Publication
‘CHAOTIC’ JOBS REFORM COULD COST FIRMS £3BN
THE government faced backlash from business groups yesterday after revealing its “chaotic” crackdown on zero-hour contracts could cost businesses nearly £3bn every year, higher than previously expected. The cost of the new rules, which will force...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
HOUSING SECTOR CALLS FOR HELP
THE government is facing calls to slash stamp duty and revive a help-to-buy scheme as a drop-off in activity in Britain’s property market threatens to drag on the economy. London-listed developer Bellway became the latest firm to call on Chancellor...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
COST OF DOING BUSINESS CRISIS
BRITISH companies are facing a “cost of business crisis” as a string of controversial government policies have pushed up the average firm’s expenses by 70 per cent in a decade, one of the country’s largest industry bodies has said. A typical firm with...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
CITI BOSS HITS OUT AT BANK TAX FEARS
THE BOSS of Citigroup has warned the government that “money votes with its feet” and there are “very viable” alternatives to London should Andy Burnham decide to hit the banking sector with higher taxes. Dame Jane Fraser, a Scot credited with turning...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
COURTS GIVE BACKING TO NEW RUNWAYS ECONOMIC BOOST AS GATWICK AND LUTON GIVEN GREEN LIGHT
THE UK economy is set for a £2.5bn boost after Gatwick and Luton airports’ expansion plans were cleared for take-off yesterday. Courts dismissed challenges brought by environmental campaigners against the two hubs’ growth plans in separate rulings on...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
ASTRAZENECA’S POSSIBLE $400BN MEGADEAL SPARKS SHARE PRICE SLUMP
ASTRAZENECA had more than £12bn wiped from its valuation yesterday as investors baulked at a potential megamerger with US rival Bristol Myers Squibb. Shares in the Cambridge-headquartered drugmaker, Britain’s second most valuable listed company, fell...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
DIFFICULT DECISIONS
ANDY Burnham warned he will be forced to take “difficult decisions” to fund a sweeping overhaul of the social care system yesterday in a sign the government will turn to the taxpayer to finance the plans. In a press conference at a care home in North...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
AI sell-off ramps up as investors ditch chip stocks
A GLOBAL rout in chip stocks plunged the Nasdaq into correction territory on Tuesday just hours after South Korea’s bourse was forced to halt trading, in a sharp change of fortunes for what has been one of the year’s top performing exchanges. New...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
CITY ALARM OVER SUMMER OF TAX RUMOURS
ANDY Burnham and John Healey are facing a growing backlash from the private sector as another summer of tax speculation looks set to plunge bosses across key industries into uncertainty. Property chiefs yesterday condemned rumours of reforms to the...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
OPEN AI HACK SPARKS UK PROBE
THE UK government is probing the first known case of an artificial intelligence model breaking out of a controlled test by itself and hacking another company’s systems. Officials at the government-backed AI Security Institute (AISI) are investigating...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
TAX RISES NAILED ON WITH £22BN POLICY BILL
CHANCELLOR John Healey will be forced to launch another round of major tax rises in the autumn, leading economists have warned, after a City AM analysis found £22bn of spending pledges are not accounted for in official forecasts. Less than 24 hours...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
Andy Burnham helped prepare breakfast during a visit to The Passage Homeless Charity, just hours before becoming Britain's new prime minister
Read Full Story (Page 2)
TICK TOCK TRIPLE LOCK?
ANDY Burnham is facing fresh pressure to call time on the pensions triple lock after the world’s top economic organisation warned an overhaul of the policy was “necessary to reduce fiscal risk”. The Prime Minister-to-be has doubled down on Labour’s...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
BOND ROUT TO BIND BURNHAM
THE UK’s borrowing costs sailed past five per cent for only the third time since the onset of the Iran war on Tuesday, strangling Andy Burnham’s financial breathing room just days before he enters Downing Street. The yield on the UK’s 10-year...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
REEVES’ LAST STAND
RACHEL Reeves is set to issue a stern warning to her successor as chancellor as she battles to defend her record in office ahead of the overthrow of Labour’s electionwinning leadership. In what is widely expected to be her final act as Chancellor...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Hold, please: Virgin Media fined £28m for call centre chicanery
VIRGIN Media has been slapped with the media watchdog’s largest ever fine for direct harm to consumers after it was found to have mishandled millions of calls. The telecoms giant has been hit with a £28m fine after it was found to have put customers...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
BURNHAM FACES FINANCIAL STORM
THE growing cost of pensions is set to help swell UK public debt to three times the size of the economy and will place ‘unsustainable’ pressure on the public finances, the budget watchdog has warned, days after Andy Burnham pledged to retain the...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
BROADCASTERS TAKE ON RIVAL US STREAMERS
ITV and Sky executives have said they can make no guarantees on job cuts after the two companies announced a £1.6bn merger on Monday. Employees of ITV have been warned the tie-up between Britain’s two biggest commercial broadcasters could lead to...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
KANE AND ABLE: ENGLAND TRIUMPH
Harry Kane’s brace saved England from World Cup humiliation as Thomas Tuchel’s men survived an almighty scare against the Democratic Republic of Congo to set up a clash with co-hosts Mexico. A decade on from the humiliating Euros exit to Iceland,...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Banking on the future: Barclays takes on 999-year Wharf lease
A ROCKETING rally for defence contractors swept over London’s stock market yesterday, in the wake of Keir Starmer’s long-awaited announcement of his £15bn Defence Investment Plan (Dip). It was a Dip that fired up the City. The rally was broad – running...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
RICHARD CARING POISED TO SNAP UP ICONIC CITY SPOT
RICHARD Caring is in advanced talks to buy iconic City restaurant 1 Lombard Street, marking his first foray back into the restaurant business since the £1.4bn sale of his empire. A deal for the Lombard St restaurant, located in a former banking hall,...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
...as City firms let staff stay home during sweltering heatwave
CITY firms have told their workers to stay away from the office as London is hit with a record June heatwave. Several multinational companies headquartered in the Square Mile have advised their employees to consider remote work in a bid to dodge the...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
COURT CLEARS GATWICK PLAN
GATWICK Airport has moved a step closer to breaking ground on its eagerly anticipated expansion after a court dismissed a pair of legal challenges brought by local campaigners. In a ruling, High Court judge Mr Justice Mould said the government’s...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
City on alert over choice of Chancellor and policy direction
bour figure gets the backing of 81 MPs to launch a leadership bid after 9 July. Streeting, who had said he would stand in a contest and appeared to criticise Burnham’s stance on economic issues, said he had spoken “at length” to the front-runner,...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
AO World boss blasts Labour over ‘fantasy land’ employment costs
THE boss of AO World has hit out at the government after it shifted hundreds of jobs to South Africa in a bid to dodge soaring employment costs. John Roberts, chief executive of the electrical retailer, claimed the UK’s political class lives “in an...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
AND THEY'RE OFF...
