Loblaws
profits increased from $128 million to $201 million for the fourth quarter.
Sales
increased by only 2.3 per cent to $10.8 billion.
Just
before the quarter began, Loblaws dinged suppliers with a retroactive reduction
of payments on invoices, reducing their prices by one per cent. Sobeys, second
to Loblaws in the Canadian grocery retail business, did the same.
Loblaws also forecast that it will increase capital spending from $1.2
to $1.3 billion this year.
Bullying and greed appear to be the order of the day in the food business. Just read the Globe and Mail report yesterday on how 3G Capital fired all the top executives and many other lower-level supervisors at Tim Horton's.
