The business was founded in 1860 by Josiah Hancock, initially offering a clock-winding service during the city’s cotton boom. It later moved from its first Piccadilly location to King Street, where it has remained for more than a century.

Owner Roy Lunt said: “Jewellery styles may evolve, but our commitment to quality, service and beauty never changes. Celebrating 165 years of heritage in Manchester is a moment of immense pride for the entire team.”

Hancocks has sold hand-selected diamonds, coloured gemstones and bespoke jewellery to generations of customers in Greater Manchester and beyond.

Its collection reflects changing design eras, from 1950s gem-set pieces to 1970s abstraction and today’s focus on high-quality stones such as emeralds, rubies and sapphires.

The company is recognised as a specialist in diamonds and precious stones, serving clients across the UK and overseas.

The opening represents a revival of the Searle and Co brand, under a separate operator that shares the name, that previously traded at the scheme for 125 years.

The company has taken the 519 sq ft unit 1, which is an external-facing store looking out onto Cornhill, on a new 10-year lease.

The boutique was home to the previous incarnation of Searle and Co from 1896, prior to its closure in 2021.

Searle and Co joins other luxury brands at The Royal Exchange like Tiffany and Co., Bremont, Omega, Montblanc and Hermès.

Andrew Hilston, managing director of The Ardent Companies UK, said: “It is fantastic to see a historic jewellery brand such as Searle and Co return to The Royal Exchange, and highlights its position as the City of London’s leading luxury scheme. Alongside the new dining operators we have brought in, The Royal Exchange is the Square Mile’s destination of choice for premium shopping, eating and socialising.”

In 2024, The Royal Exchange saw footfall 20% up on 2023, with December visitors some 36% higher than during the same month in the previous year.

In parallel, The City of London is undergoing a wider resurgence as a luxury retail and social destination, with The Royal Exchange aiming to play a key role in the revival.

The once mighty monolith was the first British retailer to reach a market capitalisation of £1bn and has been a mainstay of shopping districts up and down the country for as long as anyone can remember. Yet, incumbents eventually fall, and today’s news provides a stark picture for the brand’s future.

I point again to M&S today because the stock market value of challenger online fashion firm, Boohoo, has just overtaken that of ‘sparks’, after enjoying a huge year-on-year increase in sales for the weeks before Christmas Day. Boohoo’s revenue rose 44% during that period, and the financial report disclosing that fact caused shares to climb 5% to 334p, while M&S shares were down 2% to 185p and a market capitalisation of £3.6bn.

But things get worse. The credit rating agency Moody’s today added insult to injury, claiming it was mulling cutting the M&S investment rating to “junk” status. In case that is in any way unclear: that means they advise investors to steer well clear of the shares. The firm has already been taken down a peg in the last year, having dropped out of the FTSE 100 for the first time since that index was created. It’s the slow and painful decline of a 136-year-old brand that generations of people have known.

Boohoo on the other hand, appeared in 2006 in Manchester, and has captured a big chunk of the teenage and early-twenties market, a generation which is accustomed to fast fashion, low prices, and making purchases on their phones for home delivery.

But Boohoo’s success is not just down to its product range or snazzy logistics, it has also been a pioneer (at least from the marketer’s perspective) in its eschewal of glossy magazines and television advertising in favour of social media. It has made extensive use of Instagram posts for a fee by ‘influencers’.

These can be anything from singers and actors to whatever Kim Kardashian’s profession is, but also simply private individuals who have painstakingly built large followings of their own, becoming famous for YouTube makeup tutorials or nomadic travelling lifestyles.

It’s the new way, and such a difference in sales performance, investor interest, and more importantly, business model, suggests things may get yet messier as the retail world realigns for the technology of the age. Which never stops advancing.

Inflation falls fast after festive discounting

The rate of inflation is at its lowest for just over three years, after retailers discounted hard during December, according to the Office for National Statistics. While falling inflation will be good for people’s purchasing power vis-à-vis their wages in the short term, it is overall a sign of economic weakness at the end of 2019.

The City had anticipated inflation somewhere in the region of 1.5%, but while basis points may seem insignificant to the average punter, they mean quite a lot when you scale them up to measurements of a nation’s economy. That’s why inflation of 1.3% in December means the Bank of England will now be under even greater pressure to cut interest rates when the Monetary Policy Committee convenes at the end of January.

It is the latest in a small string of negative results concerning economic performance at the end of 2019, and while it is possible that the paralysis of parliament, followed by a particularly bruising general election may have been a significant dampener, we cannot discount the possibility that it’s a symptom of a more deep-rooted malaise in the economy.

Successful emergency landing for Flybe

While still not fully out of the woods, it does seem as though Europe’s largest regional airline will survive. Government ministers have arrived at a deal with the firm’s shareholders which will keep its planes in the air for the foreseeable future. The deal reportedly features a loan worth £100m and the postponement of £106m in air passenger duty which Flybe currently owes.

There are more hands on deck than just the government though – the owner of the Flybe, Connect Airways, has agreed to commit an unspecified number of millions of pounds to take up the slack of the firm’s existing losses.

The putative arrangements have ruffled feathers elsewhere in the industry. IAG, which owns British Airways, has described the proposed bailout arrangements as a “misuse of public funds”, with the CEO Willie Walsh accusing Virgin (which heads the Connect Airways consortium) of asking taxpayers to underwrite their “mismanagement of the airline”.

