Exclusive: Liberty Charge kickstarts rollout of 800 EV chargepoints across London April 12, 2021 Telecoms giant Liberty Global has today kicked off plans to install 800 electric vehicle (EV) chargepoints across London over the next 12 months. The first 20 chargepoints, which were installed by Liberty Charge, a joint venture with Zouk Capital, went online this morning in the borough of Waltham Forest. It is the initial step in [...]
Heathrow passenger numbers down four-fifths in March April 12, 2021 The number of passengers passing through Heathrow Airport fell more than four-fifths in March as the worst ever financial year for aviation came to a close. Passenger numbers fell 82.6 per cent, to 542,000, last month, as the UK continued to impose strict controls on international travel. For the first three months of 2021, passenger [...]
Vroom to Zoom: UK business travellers to cut flying after pandemic April 12, 2021 A majority of UK business travellers will fly less often when pandemic-related travel restrictions are lifted, a new survey from YouGov has found. As a result of the widespread adoption of videoconferencing technologies such as Zoom, 56 per cent of travellers said they would cut down on corporate travel. That’s the highest percentage of any [...]
Brewdog toasts online sales as revenue grows a tenth April 10, 2021 Craft brewer Brewdog today said that an explosion on online sales had helped grow its revenue 10 per cent in 2020, despite the widespread hospitality shutdown due to the pandemic. The Scottish firm said that revenue had come in at £238m for the year, driven by a thirteen-fold increase in digital sales of its drinks. [...]
Aramco sells minority stake in pipeline network for $12bn April 10, 2021 Oil giant Saudi Aramco has agreed a $12.4bn (£9bn) deal to sell nearly half of its pipelines business to a consortium led by private equity firm EIG Global Energy Partners. Under the deal, which was announced late last night, EIG will take a 49 per cent stake in the newly formed Aramco Oil Pipelines Company. [...]
Future of Stanlow oil refinery up in the air April 10, 2021 The future of the Stanlow oil refinery in Cheshire was up in the air last night after it emerged that it was in talks over its finances. The plant, which supplies about 16 per cent of the UK’s road fuel and employs around 900 people, is owned by Indian multinational Essar. Sky News first reported [...]
China fines Alibaba a record £2bn after competition probe April 10, 2021 Chinese authorities have fined e-commerce giant Alibaba 18.2bn yuan (£2bn) over competition breaches, the largest penalty the country’s regulator has ever handed down. The fine, which amounts to about 4.0 per cent of the firm’s home country revenues, is the latest step in a crackdown on the tech firm after founder Jack Ma criticised China’s [...]
Airlines pull 737 Max from flight schedules after Boeing warning April 9, 2021 A number of airlines have begun grounding Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft today after the planemaker warned 16 of its customers over a potential electrical problem with the model. Southwest Airlines and American Airlines have pulled nearly 50 jets from their flight schedules on the back of the announcement. United Airlines, Alaska Air, and West Jet [...]
UK-France trade back at pre-pandemic levels in March April 9, 2021 UK-France trade bounced back to close to pre-pandemic levels in March, raising hopes that the impact of Britain’s departure from the EU might not be as dramatic as feared. Data from French customs officials showed that after a plunge in January, imports from the UK rose to 107 per cent of pre-Covid levels last month, [...]
Trafigura to open carbon offset trading desk April 9, 2021 Commodities giant Trafigura has today announced that it will launch a carbon trading desk as financial institutions continue to adapt to the ever-increasing focus on climate change. The new desk will be led by Hannah Hauman, the firm’s former head of crude oil trading in Europe. The decision marks another step into the low-carbon market [...]