John Lewis announces £151 million bonus pot

John Lewis has today announced a £151 million bonus pot for the company's 70,000 staff with profits for the group as a whole up by 9.7% to £307 million last year. The company has proved resilient during the UK recession and the £151 million bonus pot equates to around 15% of staff annual salary - or eight weeks pay - which compares favourably to the 13% level last year. So what does 2010 hold for John Lewis?

Despite the impressive £307 million profits for the year to 30 January 2010 the company is expecting yet another challenging year in 2010 with the future direction of the UK economy unclear at the moment. These comments are indicative of the feeling within the UK retail sector despite the fact that recent economic news has been more positive than negative on the whole. One major problem we could encounter over the next few months is "talking ourselves into a recession" with consumers unclear about the immediate prospects for the UK economy and businesses concerned about over investing in the short term.

It will be interesting to see how other retailers have fared in the UK because slowly but surely we are seeing a divergence in performance over the last few months between different sectors of the retail market and different retail companies.