It’s a classic case of the libertarian free market vs. paternal state: do we save a failing company to protect the jobs and the industry, or do we let market forces run their course?

Answers on Twitter, if you feel strongly either way…

Under expansion plans in the UAE, the brand also opened a concession stand at Galeries Lafayette in Dubai Mall.

The City Centre Mirdif store was designed with the aim to create a luxurious shopping environment, complete with gold chandeliers and marble and gold cabinets.

The shops will feature Monica Vinader’s collections ranging from friendship bracelets to gemstone diamonds collections. It will also offer complimentary in-house customisation.

Monica Vinader, CEO and founder, said: “I am honoured that the brand has been so well received in Dubai and I am thrilled that we are opening our first store in the prestigious Mall of Emirates.”

The family-run business, which last year opened a new store in Drakes Circus Shopping Centre, picked up the award at the James Bond-themed black tie event at Plymouth Pavilions on Thursday, October 22.

The City and Waterfront Awards, hosted by local paper the Plymouth Herald, is an annual event that celebrates the success of local businesses in the community.

Businesses from across the city were nominated by the general public before they voted for who they wanted to win the awards. Some 787 nominations were placed and 35,500 votes were received before a final decision was made by a judging panel.

Andrew Hirshman, director, said: “We are so proud and delighted to have been named as Plymouth’s Best Independent Fashion Retailer. We are very privileged to have such a great team behind us which enable us to win awards like this.

“What makes this so special is that the City and Waterfront awards are voted for by the general public and we are honoured that they took the time to nominate and vote for us. Overall, a fantastic evening surrounded by great company from across a city we are fiercely proud of.”

In last year’s award Drakes picked up the ‘Business of the Year’ award.

Drakes, which is currently expanding into Plymouth’s Drake Circus Shopping Centre, received the award at the black tie event on October 8.

The firm was selected for the award by a judging panel consisting of local press and city centre management, and a statement from the company said they were “thrilled to win this award.”

Andrew Hirshman, director of Drakes Jewellers, said: “We are both delighted and honoured to have won this fantastic award. I am incredibly proud of all of the hard work that our team put in to make these successes happen.

“We feel privileged to be part of the Plymouth Community and it’s great to share in celebrating local achievements. The coming months are going to be very exciting for our business and this is the perfect way to get into the spirit.”

The City and Waterfronts Awards, an annual event, celebrates the success of local business in Plymouth.

Birmingham’s council has been at the centre of a lengthy dispute over equal pay.  The legal bill and the money needed to settle is thought to be somewhere in the region of £1bn.

In a statement, the NEC said: “Principal objectives of the proposed sale are to secure an investor who shares the vision and strategic ambitions of the NEC Group and to maximise the proceeds for Birmingham City Council. Bringing the NEC Group under private ownership will enable the business to take full advantage of its growth opportunities and reach the next stage of its development.”

The NEC Group is a major contributor to the West Midlands economy, and the firm claims it delivers direct and indirect economic value of £2 billion a year to the surrounding area, as well as supporting some 29,000 jobs in the region. The NEC added: “Securing and enhancing this economic impact is a key objective for Birmingham City Council.”

The City Council will invite potentially interested buyers to participate in a pre-qualification process while sale preparations are finalised, and intends to ensure that the existing uses of the exhibition centre, International Convention Centre and two arenas (LG Arena and National Indoor Arena) are preserved.

The City Council also intends to retain claw-back rights over certain land at the main NEC site, so ensuring that it preserves potential future development value from the site, which will be adjacent to the new Birmingham Interchange HS2 station when it is constructed.

The NEC Group also includes national ticketing agency (The Ticket Factory), a catering business (Amadeus) and NEC Group International which is involved in the operation of third party-owned venues.

Sir Albert Bore, Leader of Birmingham City Council, said: “A key purpose of the City Council investing in establishing the NEC Group more than 30 years ago was to drive economic development and regeneration.

“This has been achieved, but now the NEC Group has reached a point in its evolution where it needs to be able to adopt the financial disciplines of a private, rather than a council-owned company to enable the next stage of strategic development. In doing so, economic impact and job creation can be preserved and enhanced.

“An open sale process has been identified through an extensive strategic review process as the way to achieve full value for this internationally-renowned asset, whilst achieving the other principal objectives of enabling the Group to achieve its potential and growing economic impact.”

Martin Angle, chairman of the NEC Group, added: “We look forward to working with Birmingham City Council in preparing the NEC Group for this major step forward and believe that its iconic status and portfolio of venues and businesses is likely to attract strong interest from potential buyers, from both the UK and overseas.”

Birmingham City Council and the NEC Group have retained Gleacher Shacklock LLP as financial advisers and Wragge & Co LLP as legal advisers in relation to the sale process.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed today that sales volumes rose by 0.9 per cent compared to December. The City had expected a 0.4 per cent fall, further emphasising the surprising nature of these results.

The ONS figures also show that internet sales accounted for 12 per cent of total sales, up from nine per cent in January last year.

David Kern, the chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce, said: “The retail sales figures for January were far stronger than expected. After the December increase, which was affected by heavy pre-Christmas discounting, most analysts expected a small fall in January. This increase shows that the economy is slowly improving and supports our view that GDP will return to positive growth in the first quarter of the year.”