Jersey and Guernsey Coop customers approve dividend of 2% for second year running
Members of a major Jersey and Guernsey supermarket chain have voted to accept a lower dividend to customers in their membership scheme for the second year running.
The Board of Channel Islands Coop recommended continuing with the halved dividend of 2%, having made the "unprecedented adjustment" in 2024 due to difficult trading conditions.
Members agreed to the proposal and will be able to withdraw the payout from today (Thursday 22 May).
The Coop said: "Over 122,000 members can look forward to a share of £2.8 million dividend payment this year.
"Thank you to all our members who came along and voted in Jersey and Guernsey."
Five 10% discount weekends were also offered to members throughout 2024.
A public outcry followed the announcement of last year's reduced rate, although it was voted through by members following a year of financial hardship for the organisation that saw a net loss of £1.8 million in 2023.
Coop says its latest accounts show improvements with turnover increasing and a net profit of £800,000 in 2024.
The Annual Meeting of Members (AMM) took place in Jersey on Tuesday 20 May, and on Wednesday 21 May in Guernsey.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘We're being attacked all the time': how UK banks stop hackers
It is every bank boss's worst nightmare: a panicked phone call informs them a cyber-attack has crippled the IT system, rapidly unleashing chaos across the entire UK financial industry. As household names in other industries, including Marks & Spencer, grapple with the fallout from such hacks, banking executives will be acutely aware that, for them, the stakes are even higher. Within hours of a successful bank hack, millions of direct debits could fail, leaving rents, mortgages and wages unpaid. Online banking may be blocked, cash machine withdrawals denied, and commuters left in limbo as buses and petrol stations reject payments. News of the attack could spark panic, leading to a run on rival lenders, as customers pull money from their accounts amid fear the disruption could spread. This situation may seem far-fetched but it is not a long way off from the government's 'reasonable worst-case scenario' if a sophisticated cyber-attack hit a big UK bank. With the financial industry among 14 sectors categorised as 'critical national infrastructure', it is no surprise that a hack is listed on the national risk register, which models some of the biggest threats facing the UK. Billions of pounds are being spent preventing the kind of devastating attacks that shut down systems at three retailers, Harrods, the Co-op and M&S, this spring. 'The amount of money [that] banks, all of us, will be spending on our systems is enormous today. And it has to be,' the UK chief executive of HSBC, Ian Stuart, told MPs last month. 'We are being attacked all the time.' HSBC alone is having to invest hundreds of millions of pounds to protect itself, Stuart said. 'This is our biggest expense.' Globally, banks are expected to allocate 11% of their IT budgets to cybersecurity in 2025, according to an EY study. With those IT budgets forecast to hit $290bn (£214bn) this year, according to the research body Celent, banks could end up shelling out $32bn on cybersecurity by December. It is a new era for high street banks, as attempted heists evolve from criminals in balaclavas hitting physical branches and vaults to state-sponsored hackers and independent cybergroups looking for ransom payments or merely to cause mass disruption. 'Banks have understood the risk far better than probably a lot of other industries. They've invested far more in security,' said Stuart McKenzie, a managing director for Mandiant Consulting, a Google-owned cybersecurity company that works closely with a number of lenders in the UK. Last month the governor of the Bank of England told the BBC that cybersecurity was a risk that was never going away because it continually evolved. 'We're dealing with bad actors who will continually refine the lines of attack. And I always have to say to institutions: 'You've got to continue to work at this,'' Andrew Bailey said. However, protecting systems is a complex task. Most high street banks operate on an onion-like IT system, with layers upon layers of updates, patches and add-ons. Throw third-party software and cloud providers into the mix, and banks are left playing whack-a-mole. 'We call it the attack surface,' Alan Woodward, a professor and cybersecurity expert at the University of Surrey, said. 