The Business Matrix: Saturday 8 February 2014

£1.46m loss for The Kooples

The French fashion brand The Kooples has found business tough in the UK and reported a 24 per cent widening of losses for 2013. Founded by three brothers in Paris, it filed a £1.46m loss for the year to September, against £1.17m for the previous period. But turnover ticked up 21 per cent to £18.5m.

Low number of new jobs created

The US economy created just 113,000 new jobs in January, well below market expectations. The weak result follows an increase of 75,000 jobs in December and adds to fears that the world’s largest economy is slowing. The overall jobless rate, however, fell to 6.6 per cent, its lowest level since October 2008.

Banks overvalued the Royal Mail

Banks pitching to work on the Royal Mail float valued the business at between £4bn and £4.8bn, far above the eventual £3.3bn flotation price, according to documents released by the Department for Business after Freedom of Information requests.