Meet the City AM Dragon Awards Winners 2024 News You would be forgiven for thinking that the most important Mansion House event was the Chancellor’s annual speech to City leaders but, with apologies to Rachel Reeves, she’s just been upstaged. Last night 200 leaders and founders from a staggering array of businesses, charities and organisations gathered at this iconic Square Mile venue for the [...]
Businesses warn of £400m in extra costs after Reeves’s Budget tax raid Business Businesses across the UK are sounding the alarm over rising costs after Rachel Reeves raised taxes by some £40bn at the Budget last week. The Chancellor announced that employer’s national insurance contributions (NIC) will increase by 1.2 per cent to 15 per cent, and the threshold at which businesses start paying the levy will be [...]
Price rises loom as Budget hits Sainsbury’s with £140m costs Business Sainsbury’s chief executive Simon Roberts has cautioned that new government measures will hit shoppers with higher prices by adding £140m to the supermarket’s costs. These include a National Insurance hike, and a rise in the UK minimum wage. The increased National Insurance contributions, as announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in her Autumn Budget, will surge [...]
Sainsbury’s: FTSE 100 retailer warns Reeves’ budget may push up food prices November 7, 2024 Chief executive of Sainsbury’s Simon Roberts has warned that Reeves’ decision to increase employer’s national insurance contributions (NICs) by 1.2 per cent to 15 per cent next April could lead to price inflation. Sainsbury’s has estimated the cost of the change at £140m, according to the Guardian. “This industry operates on very low margins, and there just [...]
Labour’s ‘growth’ agenda already looks like a bad joke November 7, 2024 Well, that didn’t take long to unravel: the first Labour Budget for nearly 15 years, and the first ever by a female chancellor, saw the parallels with Kwasi Kwarteng’s infamous 2022 mini-Budget emerging within hours. The comparison was misguided, although the jittery reaction of financial investors and rise in government funding costs told its own [...]
How will the Budget impact the prime housing market? November 1, 2024 The Budget was, by and large, a set of fiscal promises for people who rely on public services. So with that in mind, how might the Budget affect the prime housing market, a market exclusively for the UK’s wealthiest buyers? Prime houses are typically defined as the upper five per cent of houses in any [...]
Sainsbury’s to sell ATM machines after exiting core banking business September 25, 2024 Sainsbury’s has agreed to sell its ATM machines to operator Notemachine three months after offloading most of its banking business to Natwest.
Planning reforms are good news – but there is more Labour could do September 3, 2024 Rumours are running amok about which taxes Labour might hike in the Budget and what impact those policies might have on growth.
Supermarket and McDonald’s bosses to meet ministers over workers’ rights reforms September 2, 2024 Bosses from UK supermarkets and McDonald’s are set to meet government ministers to be updated on plans for new laws around workers rights. Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and business secretary Jonathan Reynolds will join John Lewis CEO Nish Kankiwala; Sainsbury’s CEO Simon Roberts; Claire Costello, chief people and inclusion officer at the Co-Op; and [...]
Strange dreams: Lessons from the life of Paul Simon August 29, 2024 An essay on what I have absorbed over a lifetime listening to Paul Simon What do you need to make a musical career? I’d say it comes down to one thing: a talent for immediacy. If you don’t have it, the chances are you’ll lose out to someone who does. I remember when I first [...]