Press Round-Up Short (Premium)
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Liberty Steel, Serco, Archegos
When Boris Johnson announced the first stay-at-home order, effectively shutting down whole sections of the economy, it was hoped the tide could be turned within 12 weeks. As many months later, lockdown measures are being relaxed for a third time and Britain still faces a lengthy road to recovery from the worst recession for 300 years. As restrictions ease, the chief economist at the Bank of England, Andy Haldane, warned that despite the reopening of the economy, the risk of a “jobs equivalent of long Covid” remains for workers across the country.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Archegos, retailers, Liberty Steel
Financial regulators across the world are monitoring the collapse of the New York-based billionaire Bill Hwang’s personal hedge fund. The sudden liquidation of Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management sparked a fire sale of more than $20bn assets that has left some of the world’s biggest investment banks nursing billions of dollars of losses. - Guardian.
Monday newspaper round-up: Liberty Steel, Amigo, Arcadia Group
Concerns for the future of Liberty Steel and its 3,000 UK workers have grown after the government rejected its parent company’s plea for a £170m rescue loan. The rejection has added to the pressure on Liberty Steel, part of the business empire built up by the industrialist Sanjeev Gupta. Gupta has been urgently seeking extra funding for the business in the three weeks since the collapse of a key financial backer, Greensill Capital. - Guardian.
Sunday newspaper round-up: Moderna, Asda, Summer holidays
A third coronavirus vaccine will start being administered in the UK next month, joining the Pfizer and AstraZeneca jabs already in use, the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, has confirmed. Britain has ordered 17m doses of the Moderna vaccine, which has a 94% efficacy rate in trials, and Dowden said the first supplies were expected to arrive in April. - Guardian.
Friday newspaper round-up: Amazon, Liberty Steel, Arrival
The government has announced plans for a £1. 5bn funding pot to help companies struggling with business rates following a flood of requests for support during the coronavirus pandemic. In an expansion of support across the economy, the Treasury said the new fund was designed to help firms outside the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors with the taxes they pay based on the value of the premises they occupy. - Guardian.
Thursday newspaper round-up: Cameron, Viagogo, Boohoo, Nationwide
A formal investigation has been launched into whether David Cameron breached lobbying laws through his work on behalf of Greensill Capital, according to reports. However, the Guardian understands the former prime minister will say he was acting as an employee for the firm. According to guidance by the Register of Consultant Lobbyists, people who lobby on behalf of their own organisation do not need to declare themselves on the register. - Guardian.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Robinhood, online sales tax, fossil fuel companies
The world’s biggest 60 banks have provided $3. 8tn of financing for fossil fuel companies since the Paris climate deal in 2015, according to a report by a coalition of NGOs. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic cutting energy use, overall funding remains on an upward trend and the finance provided in 2020 was higher than in 2016 or 2017, a fact the report’s authors and others described as “shocking”. - Guardian .
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Local shops, Cameron, BBC, Wework
Small local grocery stores and online retailers are likely to benefit from permanent changes in shopping habits after a year of Covid-19 restrictions, according to a report one year on from the first lockdown. More than nine in 10 of people who have shopped locally say they will continue to do so, a survey by Barclaycard found. Nearly two-thirds of consumers in the UK have chosen to buy closer to home in the past year, leading to a 63% rise in spending at specialist food and drink stores such as butchers, bakeries and greengrocers last month, the debit and credit card operator said.
Monday newspaper round-up: Covid cost, Greensill, cinema bosses
A year of Covid-19 lockdowns has cost the UK economy £251bn – the equivalent of the entire annual output of the south-east of England or nearly twice that of Scotland, according to a report published on Monday. Analysis by the Centre for Economics and Business Research found that while the whole of the country had suffered huge damage from restrictions on activity since the first national lockdown began, some poorer regions had suffered the most. - Guardian.
Sunday newspaper round-up: UK vaccine record, Turkish lira, Strict restrictions
The UK's vaccine record was once again broken yesterday, the Department for Health has confirmed, with 873,784 vaccinations registered. This breaks down into 686,424 first doses and 70,449 second doses in England; 59,415 first doses and 13,160 second doses in Scotland; 26,939 first doses and 9,429 second doses in Wales; and 4,785 first doses and 3,183 second doses in Northern Ireland. Yesterday's figures also represent a record amount of first doses in the UK, as well as a record number of doses overall.
