Brexit talks: Germany ‘concerned’ over lack of progress given reliance on City October 30, 2020 A senior German government official said he was “deeply concerned” by the lack of progress in post-Brexit trade talks between the UK and EU, given the reliance of Germany companies on funding from the City. “German corporates, for all that I can tell, rely massively on wholesale financing offered from the City of London, so [...]
Eurozone economy posts record growth but Covid set to knock recovery October 30, 2020 The Eurozone economy handily beat expectations in the third quarter of the year with record growth, although surging coronavirus cases and new lockdowns now look set to knock the recovery off course. Eurozone GDP grew 12.7 per cent in the third quarter, having slumped 11.8 per cent in the April to June period, the EU’s [...]
Bother: The startup looking to disrupt the grocery market October 30, 2020 The days of empty shelves and loo roll shortages seem a distant lockdown memory, but one London-based startup thinks it speaks to a wider problem within the UK’s grocery market. Startup Bother is on a mission to disrupt the saturated grocery market by offering what it considers to be a convenient and cheaper online alternative. [...]
Watchdog slams Grant Thornton over ‘unacceptable’ public sector audits October 30, 2020 The accounting watchdog has criticised Grant Thornton over its ‘unacceptable” record on public sector audits, after five out of six of the firm’s local audits were found to fall below the expected standard. The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) singled out Grant Thornton and Mazars for criticism following a review of 15 major audits of health [...]
Screenshot: Will Tim Davie win the generation game? October 30, 2020 A weekly column from City A.M. bringing you all the biggest stories and trends in technology, media and telecoms This week: ** Media Moment of the Week: A sorry soy saga ** Tim Davie and the BBC’s tug of war ** The tech titans’ tumultuous year Media Moment of the Week This week it’s another [...]
What’s in store for the airline industry this winter? October 30, 2020 Although every industry has suffered due to the coronavirus pandemic, few have been as hard hit as the world’s airlines. At the beginning of the year, the idea of a world without global air travel was for most people a relic of a long-forgotten past, but seven months of extreme turbulence have flipped that notion [...]
Natwest returns to profit as virus loan charges fall October 30, 2020 Natwest returned to profit during the third quarter, reporting forecast-beating earnings after setting aside a smaller-than-expected sum to deal with bad loans due to the coronavirus pandemic. Natwest posted an operating profit before tax of £355m for the three months to September on an income of £1.9bn. The figure beat the bank-compiled analyst estimates of [...]
British Airways owner IAG calls for airport testing as losses widen October 30, 2020 British Airways owner International Airlines Group (IAG) fell to a €5.56bn loss in the first nine months of the year as it warned passenger demand could take three-years to recover to pre-pandemic levels. The company this morning announced it had plunged to a loss after tax and exceptional items of more than €5bn this year [...]
AstraZeneca strikes £307m deal for heart and blood pressure medicines October 30, 2020 UK pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca (AZN) said today it will sell the commercial rights for two of its heart failure and blood pressure medicines to German pharmaceutical company Cheplapharm Arzneimittel GmbH for £307m. Cheplapharm, which already holds the European rights for Atacand and Atacand Plus since 2018, can sell now them in around 70 countries under [...]
US breaks daily record for coronavirus cases as total infections hit nine million October 30, 2020 The United States broke its single-day record for new coronavirus infections yesterday, with the country reporting over 91,000 new cases. Thursday’s surge in cases, which comes less than a week before the US election, also hospitalisations hit new highs in many states, according to a tally by Reuters. The previous one-day record for US cases [...]