Betfair tipped for World Cup glory

Eyes on the prize: Betfair is expected to do well at the World Cup. Photograph: Alexander Hassenstein/FIFA via Getty Images

You may have noticed that there is a small football tournament about to kick off in Brazil, and in at least one sense we will have home interest all the way to the final.

British bookmakers remain among the favourites to triumph in the World Cup – they'll take up to 600m online according to a new report by Regulus Insights and Sporting Index – and one of our teams, Betfair, will limber up for the big event this week by unveiling its annual results.

Over the past two years, under the guidance of boss Breon Corcoran, the company has been in decent form, with the shares up about 33%. Investors are now expecting more encouraging trading news this week, as well as some guidance on what the company plans to do with around 200m of cash.

Still, the fear from the terraces is that Corcoran's reign could prove analogous with Sven-Gran Eriksson's England career (save brushes with secretaries and fake sheikhs): he inherited such a mess that a few simple tweaks produced decent early results.

The big question is if Betfair, unlike Eriksson's England, can kick on from an encouraging early spell, as Corcoran's cost-cutting regime is surely reaching a conclusion, while there are tactical concerns about growing the betting exchange and diminishing bets from unregulated markets. Developing, as they say.

Shirt maker Kelvin has City success sewn up

The City is littered with stories of people metaphorically losing their shirts – but very few of folk getting rich on the back of one.

But that's the tale of Ray Kelvin, the rather oddball founder of fashion chain Ted Baker, who for some reason obscures his face when photographed.

"We created a shirt that everyone in the country, for some wonderful reason, wanted to wear," he told the Telegraph last year. "It was during the period of Acid House and Garage, and they wore these bright acidy-colour shirts ... We floated the business [in 1997], really on the back of that shirt."

Kelvin's stake is now worth more than 300m, despite flogging about 20m of shares last year, which makes him just about the only seller in the Square Mile. His analyst fans are expecting more decent news when the company hands out its trading statement on Tuesday, with around 15% sales growth coming on top of a decent performance last year.

Still, if you're being picky, one concern remains. In March, Kelvin was awarded one of those "outstanding contribution to retail" awards – the type of gong that is frequently a sell sign.

Lean times in store for new Sainsbury's boss

So, how dicey is the hospital pass about to be received by Mike Coupe, the Sainsbury's commercial director who will succeed Justin King as chief executive next month?

We might get some clues this week as the grocer becomes the latest to address investors, following last week's Tesco and Morrisons horror shows.

You'll recall that just over a year ago, King was pledging himself to Sainsbury's for the "long term" – until U-turning more sharply than a dodgy supermarket trolley by admitting in January he was past his sell-by date.

By an astonishing coincidence, 36 unbroken quarters of growth then came to a crashing halt and the City is pencilling in another negative three months this time. Analysts at Jefferies reckon like-for-like sales will slip by 0.5% and add: "Sainsbury's sales performance remains extremely volatile. Impressive trading around major events is followed by quite uneventful sales in normal conditions."

To be fair, Coupe's hardly inheriting woes comparable to his two listed rivals – but the German discounters have changed the market, possibly for good. So King's legacy to his old pal is that the new Sainsbury's boss will have to live well with less, as the company (almost) used to tell customers. That doesn't seem like King's style.