N Brown shares drop as profit falls on ‘year of restructuring’ June 25, 2020 Fashion retailer N Brown has today posted falls in both profit and revenue for the last financial year, blaming the drop on a lengthy period of “restructuring” the business. In the 12 months to 29 February 2020, the owner of the Simply Be and Jacamo brands said adjusted profit before tax fell 28.8 per cent [...]
Royal Mail to slash 2,000 jobs as profit sinks 25 per cent June 25, 2020 Royal Mail is set to make 2,000 staffredundant to save £130m to combat the impact of coronavirus after the sudden departure of its ex-CEO in May. The postal delivery service said it needed to take “immediate action” on costs after profit before tax plunged 25 per cent to £180m in the financial year to the [...]
Easyjet raises £419m through share placing to bolster finances June 25, 2020 Low-cost carrier Easyjet today announced that it had raised £419m through a share placing in order to help it withstand the coronavirus pandemic. In total, the budget airline placed 59.5m ordinary new shares – 15 per cent of the firm’s existing share capital – at a price of 703p per share. The placing price represents [...]
Stocks sell-off continues as new cases rocket June 25, 2020 Asian stocks were buffeted by their biggest drop in eight sessions today, as a rise in US coronavirus cases and warnings from the International Monetary Fund knocked investor confidence. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.7 per cent, Tokyo’s Nikkei slumped 1.1 per cent and Australia’s ASX 200 tumbled 2.1 per cent. [...]
Sadiq Khan is wrong — extending the furlough scheme would hinder London’s recovery, not help it June 25, 2020 Warning of a “looming unemployment crisis”, Sadiq Khan this week made an appeal for a further extension of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), under which more than a million Londoners have been furloughed. His concern for London jobs is understandable. But it would be wrong to continue the scheme beyond October. Furloughing made sense [...]
A message from a former Extinction Rebellion activist: Fellow environmentalists, join me in embracing nuclear power June 25, 2020 As the lockdown measures we have become so familiar with over the past three months are slowly eased, discussions are turning to how to move forward with recovering from the economic hit of Covid-19 in a way that also addresses climate change. I have a long history of campaigning on environmental issues, most recently as [...]
The City View: The ‘cardiac arrest’ of the UK jobs market – with Andrew Hunter of Adzuna June 25, 2020 In this episode, City A.M. Deputy Editor Andy Silvester is joined by Andrew Hunter, co-founder and chief executive of Adzuna, now Europe’s fastest growing job search engine. Subscribe to The City View Podcast: Apple / Google / Spotify / RSS Andrew discusses the “cardiac arrest” in the UK job market caused by Covid-19, the competition for job offers and steps the government could [...]
SMEs anticipate spike in redundancies this summer as lockdown eases June 25, 2020 Small businesses across the UK are expecting a difficult summer as they predict redundancies are likely to spike in August even as lockdown starts to ease. The total impact on revenue that SMEs expect from the coronavirus outbreak has reduced from minus 29 per cent at the start of lockdown to minus 10 per cent [...]
Crisis is ‘defining moment’ in climate change battle, government told June 25, 2020 The government must use its recovery from the coronavirus crisis to accelerate the country’s transition to a net zero economy, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has said. In its latest guidance to parliament released today, the CCC urged ministers to seize the opportunity to turn the crisis into a “defining moment” in the fight [...]
Builders urge government to target 30,000 new houses for elderly a year in pandemic recovery June 25, 2020 The three largest retirement home providers have warned Boris Johnson that Britain’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic will be “running on empty” if he does not urgently build new houses for older people. The chief executives of McCarthy & Stone, Churchill Retirement, and Lifestory Group have written to the Prime Minister urging him to [...]