Lockdown blues: Breakups and divorces support UK house prices July 21, 2020 The property market is currently defying gravity, with asking prices hitting an all-time high in July and spirits buoyant after the chancellor slashed the stamp duty homes tax. But estate agents say a less-publicised factor has been helping the property sector ride out economic turbulence better than most had predicted: A surge in lockdown breakups [...]
Johanna Kyrklund: Are markets paying enough attention? July 20, 2020 Like home-schooled children during the Covid crisis, markets seem to be struggling to pay attention for long. For parents, one of the most difficult parts of lockdown has been home-schooling their children. My social media feed has been full of people tearing their hair out as long-forgotten concepts such as subordinate clauses or trigonometry have [...]
Keep shopping like you did during lockdown July 20, 2020 No, not stockpiling. Nobody wants more stockpiling. But in other ways, lockdown has changed how we shop for the better — and there are valuable lessons we should all learn from this period of disruption. Over the years we’ve grown accustomed to easy access to a huge variety of food. We’re not typically too concerned [...]
Airlines call on Rishi Sunak to waive passenger tax for 12 months July 20, 2020 The UK’s airlines have renewed calls for a 12-month waiver from paying Air Passenger Duty (APD) in a bid to protect the industry from damage from the coronavirus crisis. A new survey from industry body Airlines UK has found that without such a waiver, 600 air routes will be lost in the short-term, as well [...]
M&S set to announce hundreds of UK job cuts this week July 20, 2020 Supermarket giant Marks and Spencer (M&S) is set to announce plans for hundreds of job cuts later this week, according to reports, as the retailer undergoes a wide-scale restructure in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. M&S will begin announcing redundancy plans over the next few days, which are expected to run into their thousands [...]
DEBATE: Is Rishi Sunak’s job retention bonus scheme the right strategy for supporting the retail sector? July 20, 2020 Is Rishi Sunak’s job retention bonus scheme the right strategy for supporting the retail sector? Helen Dickinson OBE, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, says YES. The job retention bonus will provide welcome support as retailers think about future requirements and bring back thousands of staff over the next few months who have been [...]
Pizza Express draws up plans to close 75 restaurants July 16, 2020 Pizza Express is drawing up plans to close up to 75 restaurants around the UK as the pizza chain undergoes a wide-scale financial restructure as a result of the coronavirus crisis. The company is mulling the closure of “around 75” of its 470 UK outlets through a company voluntary arrangement (CVA), Pizza Express said today. [...]
‘Calm before the storm’: Rate of redundancies slows but worst is yet to come July 16, 2020 Fewer British employees were made redundant in June but economists warn unemployment is on course to rise. Around 650,000 people lost their jobs between March and June but the pace of decline slowed in June, with the bulk of job losses occurring around the onset of lockdown restrictions. June’s drop of just over 74,000 was [...]
UK to borrow record £385bn in bond markets to fund Covid support July 16, 2020 UK government fundraising in the bond markets will hit a record £385bn between April and November after it announced plans to raise £110bn more from September. The unprecedented bond sales come as the government racks up the biggest peacetime budget deficit in hundreds of years. It has spent big to keep the economy on its [...]
Julian Lewis calls Tory party sacking ‘strange’ after Grayling plot July 16, 2020 Sacked Conservative MP Julian Lewis has called his removal from the party “strange” and labelled Downing Street’s attempt to install its own candidate to the chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) as “improper”. Former transport secretary Chris Grayling had been handpicked by Boris Johnson to take the reins of the powerful committee, however [...]