Us versus them will do nobody any good on the High Street January 14, 2021 While a new year symbolises a fresh start for many, you could be forgiven for thinking you had been planted in the film Groundhog Day but instead the calendar was stuck in 2020. Perhaps nowhere is this more the case than in the retail and hospitality industry, with Lord Sugar’s legal challenge to the planned [...]
Culture secretary: EU ‘let down music’ over post-Brexit touring visa January 13, 2021 The EU is to blame for “letting down music on both sides of the Channel” over a failure to grant visas to touring artists, the culture secretary has said. Oliver Dowden today insisted that the government “fought to get a good deal for British music” but the EU had turned it down “repeatedly”. “It did [...]
Exclusive: City fund managers on the impact of the third lockdown January 13, 2021 In this 2-part series, City A.M. asked UK-focused fund managers what they make of post-Brexit trade arrangements, the impact of three lockdowns and the long-term outlook for the UK’s investment community. Yesterday, in part 1, the investment managers focused on the UK-EU deal and which sectors and companies may become the winners and losers from [...]
Labour’s Anneliese Dodds to call for ‘responsible fiscal framework’ in major speech January 13, 2021 Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds is set to make a definitive break from Jeremy Corbyn-era economic policies in a speech that will commit Labour to “responsible” government spending. Dodds will also urge Rishi Sunak to delay paying of fiscal policy cutbacks or tax increases until the UK’s economy has recovered from Covid, which has been the [...]
Pink goes offline as Covid takes the shirt off its back January 13, 2021 Pink Shirtmaker, the fashion retailer that became famous trading under the name Thomas Pink, has been shuttered by owner LVMH. Covid appears to have seen off the shirtmaker, which had been struggling for years and closed its Jermyn Street flagship in December. All traces of its social media channels, online store and links on the [...]
Exclusive: City of London boss says financial services overlooked in Brexit talks January 13, 2021 City of London Corporation boss Catherine McGuinness has hit out at Boris Johnson’s government for taking financial services for granted and overlooking the City of London during the last two years of Brexit talks. McGuinness, who is policy chair at the powerful local authority, told City A.M. today that she wanted to see “those important [...]
Our tech advances are difficult for productivity stats to compute January 13, 2021 One of the most depressing aspects of the decade of the 2010s, well before Covid-19 struck, was the apparently very slow growth in productivity. This is not a mere ivory tower issue. It is only through increasing productivity that rises in living standards can be sustained. Productivity is the key measure of the efficiency of [...]
Sterling strengthens after Bank boss Andrew Bailey dismisses negative rates talk January 12, 2021 The pound is stronger against the US dollar and the euro this evening after comments from Andrew Bailey
PwC to examine possible fraud in govt coronavirus loan programme January 12, 2021 The government-owned British Business Bank (BBB) has brought on PwC to examine cases of possible fraud in its Covid-19 business loans programme. The loan programme was established to help smaller businesses impacted by coronavirus. According to website Consultancy.co.uk, BBB tapped PwC to look into possible fraud, having previously worked with the Big Four firm and [...]
FTSE 100 slides again but Wall Street edges up January 12, 2021 The FTSE 100 dropped again today after Chancellor Rishi Sunak warned that the economy would get worse before it got better. Across the Atlantic, Wall Street’s main markets crept upwards as traders looked for details of a new stimulus package for the distressed economy. London’s premier index was up 0.1 per cent at the opening [...]