’s gone into ways to try to vertically integrate their components so they can add more functionality for competitive differentiation.” The tech giant’s new chips will be made with the hope to allow all of Apple’s devices to work together “seamlessly”.