Friday newspaper round-up: Football Index, Goldman Sachs, workplace testing
The Gambling Commission was warned in January 2020 that the betting firm Football Index, which suspended its platform last week, was “an exceptionally dangerous pyramid scheme under the guise of a ‘football stock market’” and that immediate and urgent action was needed “to alert and protect their users”, the Guardian can reveal. - Guardian.
Thursday newspaper round-up: Bonus reforms, sovereign debt downgrades, Eurostar
The government plans to make it easier to claw back bonuses paid to executives of failed companies in what is being billed as the biggest shake-up of Britain’s corporate governance rules in decades, with ministers vowing to target negligent auditors and rogue directors. Part of a sweeping series of reforms designed to break the dominance of the big four accounting firms, the new measures were outlined by the business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng in a consultation launched on Thursday.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Ocado, Uber, Hipgnosis
Britons are planning to use a hefty chunk of the savings built up over the past year to go on a £50bn spending spree once restrictions are lifted, a report has said. Research by the Isa provider Scottish Friendly and the consultancy, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), found that households intend to take more holidays at home and abroad, travel, and go out to eat in cafes and restaurants. - Guardian.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Tesla, Thorntons, Screwfix
Yorkshire Building Society will become the first lender to relaunch 95% mortgages in the mainstream market, nearly a year after the pandemic spooked lenders into withdrawing low-deposit home loans. However, the deal will only be available to first-time buyers and the society will apply strict conditions on lending, including ruling out flats and new-build homes. - Guardian.
Monday newspaper round-up: Car manufacturers, Woodford, store closures
Britain’s biggest car manufacturers lobbied the government to delay a ban on petrol and diesel cars by warning that sales would plunge and jobs would be at risk from accelerating the transition to electric vehicles, the Guardian can reveal. The government announced in November that it would move forward a ban on the sale of pure internal combustion engine cars from 2040 to 2030, but said that it would allow the sale of hybrid vehicles until 2035, in a significant victory for the car industry.
Sunday newspaper round-up: BT Group, Greensill, Chain store outlets
BT will this week be given the green light to make a double-digit rate of return on a £12 billion investment in full-fibre broadband, in a key verdict by the telecoms watchdog. Ofcom is poised to say on Thursday that the former state monopoly’s Openreach division will be able to make a “fair” return on its work to connect 20 million homes to super-fast internet. - Sunday Times.
Friday newspaper round-up: Odey, Royal Mail, Barclays
Football Index, the self-styled “football stock market”, appeared to be heading into administration on Thursday evening, five days after a massive crash on its market that left its customers with tens of millions of pounds trapped in its platform. If the business collapses, it will be the biggest failure of any British betting company, possibly leaving individual customers facing potential losses of £200,000 or more. A statement posted on the Football Index website on Thursday evening said that “after a difficult and challenging week” for its users, a decision had been taken “to suspend the platform”.
Thursday newspaper round-up: British manufacturers, Serco, City regulator
Three-quarters of British manufacturers are struggling to cope with delays in moving goods in and out of the EU amid continuing disruption caused by Brexit and the Covid pandemic, industry figures said. Two months after the UK left the EU on trade terms agreed by Boris Johnson’s government, research from the manufacturing trade group Make UK has shown that 74% of firms in a survey of more than 200 leading industrial companies are facing delays with EU imports and exports.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Air passenger duty, Evans Cycles, M&S
Air passenger duty is set to be cut on domestic flights after the prime minister signalled his support for reform to bolster air links around the UK. Lower rates for UK internal flights or an exemption for return legs will be considered. The news will come as some relief to the beleaguered aviation industry, whose complaints about the level of duty predate the Covid-19 crisis, but environmental groups said the move was “nonsensical” and “beggared belief” in the face of climate change.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Consumer spending, property prices, City of London
The prospects for a consumer spending boom after lockdown have been downplayed by a senior Treasury official, amid warnings that wealthier families have saved more than low-paid workers during the pandemic. Charlie Bean, a former Bank of England deputy governor who sits on the government’s budget responsibility committee, said it would take several years for households to spend £180bn in extra savings accumulated mainly by retirees and higher-paid workers during the crisis.