sharecast

{{ storiesRelated.title }}

Press Round-Up Short (Premium)
29 Jun
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Supply chain issues, Multiverse, easyJet

Britain’s supply chain strain could last until after Christmas, Boris Johnson has admitted as he urged motorists to stop panic-buying fuel by insisting supplies were “improving” – despite thousands of forecourts remaining dry. The prime minister intervened after being accused by Labour of “reducing the country to chaos” with car queues continuing to build up and fights breaking out at petrol stations, while teachers and hospital workers were left unable to get to work.

29 Jun
Monday newspaper round-up: Petrol stations, house prices, Octopus Energy

Hundreds of soldiers could be scrambled to deliver fuel to petrol stations running dry across the country due to panic buying and a shortage of drivers under an emergency plan expected to be considered by Boris Johnson on Monday. The prime minister will gather senior members of the cabinet to scrutinise “Operation Escalin” after BP admitted that a third of its petrol stations had run out of the main two grades of fuel, while the Petrol Retailers Association (PRA), which represents almost 5,500 independent outlets, said 50% to 90% of its members had reported running out.

29 Jun
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Wise, National Lottery, Octopus Energy

The billionaire chief executive of the money transfer provider Wise has been fined hundreds of thousands of pounds by HMRC for deliberately defaulting on his taxes, The Telegraph can reveal. Kristo Kaarmann, the Estonian co-founder of Wise, was charged £365,651 for a deliberate default during the 2017/18 tax year on a £720,495 tax bill. - Telegraph.

29 Jun
Thursday newspaper round-up: Transport bosses, online deliveries, car exports

Airline, shipping and trucking bosses have joined union leaders in calling for governments around the world to ease coronavirus restrictions on transport workers to help avoid a Christmas supply chain crisis. Industry representatives from around the world issued a joint call on Wednesday for coordinated action from national governments to simplify border restrictions. - Guardian.

29 Jun
Thursday newspaper round-up: GSK, US pension funds, LVMH

GSK’s chief executive, Emma Walmsley, has come under pressure from a second activist hedge fund, Bluebell Capital Partners, which has taken a stake in the drugmaker to push for change at the top, including demanding that she reapply for her job. The London-based Bluebell Capital Partners has joined the US hedge fund Elliott Management on the pharmaceutical giant’s shareholder roster, with a stake reported to be worth £10m. With £100m assets under management, Bluebell is a much smaller firm than Elliott, which snapped up an undisclosed stake in April.

29 Jun
Friday newspaper round-up: NHS app, Uber, John Lewis

Undisclosed companies are analysing facial data collected by the NHS app, which is used by more than 16 million English citizens, prompting fresh concern about the role of outsourcing to private businesses in the service. Data security experts have previously criticised the lack of transparency around a contract with the NHS held by iProov, whose facial verification software is used to perform automated ID checks on people signing up for the NHS app. - Guardian.

28 Jun
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Energy crisis, Pimlico Plumbers, Stagecoach

The chief executive of Universal Music has said the hotly anticipated €40bn flotation of the world’s largest record company this week does not mark the peak of the streaming-led recovery of the music industry, with billions of dollars of growth yet to come from a new wave of digital listening on devices such a smart speakers, connected cars and services such as TikTok. Sir Lucian Grainge, who stands to make a transaction bonus of at least $170m when the label behind artists such as Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber goes public in Amsterdam on Tuesday, said the listing provided the opportunity to build Universal into the “next generation music company”.

28 Jun
Monday newspaper round-up: Gas prices, Virgin Money, OneWeb

Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, will hold an emergency summit with gas industry chiefs on Monday morning in an effort to contain the fallout caused by soaring market prices on consumers and businesses. Mid-level suppliers will be placed into administration if they fall into trouble this winter in an attempt to protect consumers from costlier bills, he revealed on Sunday, after spending a frantic weekend thrashing out contingencies for Britain’s looming gas crisis.

28 Jun
Thursday newspaper round-up: Monzo, energy blackout, PwC

There are signs outside almost every pub, restaurant and hotel dotting Torquay’s harbour: Staff wanted. “It’s been packed solid busy, you can’t get a table anywhere,” said Brett Powis, owner of three hotels in the area including the Riviera and Lincombe Hall. For the hotelier, staff shortages made it harder to take full advantage of the busiest summertime boom in the Devon resort for decades. – Guardian.

28 Jun
Wednesday newspaper round-up: NHS app, Airbus, Channel 4

The NHS app is collecting and storing facial verification data from UK citizens in a process which has fuelled concerns about transparency and accountability. The data collection is taking place under a contract with a company linked to Tory donors called iProov, awarded by NHS Digital in 2019, which has yet to be published on the government website. - Guardian.

