Press Round-Up Short (Premium)
Tuesday newspaper round-up: BNPL, Unilever, oil prices
The Trades Union Congress has accused the Tory government of promoting a “greed is good” culture among bankers, who it said would be able to “cash in on unlimited bonuses” after a cap on payouts was lifted on Tuesday. The TUC said that while ministers had repeatedly called for pay restraint for most workers, they had been “silent over excess in the City”. – Guardian.
Monday newspaper round-up: Interest rates, house prices, Hargreaves Lansdown
The recent rise in interest rates has been blamed for ending Britain’s wealth boom and causing total household wealth to plunge by a quarter since the Covid-19 pandemic. A report by the Resolution Foundation, a thinktank, and Abrdn, the asset manager, said the fall was due to a drop in house prices and pension pots, which account for about £4 out of every £5 of total wealth, and played a leading role in rising wealth across the country over the 40 years leading up to the pandemic.
Sunday newspaper round-up: Global reckoning, Pensions, Pubs
HSBC boss Noel Quinn has warned that a "global reckoning" may be approaching after debt ballooned in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and during the Covid pandemic. That is because the world economy's rate of growth is too slow to handle the pace at which government debt is rising. Inflation and the interest rate increases that go with it are hampering the bounce-back following the pandemic. Those higher rates also mean that government's borrowing costs are going up.
Friday newspaper round-up: Amazon, Wimbledon, EY
Profits almost tripled at Amazon in the latest quarter as consumers continued to spend heavily despite the sharp rise in interest rates. The world’s largest retailer forecast that sales would continue to rise at a robust pace for the rest of the year. Growth had been knocked by surging prices and customers returning to bricks-and-mortar stores. – Guardian.
Thursday newspaper round-up: Shell, Boohoo, Sam Bankman-Fried
The former NatWest chief executive breached data protection laws when she spoke to a BBC journalist about the planned closure of Nigel Farage’s bank accounts, the UK’s information watchdog has ruled. An Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) report seen by the Guardian said that Alison Rose broke rules on two counts: first by revealing that Farage had a banking relationship with its private bank, Coutts; and secondly by providing “misleading information” that led the BBC to believe the bank was closing his accounts for purely commercial reasons, linked to his wealth.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: AI laws, Microsoft, AstraZeneca
Scammers were responsible for nearly 1. 4m cases of fraud in the UK during the first half of 2023 – the equivalent of one every 12 seconds – with romance scams and ID theft among the fastest growing categories. Overall, criminals stole £580m in the first six months of the year, according to the banking trade association UK Finance, suggesting households are set to lose more than £1bn to fraudsters during 2023. – Guardian.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: EV charging network, net zero targets, St James's Place
Almost £1bn meant to help build Britain’s electric vehicle charging network remains unallocated more than three years after it was first announced by Rishi Sunak. Promised in March 2020 before the first Covid lockdown in Sunak’s early weeks as Boris Johnson’s chancellor, the “rapid charging fund” was meant to support electrical capacity at motorway service stations. It was intended to help fund upgrades to the grid so that more electric cars can be rapidly charged at the same time.
Monday newspaper round-up: JCB, ULEZ, mobile 'not spots'
The influential Tory donors behind the JCB digger empire could be hit with a bill for more than £500m to settle a longrunning investigation by HM Revenue and Customs, the Guardian can reveal. The investigation into Anthony Bamford, a Tory peer, and his brother Mark, the director of a subsidiary of the Conservative party, is understood to span a complex network of offshore tax havens and companies. – Guardian.
Sunday newspaper round-up: British Steel, Moody's, Christmas
British Steel is planning to let go 2,000 employees amid a push by its Chinese owners to radically overhaul its operations and cut pollution. As many as 2,000 people could be let go as part of the turnaround plans, two people familiar with the company's thinking said, although no final decisions had yet been taken. The cost reductions are understood to be a critical part of plans to convert from blast furnaces to electric ark furnaces, which could unlock over £1bn in fresh funding from its owner, Jingye Group.
Friday newspaper round-up: English councils, OBR, M&G
Many more councils in England are at risk of bankruptcy, town hall leaders have warned, as unprecedented financial pressures force local authorities to prepare drastic cuts to services to cope with a collective £4bn deficit. The bleak message, set out in a letter to the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said council budgets were “under pressure like never before” because of the rapid deterioration in their finances caused by inflation and soaring demand for social care.