Royal Ascot, the greatest flat racing festival in all of horse racing, is underway and thousands of punters have dressed to impress in Berkshire. Over the course of the spectacle, which features 35 races over five days through to Saturday, over 300,000...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
TOUR DE SQUARE MILE
The Square Mile was transformed into an Olympicstyle time trial cycling circuit at the weekend as Nocturne returned to the City of London. The festival of cycling saw two days of racing around the capital, with XTX Markets winning the City Criterium –...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
SPACE RACE
SPACEX is set to launch the largest retail allocation ever attempted in a megacap IPO as part of its hotly anticipated listing on the Nasdaq tomorrow, with around 30 per cent of shares reserved for retail investors. Bret Johnsen, SpaceX CFO, has said...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
UK MUST NOT ‘STICK HEAD IN SAND’ OVER AI
SIR Keir Starmer has said Britain must not “stick its head in the sand” on artificial intelligence, with the technology set to fundamentally reshape the UK economy. The Prime Minister used his speech at London Tech Week to unveil a major sovereign...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
‘TIPPING POINT’
THE boss of the UK’s most influential business group used a landmark speech to warn that the heavy business tax burden is nudging British firms towards a “tipping point”, directly linking the Labour government’s troubles to cost pressures on firms. At...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
British investors offered a ticket to blockbuster SpaceX IPO
A GROUP of influential City chiefs have thrown their weight behind an industry-wide campaign to tackle “disinformation about London” and promote the capital as an innovative hub for global investment. All four of the financial sector’s largest...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
MINISTER’S DAMNING MESSAGES
ONE of Keir Starmer’s closest allies vented his frustration with Downing Street’s economic policy as he complained to Peter Mandelson about the government’s efforts to fund welfare spending through higher taxes, the latest Mandelson files have...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
Blair is Labour’s last sensible voice
FTER reading Tony Blair’s essay on the state of Britain (and the state of the Labour party) I was struck by the realisation that large parts of it sounded as if they’d come straight out of one of my own columns. Regular readers will know that I’ve...
Read Full Story (Page 2)
BP’S CHAIRMAN FORCED OUT BY BOARD AFTER ALLEGATIONS OF BULLYING AND ‘CONCERNS’ ABOUT HIS CONDUCT
TEMPERATURES may be hitting record highs in the capital but City commuters are unlikely to find relief from the heat underground, after TfL decided to decommission the air conditioning systems at one of its busiest stations. of manner; it was not about...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
TO BE BESIDE THE SEASIDE
AMERICAN tech firm Palantir should challenge Sadiq Khan in court after the London mayor blocked a £50m contract with the Metropolitan Police, former government legal officer Sir Michael Ellis has said. Sir Michael Ellis KC, a former Tory attorney...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
HS2 TO BLOW £33BN HOLE IN REEVES’ PLAN
THE government will need to find as much as £33bn in additional cash from tax and spending measures or from other departments to fund its revamped plans to deliver HS2. According to a City AM analysis, the Department for Transport’s updated proposals...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
‘GOLD-PLATED FOLLY’
HS2 is now poised to cost the taxpayer as much as £102bn and will not run from Euston until at least 2040, according to the transport secretary who blasted the project as a “massively over-specced folly”. Heidi Alexander said the cost of the ill-fated...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
BURNHAM VOWS TO END ‘40 YEARS OF NEOLIBERALISM’ AS HE KICKS OFF CAMPAIGN
LABOUR leadership hopeful Andy Burnham has called for the government to abandon “40 years of neoliberalism” as he promised to reverse privatisation and reduce the cost of energy, rent and transport. In what has widely been interpreted as Burnham’s...
Read Full Story (Page 1)
EAGLE HAS LANDED
Donald Trump was greeted on arrival in Beijing by China’s vice president Han Zheng ahead of two days of high-stakes talks with President Xi Jinping
Read Full Story (Page 2)