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France’s Fight Against Fast Fashion

Sylvie Gallage-Alwis, Partner at Signature Litigation, explains how a bill passing through the French Parliament aims to challenge unsustainable business models in the apparel sector.   

Fast fashion has transformed how we buy our clothes, generating more than US$1.7 billion in global sales revenues last year. More recently, ultra-fast fashion clothing has emerged, providing greater choice at an even lower cost. Despite the obvious benefits to consumers, the French Parliament wants to limit its environmental and sustainability impact through regulation. A bill (no. 2129) passed in March 2024 by the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, is a first step in that direction.

As a relatively new phenomenon, no legal definition exists. Although the English phrase ‘fast fashion’ is commonplace in France, specific French terms are also used, which translate as: short-lived fashion, express fashion, flash fashion, and disposable fashion. Such label diversity makes itdifficult to define legally.

It could be argued that a company creates fast fashion when production cycles are shortened to ensure a constant renewal of product lines at low prices. Mass production now dominates, representing seven out of every ten items of clothing sold in France. But companies producing ultra-fast fashion go further still: even cheaper than their competitors, they offer up to 10,000 new items in real time online – up to 900 times more products than traditional French brands.

Fast fashion was clearly targeted in a report published in February 2024 by France’s General Inspectorate for the Environment and Sustainable Development (IGEDD). Using the criterion of synthetic fibres in the manufacture of clothing, it accused fast fashion companies of creating pollution through their use of microplastics.

Other attempts to define fast fashion have focused on the number of new product lines, known as ‘references’, an industry-specific practice. Following discussion in the French National Assembly over Bill no. 2129, the definition of fast fashion was extended to include sales made online.

Included in the bill’s definition is a calculation of the number of references “displayed on the electronic interface” by e-market suppliers – to be based on thresholds set by decree by the French Council of State. Notably, the number of unsold items will not be considered in the calculation, provided that these unsold items were not originally owned by the sellers.

The French Parliament has tried to regulate fast fashion before – for example, the 2020 ‘anti-waste’ law, which introduced a

Roaring Kitty’s GameStop stake grows to 9 million shares after selling his big options position

Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty, hosting a YouTube livestream on June 7th, 2024. Source: Roaring Kitty | YouTube

Meme stock champion Keith Gill, known as “Roaring Kitty” online, seemed to increase his ownership in GameStop‘s common stock and appears to be holding more than 9 million shares.

Gill posted a new screenshot of his E-Trade portfolio on Reddit’s Superstonk forum after the bell Thursday, showing that he is now holding 9.001 million GameStop shares and over $6 million in cash. On June 2, the first day he started disclosing his position in 2024’s meme stock frenzy, his portfolio had 5 million shares as well as 120,000 call options against GameStop.

Call options give the holder the right, but not the obligation, to buy shares at a specified price by a certain expiration date.

It’s hard to decipher what Gill did exactly to get to this position. He could have dumped all of 120,000 call contracts and used the proceeds to buy the additional shares, or he could have sold a portion of the massive options position and exercised the rest early.

Arrows pointing outwards

There was a huge spike in trading volume Wednesday afternoon of GameStop calls contracts with a strike price of $20 and an expiration date of June 21, the same ones Gill owned. The phenomenon, along with sliding prices in GameStop shares and call options, led many to believe Gill had started offloading.

Many had speculated that Gill wouldn’t have held onto those calls to expiration. For Gill to exercise all of his calls, he would have needed to have $240 million to take custody of the stock — 12 million shares bought at $20 apiece — way more than he had shown publicly in his E-Trade account.

The total value of Gill’s portfolio, including cash, reached more than $268 million as of Thursday evening, up from $210 million on June 2.

GameStop shares surged more than 14% Thursday.

The video game retailer’s annual shareholder meeting was disrupted by computer problems Thursday, as servers crashed under overwhelming interest in the stream.

GameStop recently raised more than $2 billion in an equity sale as the company took advantage of the revived meme rally. GameStop said it intends to use the money for general corporate purposes, which may include acquisitions and investments.

CNBC

The World’s Top Retail Companies, by Domestic Revenue

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June 13, 2024 Graphics/Design:

See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.

The World’s Top Retail Companies, by Domestic Revenue

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

The retail sector plays a vital role in powering economies, contributing $5.3 trillion annually to America’s GDP alone.

Moreover, the industry is America’s biggest private-sector employer, responsible for one of every four jobs, or 55 million employees. Yet in today’s challenging consumer environment, retailers are facing higher e-commerce penetration and inflationary pressures—across an industry notoriously known for razor-thin margins.

This graphic shows the world’s top retail companies by domestic revenue, based on data from the National Retail Federation.

Methodology

To be included in the rankings, companies must engage in a goods-for-consumer resale business accessible to the public and have direct selling operations in a minimum of three countries.

The rankings include both publicly and private companies, and are based on the most recent 52-week period analyzed by the National Retail Federation between January and March 2024. All revenue figures were converted to U.S. dollars.

Ranked: The Top 10 Global Retailers by Domestic Sales

Here are the leading retailers worldwide based on domestic sales as of 2023:

RankingRetailerDomestic Retail Revenue
(USD)Share of Total Retail RevenueHeadquarters 1Walmart$532.3B85%🇺🇸 U.S. 2Amazon.com$250.0B70%🇺🇸 U.S. 3Costco$175.4B75%🇺🇸 U.S. 4The Home Depot$142.0B94%🇺🇸 U.S. 5Walgreens Boots Alliance$105.1B89%🇺🇸 U.S. 6Alibaba$91.5B97%🇨🇳 China 7Apple$70.9B87%🇺🇸 U.S. 8Aeon$64.3B93%🇯🇵 Japan 9Schwarz Group$56.5B32%🇩🇪 Germany 10Rewe$55.5B75%🇩🇪 Germany

Walmart towers ahead as the world’s largest retailer with $532 billion in domestic revenue—more than Amazon.com and Costco combined.

