Success sees John Lewis staff share £140m bonus pot

JOHN Lewis is expected to pay its 70,000 staff a total of £140 million in bonuses this week as the employee-owned department store and supermarket group unveils recession-defying profits.

• John Lewis is preparing to post bumper profit figures for both its department stores, above, and the Waitrose supermarket chain

The payout – which would represent about 14 per cent of workers' annual salaries – comes as the group prepares to post bumper profits for the year to 31 January, which are expected to have risen from 280m last year to 315m this year.

Last year's bonuses were slashed by 31 per cent after a 26 per cent fall in profits.

A busy second half is thought to have helped offset a slow start to 2009 for the John Lewis Partnership, which also owns the Waitrose grocery chain.

The firm did recently suffer the detrimental effect of the snow and ice – keeping shoppers away from its stores during its peak post-Christmas clearance week – but pent-up demand has since seen a strong rebound.

According to recent figures by industry researcher Kantar Worldpanel, Waitrose saw its market share rise to 4.3 per cent in the 12 weeks to 21 February from the same period a year ago.

Sales figures from the group showed both the department stores and the supermarkets outperforming 2009 in recent trading: John Lewis stores saw a 14.8 per cent sales increase for the week to 27 February; the Waitrose chain grew 11.7 per cent. Howard Archer, chief European and UK economist at IHS Global Insight, said John Lewis had enjoyed a "highly satisfactory" February, which bodes well for the whole retail industry.

He added: "Even allowing for the fact that John Lewis has been outperforming the sector as a whole, this robust performance boosts hopes that retail sales bounced back appreciably in February after being hit hard in January by the very bad weather."