'The attack surface has actually increased, so the opportunities for attackers to try to look for ways in have also increased.' No bank hacks to date have been disruptive enough to bring a country to an economic standstill – although April's power blackout across the Iberian peninsula exposed how reliant modern societies are on digital payments. Where hackers have been successful, they have more often than not targeted banks' customer data and accounts. In 2021, attackers on the US bank Morgan Stanley stole personal information belonging to its corporate clients by hacking into a server used by a third-party consulting company. A year earlier, at the start of the Covid pandemic, attackers got hold of staff mailboxes at the Italian state-owned bank Monte dei Paschi, and sent emails to clients with voicemail attachments. Meanwhile, one of the most devastating hacks on a UK bank came in 2016, when criminals found a way to guess bank card details and steal almost £2.5m from 9,000 accounts at Tesco Bank. Tesco was forced to halt all online and contactless card transactions after struggling to block fake purchases taking place around the world, including Spain and Brazil. Tesco Bank eventually reimbursed customers in full. The National Cyber Security Centre says customers who suspect a hack should contact their bank using their official website or social media channels, and avoid using any links or contact details they have been sent. The organisation should be able to confirm if a hack has actually taken place, how they have been affected and what they need to do next. The Bank of England has tried to stay a step ahead. Policymakers officially recognised cybersecurity as a risk to financial stability in 2013 and started to implement cyber resilience standards for all regulated banks and insurers under its supervision. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion That involved the launch of 'CBEST', a world-first scheme in which ethical hackers test a single bank's potential vulnerabilities with a cutting-edge attack. 'Nothing is 100% secure,' Woodward said, but the UK banking system comes close. 'A lot of it has to do with the oversight', particularly by the central bank. 'They gather threats and intelligence from MI5, GCHQ, NCSC, all the usual people, and then they actually try real scenarios out to see how robustly a bank can withstand that,' he said. The central bank also coordinates multiday cyberwar games as part of its SIMEX – simulation exercise – programme every two years to test City companies' security. Authorities are tested, too, and the Bank, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Treasury and the National Cyber Security Centre review their response to a range of devastating scenarios. Regulators are not just checking banks' preventive measures. Policymakers assume a cyber-attack will eventually be successful and are therefore pushing banks to prepare their response and recover plans that would avoid long-lasting outages that could bring pockets of the economy to a standstill. The Cross Market Business Continuity Group, which brings together regulators and members of the bank industry body UK Finance, boasts the ability to summon about 100 companies for emergency group calls in under an hour to discuss a potential attack. Fending off a hack is seen as vital to protect an industry that ultimately trades on trust: customers expect lenders to keep their information, wages and life savings protected from outside threats. 'If somebody breaks in there and manages to make a fraudulent transaction … you're not going to trust that bank again with your money, are you?' Woodward said. Banks have already experienced the backlash that can erupt from mere IT outages, without any malicious actors trying to disrupt the banking system or steal data and cash. TSB has for years been working to restore its reputation after its IT meltdown in 2018, caused by its botched separation from Lloyds' internal systems, which left millions of banking customers locked out of their accounts for weeks. The lender was subsequently fined £48m for 'widespread and serious' failings. Outages have continued to plague customers of Britain's largest banks and building societies, who suffered the equivalent of more than a month of IT failures between January 2023 and February 2025, according to the data gathered by the parliamentary Treasury committee. 'The security of customer money and data is of paramount importance to banks, not just because it's a requirement under regulation but because it's the way that banks do business,' Laura Catterick, a director focused on resilience and cybersecurity at UK Finance, said. 'I would say, never rule out a cyber-attack. But I would say, there should be confidence in the amount of cyber defences in place.'