28 Jun
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Evergrande, travel industry, travel chaos

Property giant China Evergrande Group has said that it cannot sell properties and other assets fast enough to service its massive $300bn debts, and that its cashflow was under “tremendous pressure”. Only hours after angry investors besieged its Shenzhen headquarters and the company denied it was set for bankruptcy, Evergrande issued a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange saying that a significant drop in sales would continue this month, which was likely to further deteriorate its liquidity and cash flow.

28 Jun
Monday newspaper round-up: WH Smith, customs duties, Vectura

The activist investor calling for a shake-up at Rolls-Royce has upped its stake in WH Smith but insisted it iswas supportive of management at the struggling high street chain. Causeway Capital Management is the retailer’s biggest shareholder and owns 9% after buying shares in the wake of a recent profit alert. Analysts suggested the California-based investor was betting on a recovery in international travel rather than agitating for change. - Guardian.

28 Jun
Friday newspaper round-up: Ikea, durum wheat, RICS, Goldman

Ikea is poised to buy Topshop’s former flagship store on London’s Oxford Street, once the jewel in Sir Philip Green’s retail empire, for an estimated £385m, creating a new London home for the Swedish furniture brand. The deal to buy the long leasehold on the building, which includes the now-vacant 100,000 sq ft Topshop outlet as well as a Nike Town store and a shop for footwear brand Vans, is expected to complete the sell off of the assets of Green’s Arcadia Group empire which collapsed into administration in November last year.

28 Jun
Thursday newspaper round-up: Boeing, Evergrande, M&S

Boeing’s board of directors must face a lawsuit from the planemaker’s shareholders over two fatal crashes of its 737 Max aircraft, which killed 346 people in less than six months, a US judge has ruled. Delaware judge vice-chancellor Morgan Zurn found that the company had ignored “red flags” about the safety of the new aircraft and its anti-stall system, which the board “should have heeded but instead ignored”, following the crash of Lion Air flight 610 in October 2018.

28 Jun
Wednesday newspaper round-up: NI hike, Amazon, Mumsnet

Business groups reacted with dismay to the government’s national insurance hike and surcharge on dividend income to boost health and social care spending from next April, calling it a tax on jobs and a blow to the economic recovery. The British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) said the extra financial burden from higher tax charges ignored the damage suffered by thousands of small businesses over the last 18 months. - Guardian.

28 Jun
Tuesday newspaper round-up: FirstGroup, Channel 4, JCB

Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has ordered a national security review of a takeover by a Chinese academic of a small Welsh manufacturer of graphene – the thinnest and lightest “supermaterial” known. In a rare move, Kwarteng instructed the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to review the planned takeover of Perpetuus Group by Taurus International or any companies associated with Dr Zhongfu Zhou. - Guardian.

28 Jun
Monday newspaper round-up: Labour crisis, Byron, British Airways

The labour crisis could last for up to two years, Britain’s leading business lobby group has warned, as it called for ministers to take action on visas for foreign workers and stop “waiting for shortages to solve themselves”. Amid the most severe labour crunch since the 1970s, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) launched a broadside against the government, saying the UK’s economic recovery from the winter lockdown was being undermined by a lack of skills in key positions, with mounting risks that the problem would continue for some time.

28 Jun
Friday newspaper round-up: Reddit, Virgin Galactic, rail cuts

The government is being urged to “get a handle” on the supply chain crisis, as the chair of a cross-party commission created to scrutinise the UK’s post-Brexit trade deals said ministers need to act now to avoid empty shelves in the run-up to Christmas. “Red tape and labour shortages from Brexit have exacerbated problems that are being acutely felt across production, processing, manufacturing, retail and of course logistics,” said Aodhán Connolly, who chaired an extraordinary session of the UK Trade and Business Commission, a group of cross-party MPs and business representatives set up as an independent adviser to government in April.

28 Jun
Thursday newspaper round-up: Energy bills, Tata Steel, NMC Health

Household energy bills are to rise after prices on the UK’s wholesale electricity market soared to a record high last month, furthering concerns about more families being pushed into fuel poverty this winter. The electricity market price passed the £100 a megawatt-hour mark last month for the first time since the market was formed in 1990, according to analysis by Imperial College London. - Guardian .

28 Jun
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Furlough scheme, Arm Holdings, Boots

The furlough scheme should be extended to protect workers in industries that continue to be damaged by the pandemic, business groups and unions have said as the job subsidy programme that has supported more than 11 million employees entered its final month. Aviation industry workers and staff at Britain’s airports should be allowed to remain on furlough until next year when travel restrictions are likely to be lifted and the airline industry returns to normal, they said.