Aldi has been accused of desperation by senior retail figures after its UK chief executive attacked rival supermarkets’ loyalty schemes, just as industry data showed the discounter’s sales growth slowing sharply behind its competitors.

Giles Hurley, the chief executive of Aldi UK, used a piece in the Daily Mail last week to back the Government’s investigation into supermarket pricing, arguing that loyalty schemes offer shoppers a “false sense of value”. Shoppers, he said, were being bombarded with discounts that could make them believe they were getting a bargain when a rival supermarket was still cheaper.

“Taking £2 off a £6 product doesn’t make it good value if you can buy it for £3 somewhere else,” Hurley said.

The intervention went down badly across the industry. One senior retail adviser said Aldi was “completely talking their own book” by wading into the row over supermarket pricing, which is under investigation by the UK competition watchdog. “It was opportunistic, and in a way, perhaps a little bit desperate,” they said.

The timing is awkward for Aldi. Its sales rose by just 0.8 per cent in the 12 weeks to 8 August, according to NIQ, compared with 8.2 per cent at Lidl, 13 per cent at M&S, 17 per cent at Ocado and 3.6 per cent at Sainsbury’s. The slowdown is all the more significant because Aldi has continued opening new shops, with 40 more stores planned for 2026 as part of a £370 million expansion.

Clive Black, of Shore Capital, said the discounter was “protesting a bit too much”. He said: “The fact that customers are choosing to shop more at other retailers tells us something about Aldi, and it’s not just about price.”

Hurley, who joined the retailer nearly 30 years ago, took the top job in 2018 and oversaw the opening of Aldi’s 1,000th UK store in 2023. The company does not operate a loyalty scheme along the lines of Tesco’s Clubcard or Sainsbury’s Nectar Prices, and argues that shoppers should get its lowest prices without having to sign up, hand over their data or use a smartphone.

Its rivals, however, have become increasingly adept at copying its playbook. Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons are among those advertising “Aldi price match” products.

Aldi’s argument that shoppers are being duped also sits uneasily with the evidence gathered by the Competition and Markets Authority. The watchdog examined loyalty pricing across around 50,000 grocery products and found very little evidence that supermarkets were artificially inflating prices before applying discounts. Loyalty card members could “almost always” make a genuine saving against the normal price, it found, although some loyalty deals remained more expensive than the cheapest option elsewhere.

Black was equally dismissive. “British shoppers are not stupid,” he said, pointing out that Tesco and Sainsbury’s now compete with Aldi on hundreds of high volume products. “You can see that they’re growing more slowly than the big four, more slowly than Lidl,” he added.

The row comes at a significant moment for the discounters. The CMA has proposed extending the rules governing supermarket land agreements to Aldi and Lidl, arguing that their size and geographic reach mean they should now be treated like the established chains. Until now the discounters have had greater freedom to use restrictive agreements that can prevent rivals opening stores nearby, a freedom that has supported Aldi’s push to open new stores across the UK.

“I think they’re really feeling it, and the CMA ruling is a big thing for them actually, because until now they’ve had a lot of freedom,” Black said. “It’s a very significant moment in the development of the discounters here. It does have the potential to change the dynamics of the market.”

Aldi’s pricing strategy is also under renewed scrutiny from another direction. Earlier this year it cut the price of potatoes, carrots and parsnips to 4p, prompting fears that its cut price approach is offering shoppers unrealistic prices at the expense of British agriculture. Farmers are already under pressure from rising labour and input costs and increasingly unpredictable weather, and the Government’s Farming Profitability Review warned that farm input costs are expected to be 30 per cent higher this year than in 2020, calling for farmers to receive “a fair return for what they produce”.

Black believes supermarkets cannot compete endlessly to make food cheaper without eventually putting pressure on the people producing it. “To be devaluing fresh produce … giving a packet of carrots away for 8p when it costs £4.50 for a cup of coffee is just not helpful to the sustenance of the food system,” he said. “We need a food system from farm to fork that is financially sustainable. And I think that does involve paying more for food.”

Aldi rejects any suggestion that its low prices come at the expense of British farmers. It says it has committed £5 billion to British farming and food production through longer term agreements covering fruit, vegetables, dairy, meat and eggs, alongside £3 billion to British beef suppliers over five years and £1.1 billion to British egg production. The company says its model is based on efficiency rather than squeezing suppliers.

