Competition watchdog to probe Carlsberg-Marston’s tie-up August 19, 2020 The competition watchdog today said it has opened a probe into a proposed £780m tie-up between beer giants Carlsberg and Marston’s. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it was considering whether the deal would create a relevant merger situation and damage competition. In May the two companies announced plans to combine their brewing businesses [...]
Sureserve says strong trading allows it to consider ‘sustainable dividend policy’ August 19, 2020 Compliance and energy services company Sureserve today said its strong trading performance allowed it to “consider a sustainable dividend policy”. The Aim-listed company maintains and installs boilers, and makes sure homes are energy efficient among other services. Shares jumped nearly 12 per cent to 47p this morning. Sureserve said it had been awarded 21 contracts [...]
BCC: UK businesses face tough outlook after furlough ends August 19, 2020 More than one in three UK businesses have emerged from a bruising lockdown with less than three months’ worth of cash reserves, according to a British business body that warned firms remain “in the eye of the storm”. A survey conducted by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) found that business conditions have only slightly [...]
UK inflation unexpectedly rises on oil prices and clothes shopping August 19, 2020 UK inflation jumped unexpectedly to one per cent in July from 0.6 per cent in June amid a surge in global energy prices and increased retail activity, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said. The consumer price index inflation reading was the highest since March and markedly higher than the 0.6 per cent analysts [...]
Democrats nominate Joe Biden for president, vowing to end Trump ‘chaos’ August 19, 2020 Democrats formally nominated Joe Biden for president last night, vowing his election would repair a pandemic-battered America and put an end to the chaos that has defined Republican President Donald Trump’s administration. The second night of the party’s four-night national convention, under the theme “Leadership Matters,” featured elder statesmen like former presidents Bill Clinton and [...]
So what if Sajid Javid has a new job? Outside interests can make for better MPs August 19, 2020 A former Deutsche Bank board member has joined JP Morgan as part of the US bank’s EMEA advisory council. Hardly front-page news, you would imagine — notices in brief in a financial publication, at best. Except that the DB alumnus is Sajid Javid, former chancellor of the exchequer and currently MP for Bromsgrove. The reaction [...]
Why City PR firm Cicero is getting back to the office August 19, 2020 As offices around central London prepare to welcome some staff back to work, the need for employers to instil confidence in their coronavirus safety measures is paramount. At City lobbyist firm Cicero, over 80 per cent of employees have already been back to the office at some point since lockdown restrictions began to ease in [...]
Gavin Williamson smirks on — proving that this government values loyalty over competence August 19, 2020 If a picture is worth a thousand words, then there is one image that sums up the whole sorry mess of the A-level results fiasco. No, not one of the photos of tearful students, quivering with outrage and despair that their university places had been snatched away by a heartless algorithm. Rather, it is a [...]
Busting the myth of the selfless bureaucrat August 19, 2020 There seems to be a fundamental problem with quangos. Hardly a day seems to go by without some new story of incompetence and mismanagement emerging. Public Health England (PHE) is at least going to be put out of its misery by health secretary Matt Hancock, and replaced with a new agency specifically focused on pandemics. [...]
Be eco-rational: The world’s environmental problems are too serious for petty political dogma August 19, 2020 On 14 February 1990, a photograph was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from the fringes of the solar system. As it sped further away, engineers spun it around to capture an image of the planet Earth, suspended in space roughly four billion miles away. Taking up only 0.12 of a pixel in the image, [...]