Thursday newspaper round-up: Inflation target, Amazon, Abcam
The Bank of England should be set a 3% inflation target and given powers to crash borrowing costs below zero in response to future economic shocks, a leading thinktank has said. The Resolution Foundation said Britain required a big overhaul of its economic toolkit to avoid decades of rising debt or austerity, and called for reforms at the Bank and the Treasury to get a “bigger bang for each buck”. – Guardian.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: Miller & Carter, UK car industry, Tesla
Miller & Carter, the steakhouse chain owned by the nationwide pub group Mitchells & Butlers, has been criticised for taking payments from waiting staff worth up to 2% of the sales they serve up, cutting their income during the cost of living crisis. The payments are intended as a way for waiting staff to share tips with chefs and other back of house workers. – Guardian.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Tax cuts, Linkedin, Carillion
The government has no room for unfunded pre-election tax cuts despite having pushed through a “colossal” £52bn a year stealth raid on household incomes on Rishi Sunak’s watch, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned. Britain’s foremost economics thinktank said the dire state of the public finances meant that attention-grabbing tax cuts risked stoking inflation, leading to higher Bank of England interest rates and a lengthy recession. – Guardian.
Monday newspaper round-up: Inflation, energy help, landlords, Hipgnosis
Headline inflation eased again in September, official figures are expected to show this week, while pay growth is slowing. Economists polled by Refinitiv expect the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to say annual inflation fell slightly to 6. 5% in September from 6. 7% in August. However, that is still well above the Bank of England’s 2% target. – Guardian.
Friday newspaper round-up: Microsoft-Activision, KPMG, default rates
The UK’s competition watchdog has cleared Microsoft’s $69bn (£54bn) deal to buy Activision Blizzard, the maker of games including Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, in a move that paves the way for both companies to complete the transaction. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) moved to block the megadeal in April, citing concerns that Microsoft – maker of the Xbox gaming console – would dominate the nascent cloud gaming market. – Guardian.
Thursday newspaper round-up: Wealth taxes, electrical items, Birkenstock
Rachel Reeves is under pressure to drop Labour’s blanket opposition to higher taxes on wealth, amid growing alarm within the party over extreme levels of inequality and the battered state of Britain’s public finances. After a conference in Liverpool designed to showcase party unity and economic credibility, trade union leaders and senior figures on the shadow chancellor’s left said they would keep “banging the drum” for a Labour government to raise billions of pounds more in tax from the very richest.
Wednesday newspaper round-up: IMF, Currys', Mortgages
The International Monetary Fund has warned that a surge in oil prices caused by war in the Middle East could hobble the already ‘limping’ global economic recovery. The president of the World Bank, Ajay Banga, said the conflict was ‘an economic shock we don’t need’. Israel’s war with Hamas adds to turbulence on financial markets already convulsed by worries about ‘higher for longer’ interest rates. - Daily Mail.
Tuesday newspaper round-up: Dogger Bank, Metro Bank, Figma
The first turbine to be completed in a project to build the world’s largest offshore windfarm, in the North Sea, has begun powering British homes and businesses. Developers confirmed on Monday that Dogger Bank, which sits 70 nautical miles off the coast of Yorkshire, started producing power over the weekend as the first of 277 turbines was connected to the electricity grid. – Guardian.
Monday newspaper round-up: Manufacturers, EY, Waitrose
Britain’s manufacturers are urging the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, to announce a “major MOT” of the UK’s “uncompetitive” business tax and regulatory system in his autumn statement next month. Many aspects of the system are “not fit for purpose”, the business group Make UK said in a report published in the middle of the political party conference season, and called for major reform as part of an industrial strategy. – Guardian.
Sunday newspaper round-up: Renewi, Metro Bank, New homes
Some of Renewi's major shareholders are divided as to whether the recycling company should engage with Australian suitor Macquarie. One major shareholder has told Renewi's board that it should not until Macquarie raised its £636m bid, but another top ten shareholder told The Sunday Times that it should talk to the Australian outfit anyways. Macquarie has until 26 October to make a firm offer. - The Sunday Times .