“Loyalty programmes are expensive to run and ultimately lead to higher prices,” an Aldi spokesman said. “We fundamentally believe that the best way to keep grocery bills low for customers is to keep things simple.”

Black, however, said the retailer should stop attacking its rivals. “When we saw Aldi effectively trying to badmouth competitors in a way that was encouraging politicians to get involved, I thought that was bad form,” he said.

Jamie Young

Jamie Young is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, covering SME finance, employment law and Westminster policy since 2016. He has reported on every Budget and Autumn Statement since 2018, helped make sense of the ‘covid era’ and the bounce-back loan scheme from launch through the fraud investigations, and broke the magazine’s coverage of the 2024 late-payment reforms. He joined Business Matters straight from completing his BA in Administration from Exeter University and is NCTJ-qualified. Reach him at jyoung@cbmeg.co.uk

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LOS ANGELES — Philadelphia 76ers forward Jaylen Brown said this week that he would most want to have experienced the 2016 NBA Finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors, a series he watched in person as a college student, as new video game feature NBA 2K27 lets players relive historic championship matchups from different NBA eras.

Brown spoke with ClutchPoints ahead of the release of NBA 2K27 this month, which introduces an “eras” feature to MyCareer mode allowing players to begin their in-game professional careers during different periods of NBA history. Asked which past NBA Finals he would want to experience, Brown pointed to the 2016 series between LeBron James’ Cavaliers and Stephen Curry’s Warriors, a matchup he watched firsthand while attending the University of California, Berkeley.

“I feel like one of the greatest Finals was that 2016 NBA Finals, where it was LeBron James and Kyrie Irving versus Stephen Curry, but I was there. I was there for every home game in Golden State, so I got to see all those games up close,” Brown said. That series, which went the full seven games, ended with Cleveland completing a comeback from a 3-1 series deficit to deliver the city its first professional sports championship in 52 years.

Brown said he had not settled on a definitive second choice when asked what other historic Finals he might want to experience. “What other finals would I have to see? I don’t know. That’s a good question. I’ll have to put some thought into that,” Brown said. “Maybe some like old traditional like Lakers versus Celtics could have been cool to see. Maybe that 2018 Finals being there for that, or maybe the 2010 Lakers playing versus the Celtics, maybe something to that degree or something like that, but I’m not sure.”

Brown was also asked which player in NBA history he would most want to team up with, and he pointed to Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell, with whom Brown shares a personal connection: Brown was named NBA Finals MVP in 2024 using the award now officially named after Russell. “Probably Bill Russell,” Brown said. “Just because of like what he stood for on as well as what he stood for off the court. And he was a winner on the court too, so that would be my choice.”

Brown’s connection to Celtics history runs deep given his eight seasons with the franchise, which included winning the 2024 NBA championship and earning Finals MVP honors before his surprise trade to Philadelphia this offseason. That trade brought him alongside center Joel Embiid, guard Tyrese Maxey and newly signed forward LeBron James, forming a roster that has quickly become one of the league’s most anticipated for the 2026-27 season.

NBA 2K27’s initial ratings reveal reflected the scale of Philadelphia’s roster overhaul. Maxey leads the team with a 92 overall rating, while James, Brown and Embiid are each rated 91 overall, marking the first time since NBA 2K17 that a single team has featured four players rated 90 or higher, according to ClutchPoints. The Golden State Warriors previously accomplished that feat in the earlier game with Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.

Brown has publicly embraced the pressure that comes with joining a star-studded roster built for immediate championship contention. In a separate recent livestream, Brown praised James’ physical condition heading into his 24th NBA season, saying, “LeBron is the [expletive]… I don’t even need to say what LeBron is. He looks good, healthy. It’s going to be that. We’re working, man.” James, 41, is expected to remain one of the league’s most productive veterans after averaging 20.9 points, 7.2 assists and 6.1 rebounds during his final season with the Lakers.

