It’s the Machin and Norman show as M&S comes back with a bang, says MAGGIE PAGANO

The cheer from one City analyst was ‘M&S is back, baby!’ after Marks & Spencer reported a stellar set of full-year results.

And back with a bang. The retailer is not only back on the right side of St Michael but may even be coming close to reaching paradise.

Profits are up by a whopping 58 per cent, sales are £1billion higher at £13billion and the shares topped the FTSE 100 leader board. Adding a halo to the fabulous figures is a full-year dividend of 3p, the first in five years.

All credit must go to the top M&S team – its brilliant chairman Archie Norman, and the equally brilliant chief executive Stuart Machin, who managed the impossible: making M&S fashionable again and delivering what they promised when they presented their turnaround strategy.

What’s more, all divisions from clothing and homeware to food have now shown 12 consecutive quarters of growth.

Dream team: M&S chief executive Stuart Machin, left, and chairman Archie Norman, right, have led a dramatic turnaround at the High Street chain

That’s not easy. They have had to contend with the rough and tumble of the High Street with fierce competitors on the scene like Zara, Mango and Next as well as a cost of living crisis which has squeezed incomes to the bone. 

Yet the good news is that M&S is slowly creeping back towards its earlier dominance as one of the UK’s biggest clothing retailers.

Getting the right balance between high fashion and function in clothing was never going to be a walk in the park. 

Overall, the verdict is that the balance is about right and at least M&S is no longer boring.

Quite the reverse. Having celebrities like Holly Willoughby and the statuesque actress Hannah Waddingham advertise its wares has made it trendy again, while its summer campaign has kicked off to the soundtrack of Cyndi Lauper’s hit Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

So they do, and most still shop for lingerie at M&S. Last year it sold more than 22m bras. That’s one in three British women. They buy even more knickers – about 70m pairs fly through the doors each year, more than two every second.

And the fun shows no signs of stopping any time soon. Machin reckons there is much more growth to come, that ‘we are at the beginnings of a new M&S’, which has the ‘wind in its sails’.

Where to next? Well, Machin is speeding up the cost-cutting, taking out £100million more than planned, closing legacy stores and opening new ones, while online and IT systems are being upgraded.

The one blot is Ocado, which lost £37million. The joint venture with the online grocer is messy, with threats of legal action over payments. That needs sorting out, or pulling apart.

There’s another, meatier question. How long will Norman, 70 this month, stay as chairman? After seven years of slog, he may feel the time is right to stand down.

As the archangel behind M&S’s revival, investors hope he will stay to see them safely across to the other side. And for the shares to rise even higher to reflect that.

Election fever

Rishi Sunak turned out to be a gambler after all.

It looks as though falling inflation and an upbeat IMF forecast must have persuaded the Prime Minister to drop his election bombshell and go for broke on July 4.

The better economic numbers may have given him hope that voters now see that the UK has really turned a corner.

And he’s right about that: there’s no doubt the outlook is getting brighter.

But unless there is a miracle, Sunak is unlikely to be the one who benefits.

A July election also makes it near- impossible for the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee to cut interest rates in June, as many of us have argued that it should, because it would look so blatantly political.

Jeremy Hunt must be kicking himself for saying recently that it was too early to cut rates.

Drop the hurdle

Anglo American has given rival BHP another week to come up with a better offer after rejecting its third proposal.

The bid is conditional on Anglo unravelling its platinum and iron ore assets in South Africa, where it employs more than 40,000 people.

If BHP wants to clinch the deal, it may be this is the hurdle which has to be dropped to win over the board.