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Daily Mail
Tesco basks in the sun as sales surge - but boss warns Labour tax hikes are fuelling inflation
Cyber security drive The boss of Tesco said cyber security was a top priority after a high-profile attack on Marks & Spencer. 'This is probably top of my inbox on a daily, weekly basis. We stay on top of cyber all the time,' said Ken Murphy. 'We have invested continuously in upgrading our cyber capabilities, because this is a moving target.' M&S was attacked over Easter by hackers who stole the data of millions of customers. It only restored online shopping this week after 46 days. The Co-op and Harrods have also recently fallen victim to cyber attacks. Recent warm weather has given Tesco a boost as shoppers snap up its picnic food and summer clothing. Britain's largest supermarket said sales in the UK rose 5.1 per cent to £12.3billion in the 13 weeks to May 24. 'The summer weather, the good weather, is definitely helpful,' said chief executive Ken Murphy. But with a supermarket price war raging, he warned the grocery market was 'intensely competitive'. And he said Labour's tax increases were fuelling inflation. 'There are definitely continued inflationary pressures on the market,' said Murphy. 'I think you've got to look at things like the impact of all the new taxation and regulatory costs on the industry.' Total sales across the Tesco business, which includes stores in Ireland and central Europe, rose 4.6 per cent to £16.4billion in the first quarter. And its market share in the UK has risen to 28 per cent as its premium range drove sales up. But Tesco stuck to profit guidance for the year of between £2.7billion and £3billion, given the fierce supermarket rivalry. 'We're seeing intense competition from all aspects of the market,' said Murphy. 'Our guidance reflects that and continues to reflect that.' In April, Murphy warned that Tesco was ready to take a £400million hit to profits this year as the competition hots up. Speaking yesterday, he said he was 'pleased' with the group's performance as it attracted new customers by matching prices at Aldi on more than 600 items. Customers are dining at home more and eating more fresh food, according to Murphy. But supermarkets and their supply chains have had to grapple with higher cost pressures in the wake of measures introduced in Chancellor Rachel Reeves's autumn Budget. A sharp increase in employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs) and a big increase in the national minimum wage have hit businesses. Retailers face a £5billion higher bill after the Budget, according to the British Retail Consortium. Tesco said it will pay an extra £235million in the current financial year as a result of the NICs hike. The supermarket announced earlier this year that it would be cutting 400 jobs and Murphy has also refused to rule out further losses. Rising commodity prices for goods such as cocoa, meat and poultry are also piling on the 'greatest pressure' to food prices, he said. The supermarket is the 'best-in-class player' in UK food, said the Royal Bank of Canada's analysts Manjari Dhar and Richard Chamberlain. 'It has done well to gain market share in recent years, but we note a step up in competitiveness by some key peers may mean that further gains are more difficult to come by,' the pair added. Garry White, chief investment commentator at Charles Stanley, said: 'Britain's largest grocer has delivered a resilient performance despite a price war initiated by Asda and waning consumer confidence.' Tesco shares rose 1.6 per cent, or 6.3p, to 391.6p yesterday.
Times
3 days ago
- Times
Tesco sent extra stocks to bail out M&S during cyberattack
Britain's biggest supermarket stepped in to supply extra stocks of Marmite and Coca-Cola to Marks & Spencer while it was hit by a crippling cyberattack, its boss has revealed. Ken Murphy, chief executive of Tesco, said that M&S and some of the Co-Op's independent societies asked Booker, Tesco's wholesale arm, for support sourcing products while their supply systems were down. 'Over the period when they've been impacted, Booker has supplied both M&S and Co-op with products and supported them in any way they could,' he said. 'They asked us to supply products and we said yes.' In M&S's case, Booker is understood to have increased deliveries of third-party branded items, such as the household staples Marmite and Coca-Cola, and shipped more items directly to shops. The main Co-op Group did not request assistance for its supermarkets but it is understood that some of its independent societies temporarily turned to Booker. Independent Co-op societies are consumer co-operatives that operate independently within the Co-operative Group while maintaining their own distinct ownership and governance. The support was short term and both companies have since restored their operations after the cyberattack. M&S was arguably the worst affected: its online business was knocked offline for nearly two months. It has warned that the attack was likely to dent its profits this year by at least £300 million. M&S relaunched its website this week and resumed online orders, prompting a surge of customer demand. Many shoppers had left items in their online baskets, ready to buy once the site came back online. The company declined to comment on which products had proved most popular since the relaunch. The request for support from Britain's largest supermarket highlights the severity of the disruption and also reflects a rare moment of collaboration in the competitive grocery sector. Tesco, which reported an increase in like-for-like sales over the past three months, insisted that this had not been because of the cyberattacks at M&S and Co-Op. 'We haven't seen any uptick in activity or attacks since some of our competitors were attacked,' Murphy said. 'We haven't seen any material changes.' He emphasised that cybersecurity was at the 'top of my inbox on a daily, weekly basis'. 'We stay on top of cyber all the time. We have invested continuously in upgrading our cyber-capabilities because this is a moving target all the time. As the sophistication of potential attackers improves, we have to keep investing behind it. 'We stay very vigilant. We invest substantially behind it. We seek to learn from what's going on in the industry,' Murphy said.
