Marks & Spencer is to slash its dividend to shareholders by a third - from 22.5p to 15p per share - in the face of what executive chairman Stuart Rose described as "an uncertain economic outlook."
The cut, which follows eight years of consecutive rises, is being made "in order to provide a stronger foundation for moving forward". While total revenue for the year to March 28 rose slightly from 9.02bn to 9.06bn (although same store sales in the UK actually declined by 5.9%) net profit dropped to £508m from £821.7m for the previous full year.

The retailer closed 27 of its stores and made more than 1,200 redundancies in response to the economic downturn.