Known for its everyday low prices, Walmart achieves a competitive advantage through pricing goods approximately 25% cheaper than traditional retail competitors. Overall, groceries make up more than half of total sales. While its main customer base is often low and middle-income shoppers, the retail giant is seeing a surge in sales from higher-income customers as shoppers seek out lower grocery prices.

E-commerce giant, Amazon, is the second-biggest retailer globally, commanding nearly 40% of online retail sales in America. Since 2019, the number of Amazon

Bank of England Rates Decision: What to Expect on June 20

Unlike May’s meeting, June 20’s decision will just be accompanied by a brief statement rather than the full monetary policy report and press briefing. So if there is no change to interest rates this week, there will be little guidance on when this is likely to happen.

Alongside the statement, one clue will come from the voting patterns: last month seven members of the monetary policy committee voted to hold, while two voted for a cut. It’s likely that more of the MPC join the cut cohort, but probably not enough to force a decision.

Money markets, as measured by overnight index swaps, suggest that August 1 is still the most likely date for the Bank of England to make its first rate cut since 2020.

August seems more likely from the point of view of the Bank’s calendar; the quarterly monetary policy report and press conference give policymakers more scope to explain decisions.

General Election is Hard to Ignore

The looming election is also a factor. While the Bank is proud of its political neutrality, common sense would lean towards waiting until after the election on July 4 to make a decision on interest rates. Opinion polls suggest a new government will be in power by the time the Bank next meets in August, and that will change the dynamic of economic forecasting, with new tax and spending plans in place.

In recent years, the Bank’s monetary policy and government fiscal policy have notionally worked in tandem. While shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has ruled out an emergency budget on coming to power, the Labour party is likely to make significant changes to the economy this and next year.

But there is the chance of a surprise cut in June, says Morningstar’s European market strategist Michael Field, with inflation’s fall backing the case.

“Although the majority of economists are predicting the first rate cut in August, that majority is slim. In fact, a recent Reuters poll had more than 40% of economists suggesting this long-awaited rate cut would actually come in June.” 

Does the Data Back a Rate Cut?

In terms of UK economic data, not too much has changed to tip the balance towards a cut. On the side of “hold”, services sector wage growth, a concern of Bank officials, is still high. But May inflation is expected to have hit the 2% target, according to FactSet consensus, in

There is no need to lose our minds over the Jevons paradox

A few years ago, two San Francisco doctors, Mary Mercer and Christopher Peabody, persuaded the busy hospital where they worked to conduct an experiment. They replaced their clunky and inflexible old pagers with a cheaper, more flexible and more powerful system. It’s called WhatsApp.

As the podcast Planet Money reported last year, the pilot was not a success. The chief reason? Messaging became too easy. To interrupt a busy consultant by paging them to demand a return phone call was a serious step, taken with care. But with WhatsApp, why not snap a photograph or even a video message and zip it over just to get a spot of advice? Doctors were soon swamped.

To students of energy economics, this story sounds awfully familiar. It’s the Jevons paradox. William Stanley Jevons was born in 1835 in Liverpool, in a country made rich by a coal-fuelled industrial revolution. He was about to turn 30 when he published the book that made his name as an economist, The Coal Question. Jevons warned that Britain’s coal would soon run out (an eye-catching warning that turned out to be wrong) but, more intriguingly, he warned that energy efficiency was no solution.

“It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption,” he explained. “The very contrary is the truth.”

Imagine developing a more efficient blast furnace, one that would produce more iron for less coal. These more economical furnaces would proliferate. Jevons argued that more iron would be produced, which was a good thing, but the consumption of coal itself would not decline.

Is this right? In a mild form, Jevons’ analysis is certainly correct. When an energy-consuming technology becomes more efficient, we’ll use more of it. Consider light. In the late 1700s, President George Washington calculated that burning a single candle for five hours a night all year would cost him £8. Relative to incomes of the time, that is about $1,000 in today’s money. These fine spermaceti candles were pricey enough to leave even a rich man such as Washington carefully conserving them.

Modern lighting is far more economical and therefore used with abandon. LEDs are many times brighter than candles, and we use much more light and save much less energy than we otherwise could have done.

The stronger form of Jevons’ warning

Stocks making the biggest moves midday: Broadcom, Signet, Dave & Buster’s and more

Wise’s fee cuts are a cautionary tale for fintech fans

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SEC intensifies scrutiny on ‘AI washing’

The US securities regulator has warned firms not to falsely advertise the use of artificial intelligence in their investment products, adding those that engage in ‘AI washing’ may face enforcement action.

“It is a nice thing to advertise to show investors that ‘hey, we are cutting-edge’, but if the firm is not actually using it, it can attract the attention of enforcement,” said Maurya Keating, associate regional director for the investment adviser and investment company examination programme at

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UK real estate industry set for private equity cash injection

UK real estate businesses believe private equity will be the main source of investment over the next 12 months, according to a recent survey by accounting firm RSM UK, with 42% of ranking PE ahead of high street banks (37%) and foreign investors (32%).

In addition, 43% of all businesses surveyed by the audit, tax and consulting firm expect private rented sector and residential to see the most investment growth, followed by student housing at 24%, up from 19% last year.

Scotland also moved into the top three behind London and the South East as the UK regions expected to attract the most residential property investment over the next three years.