Watches of Switzerland repays furlough cash as it clocks surge in sales during pandemic December 17, 2020 Watches of Switzerland has raised its full-year guidance and announced it will repay furlough cash, after clocking a major boost in profits and sales during the pandemic. Operating profit at the luxury watchmaker beat expectations over the six months to 25 October, hiking 52 per cent year on year to £45.6m. Adjusted earnings before tax [...]
UK awaits Covid tier changes after Christmas confusion December 17, 2020 Towns and cities around the UK are waiting with bated breath this morning to see if they will be moved into a different tier of coronavirus restrictions. Government officials met to review the three tier system yesterday, with health secretary Matt Hancock due to announce any changes later today. The official update comes with London [...]
EY chair: ‘Nobody wants to go back to full time in the office’ December 17, 2020 Almost nobody will want to go back to working five days a week in the office post-pandemic, according to EY UK chair Hywel Ball, after employees have enjoyed the convenience of home working for most of 2020. Speaking to City A.M. Ball said offices were likely to look very different post-pandemic, and that staff would [...]
Public must self-isolate for five days before Christmas travel, says PM December 16, 2020 Boris Johnson has urged the public to self-isolate for five days before visiting friends and family over Christmas, as the Prime Minister refused to U-turn on plans to relax coronavirus restrictions. “A smaller Christmas is going to be a safer Christmas, and a shorter Christmas is a safer Christmas,” Johnson told a Downing Street press [...]
The UK’s four nations split on Christmas Covid rules December 16, 2020 The UK’s four nations will split on plans to relax coronavirus restrictions over Christmas, as the Prime Minister faces accusations of confusing the public over the government’s messaging. Welsh first minister Mark Drakeford said the country will toughen up current guidelines allowing three households to mix over Christmas, announcing that Wales will limit gatherings to [...]
RSM pays back £4.4m furlough cash December 16, 2020 Audit challenger firm RSM has repaid £4.4m to the government, having decided to do so in a board meeting earlier this month, City A.M can reveal. RSM’s board made the decision to repay the the money in full on 8 December. CEO Rob Donaldson said the firm did not see the decision as an opportunity [...]
Quarter of UK pubs feared closing for good even before new lockdown December 16, 2020 More than a quarter of UK pub and bar-owners said they feared their business would fail even before the latest lockdowns in London and the south east. Figures from the UK’s statistics body showed that 27.9 per cent of pub and bar businesses said they had low or no confidence in surviving the next three [...]
New biotech rapid-testing facility to help London ‘return to normality’ December 16, 2020 A biotech company, Biogroup is launching a new rapid-testing facility in London, which will boost testing capacity in the capital by 100,000 tests a week. Biogroup UK is setting-up an RT-PCR (RealTime Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction) test service, initially via two pop-up testing centres in Marylebone and Notting Hill to detect the presence of [...]
Covid vaccine: 138,000 people in UK get Pfizer jab in first week December 16, 2020 Almost 138,000 people in the UK received the coronavirus vaccine last week, the government has announced, after ministers came under pressure for failing to track the details of the vaccination programme. Tweeting the figures this morning, newly-appointed vaccine tsar Nadhim Zahawi said: “A really good start to the vaccination program.” Zahawi said the number of [...]
UK businesses return to growth in December after lockdowns December 16, 2020 The UK’s businesses clawed their way back to growth in December after the England-wide lockdown hit the economy in November, a new survey has shown, although conditions were better in manufacturing than the all-important services sector. An early reading of the IHS Markit purchasing managers’ index (PMI) – a closely watched economic gauge – rose [...]