Philadelphia enters the 2026-27 season looking to build on a 2025-26 campaign that saw the team stun the Boston Celtics in a first-round comeback before being swept by the New York Knicks in the conference semifinals. With Brown, James, Embiid and Maxey now sharing the same roster, expectations for the Sixers have risen sharply heading into training camp, with Brown himself recently declaring he is looking to bring an aggressive, championship-driven mentality into his first season in Philadelphia.

The death toll from catastrophic flooding along the Nepal-China border passed 1,000 on Tuesday, authorities said, as China warned of a continued “major risk” of further glacier collapses and landslides even as rescue teams pressed deeper into remote areas cut off since last week’s disaster.

Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority reported 987 confirmed deaths as of Tuesday, with 3,916 people still listed as missing, including 583 foreign nationals, according to Euronews. In Tibet, Chinese authorities reported 16 deaths and 546 people still missing as of their most recent update. At least 11,814 people have been rescued so far in Nepal, according to the country’s disaster agency.

China’s Ministry of Water Resources said Monday there remains an ongoing threat of further collapses along the Cuojian River in Nepal, a waterway that flows into the Purepuqiang River in Tibet, according to state broadcaster CCTV. The ministry added there is also a risk that additional landslides could cause a new barrier lake to form downstream in Tibet, adding to the hazards facing rescue crews and remaining residents in the region.

The disaster was triggered when a glacier collapsed at Langtang Lirung, on the Nepalese side of the border, at an altitude of roughly 5,200 meters on Aug. 26. The resulting surge of ice, rock and meltwater traveled 22 kilometers down a mountain valley and reached the Gyirong Port border crossing in just seven minutes, according to calculations by Jeffrey Kargel, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, who found the flow moved at an average speed of roughly 193 kilometers per hour during that initial stretch. The collapse itself registered as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event, detectable by seismometers worldwide, according to Wikipedia’s summary of scientific findings on the disaster.

High-water marks examined on the mountainside opposite Gyirong Port showed floodwaters had reached more than 60 meters at their peak, roughly the height of a 20-story building, according to estimates from rescuers cited by CCTV. Rivers in some of the affected valleys rose by as much as 9 meters within just half an hour of the initial collapse, according to earlier reporting from Yahoo News.

Weather conditions have continued to complicate rescue operations. The China Meteorological Administration warned Monday of additional rain expected in Gyirong county over the following three days, cautioning that the precipitation could make roads along key rescue routes slippery and further hamper both search efforts and transport logistics. Zhang Taiyuan, a weather presenter with the administration, urged rescue and relief vehicles operating in the area to exercise extra caution given the deteriorating conditions.

More than 60 rescuers trekked for over 10 hours through mountainous terrain to reach the disaster’s core area on Sunday, according to CCTV, and have since searched roughly 40,000 square meters of the affected zone twice. Yao Xueqin, deputy head of a fire and rescue unit deployed to the region, said search teams have so far focused on clearing surface debris and will begin digging deeper into affected areas during later phases of the operation.

Efforts to reopen a critical stretch of national highway leading to Gyirong Port have also advanced. As of 4 p.m. Monday local time, crews had cleared and reopened several hundred meters of previously blocked road, leaving approximately 1.1 kilometers still to clear before reaching the border port, according to CCTV, which described the effort as having entered its “final push.” A temporary emergency communications base station near the Gyirong Port border gate became operational Sunday, allowing repair crews to reestablish contact with rescue teams working in the immediate disaster zone for the first time since communications were severed by the initial collapse.

Among those still missing, 261 are foreign nationals, according to China’s state news agency Xinhua, including 104 from Nepal, 49 from India, 33 from Latvia and 18 from the United States. Families on both sides of the border have continued posting on social media seeking information about missing relatives and friends who were near the Gyirong Port crossing at the time the disaster struck.

The catastrophe has renewed attention on the broader challenges of monitoring and issuing early warnings for high-altitude glacial hazards across the Himalayan border region. Scientists told the Chinese outlet Shangguan News that while satellite imagery can help map glaciers and glacial lakes over time, sudden or small-scale changes remain difficult to detect in real time, and that remote areas frequently lack the reliable communications infrastructure needed for effective ground-based monitoring. China’s foreign ministry said Monday it has continued sharing disaster-area imagery, satellite and hydrological data, along with early warnings related to the upstream barrier lake, with Nepalese authorities as the two countries work to manage the ongoing crisis.