‘Global greedflation’: big firms ‘drive shopping bills to record highs’
Large corporations have fuelled inflation with price increases that go beyond rising raw materials and wages costs, pushing shopping bills to record highs, according to analysis of hundreds of company accounts.
Highlighting a trend dubbed “greedflation”, the research shows supermarkets, food manufacturers and shipping companies are among hundreds of major firms who have improved their profits and protected shareholder dividends, giving an extra lift to prices, while the cost of living crisis has meant workers face the biggest fall in living standards in a century.
Analysis of the top 350 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange, by a team of researchers at Unite, the UK’s largest private sector trade union, showed that average profit margins – a company’s revenue above the cost of sales – rose from 5.7% in the first half of 2019, to 10.7% in the first half of 2022.
“This means the average profit margin of firms in the FTSE 350 jumped 89% in the first half of 2022 compared with the first half of 2019,” the report said.
In the UK, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda made combined profits of £3.2bn in 2021, almost double pre-pandemic levels, Unite’s 170-page report shows.
Global food manufacturers such as Unilever and Nestlé have also increased profits and profit margins over the last 18 months.
Higher profits margins are the result of “tacit collusion” by large companies, adding to the prices of hundreds of goods and services that were already under pressure after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the report said.
“Profiteering is a reflection of Britain’s broken economy. From price gouging to state-licensed monopolies in energy and utilities, the choices made by corporations are revealed to have caused historic ‘price spiralling’ – and
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