No bright lights in club land

These are dark times for Luminar. Shares in the nightclub operator took a tumble in September when it warned that it faced “significant risk” of not meeting full-year expectations. They took another knock this month after Luminar reported a further deterioration in trading. Like-for-like sales at Luminar’s 88 venues were down 14 per cent for the 7 weeks to October 15 – a sharp acceleration on the 9 per cent decline it reported for the first three weeks of September. Stephen Thomas, chief executive, blamed rising unemployment among the young for the fall in clubber numbers.

Pan Kwan Yuk