Asda has warned that measures in the government’s budget will be a “big burden” for the supermarket chain, costing it £100m, and could prevent it from raising wages or hiring as many staff, as it struggles to turn around falling sales.
The company made the warning on Friday as other UK retailers’ share prices took a hit as stock market investors continued to digest the implications of the changes to employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) announced in the Labour chancellor Rachel Reeves’s first budget.
