It’s usually best to take a long view of the John Lewis Partnership, since that is how the employee-owned retailer tries to manage itself.

The verdict on the department store side, as opposed to Waitrose supermarkets, is not pretty: the latest operating profits of £115m represent their worst outcome for more than a decade.

That is remarkable when you remember that 10 years ago, the UK was mired in a banking crisis and recession. Even in the teeth of that storm though, John Lewis’s department stores did their stuff. In 2009, operating profits were £144m, followed by £166m in 2010. A steady march to £200m, achieved in 2013, followed. In 2015, £250m was reached and, within a few million, the same score was secured every year until 2018.

Now comes a 56% plunge, a jolting end to a winning streak. “We do not believe the market conditions are cyclical,” conceded the chairman, Charlie Mayfield. You bet. The evidence is in the numbers and there is little point debating the unquantifiable contribution from Brexit worries.

But let’s not call this a crisis. The headline profit figure for the department stores looks terrible, but only half can be attributed to weaker trading; the rest comes from higher property and IT costs. The latter squeeze will ease this year, so even in a slow retail market, it’s plausible that the stores will do better than £115m next year – even if the glory days aren’t coming back in a hurry. The “never knowingly undersold” price promise may prove hideously expensive while Debenhams and House of Fraser are thrashing around in pain, but John Lewis is right to stick with what it knows.

In the meantime, Waitrose, which suffered its own jolt a year ago, is heading upwards again, with an 18% recovery in operating profits to £203m. That implies a profit margin of 3.2% on sales of £6.4bn, which will very likely be better than most supermarket rivals achieve this year. That ain’t so bad, even if the loss of the Ocado deal is yet to be confronted.

Waitrose also offers a lesson in perspective. About 25 years ago, there was lively debate about whether the then-struggling supermarket chain should be ditched. Staff on the department stores side, who tended to see themselves as partnership royalty, reckoned their bonuses were being diluted. These things swing round: without Waitrose’s improvement this year, their thin 3% bonus might well have been zero.

Another Aviva boss goes back to basics

This time last year the chief executive of insurance giant Aviva was so bullish about prospects and cash generation that he proclaimed it was time to enjoy some “fun stuff”. Mark Wilson meant acquisitions but his idea of fun also turned out to be a part-time job for himself on the board of BlackRock, a provocative extracurricular adventure given Aviva’s becalmed share price. Wilson was ousted last October.

And here’s the new man, Maurice Tulloch, who makes the Aviva gig sound less entertaining. Tulloch is talking about boring tasks like “tackling complexity” and “focusing on cost efficiency” and leaving “no stone unturned”.

No doubt Tulloch’s analysis is correct, but Aviva’s shareholders must be tearing their hair out. They’ve had a succession of supposedly back-to-basics bosses on enormous pay packages who all say, in effect, that their predecessor left the job undone. Wilson, before he prematurely declared victory for his turnaround plan, was forever saying he was on a mission to “kill complexity”. Now the task starts afresh – again.

When Aviva was created at the turn of the century via a three-way merger, the share price was £11. Today it is 419p. So, yes, there probably are more boulders to be turned over. Alternatively, the insurer is so big it defies understanding, however many millions are thrown at the chief executives.

Slow car market could put brakes on Melrose’s GKN

This time last year we were also in the midst of the highly charged £8bn Melrose/GKN hostile bid battle. What news from the victor? Well, if you can get through the thicket of provisions and accounting charges, Melrose seems pleased with what it bought. “Adjusted” pretax profits were £703m last year, which the board says was ahead of expectations.

The share price, though, is down by a fifth since the takeover closed. The Melrose crew won’t fret overly, but the timing of their purchase of a large automotive and aerospace supplier could have been better. Prospects in aerospace are reasonable, but most carmakers aren’t feeling bullish these days. Melrose assumes no revenue help from the market when it makes its deals – just as well.