6,945 retail and hospitality premises have shut up shop so far this year, the equivalent of 38 a day, with High Street pharmacies, pubs and banks making up half those closures, according to research by Green Street for accountancy firm PwC. On average, 18 chemists, 16 pubs and nine banks shut down every week between January and June, while only three convenience stores and one café chain opened in their place, a finding which also illustrates the changing face of Britain’s town centres. Overall, considering store openings, a net total of 12 are closing every day this year, up from 11 last year. Footfall is a significant part of the explanation, Green Street says: the number of people doing physical High Street shopping and socialising is currently 15-20% lower than before Covid lockdowns, a fall that “has dampened sales and the profitability of some stores and hospitality operators”. Retail parks are the only outlets “bucking the declining trend,” it added

Tata Steel’s Port Talbot plant will get £500m from the Government, it was confirmed yesterday. The funding will keep the plant open, but not prevent the loss of around 2,800 jobs. Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the House of Commons the deal would "give hope for the future of steel making in south Wales" but also acknowledged the job losses meant it “very much it falls short of what would be my ideal”. Tata Steel is investing an additional £750m in the plant to switch from the use of coke to electricity to ‘green up’ its manufacturing process. The deal includes a minimum voluntary redundancy payout of £15,000 for full-time workers, and more support for retraining. It also allows the Government to claw back the £500m investment should Tata Steel not fulfil its commitments, and a pledge by Tata to retain 5,000 jobs across its UK business post-transformation. Tata currently employs around 8,000 people in the UK. Trade unions Community and GMB had wanted Tata Steel to keep one of the plant’s two coke-fired blast furnaces open until 2032 to save jobs.

The Home Office has announced it will extend the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) to all visa-exempt foreign nationals who merely transit through UK airports from January next year. The ETA already requires travellers from several Middle Eastern countries to pay £10 for the right to change planes in the UK, with the permit taking up to three days to process. The announcement the scheme is to be extended to all non-European travellers has shocked City groups and airports, which say it will hurt London’s reputation as a “world-leading” business destination and make the UK “less competitive”.  Heathrow Airport claims it has already lost 90,000 passengers due to the ETA since it was first launched in November 2023, and bosses now fear financial losses as up to an estimated four million passengers choose other hub airports to avoid the additional red tape. AirportsUK, the trade group representing UK airports, said passengers from nationalities affected are already choosing to fly “through other European airports like Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurt and Schiphol” instead, and labelled the UK approach “unattractive compared to the EU’s incoming ETIAS scheme”. Meanwhile, Polyvios Polyviou, programme director for transport at BusinessLDN, told City A.M: “At a moment when we should be levelling the playing field on traveller costs to ensure the UK aviation industry remains world class, these new rules will make London harder to reach”.  The Home Office said: “The worldwide expansion of the ETA demonstrates our commitment to enhance security through new technology and embedding a modern immigration system”.

Pay awards granted by British employers fell in the three months to July, according to a survey by Incomes Data Research which concluded the median pay settlement awarded by major employers dropped to 4% in the three months to July, the lowest since August 2022 and down from 4.8% in the three months to June. Reuters notes this data chimes with that from the Office for National Statistics released on Tuesday this week: that too showed cooling wage growth “that should keep the Bank of England on track to cut interest rates later this year,” the news agency said.

Manchester United Football Club reported a net loss of £113.2m for the year ended 30^th June yesterday, despite record revenue of £661.8m. £47.8m of that loss was attributed to costs associated with the strategic review initiated by the Glazer family in late 2022, which led to Sir Jim Ratcliffe acquiring a 27.7% stake in the club. PA Media cited sources within the club as saying the downturn was also caused by spending on transfers and wages, and included severance costs in the region of £10m because of a redundancy programme which cut 250 jobs in the year. The club maintained it was still operating within the Premier League's Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) and UEFA's Financial Fair Play regulations, rules allowing certain losses relating to infrastructure, youth, and women’s team expenditures. Man U lost £42.1m in 2023 and £115.5m in 2022.

Sky News reports that Swedish buyout firm EQT has joined a queue of buyout firms looking to take a large stake in in the UK operations of accountancy firm Grant Thornton. Other bidders include Carlyle, Cinven, CVC Capital Partners and Permira. Nordic Capital is also said to have considered an offer. Sky cited industry sources who claimed the deal was worth somewhere between £1bn and £2bn. The Financial Reporting Council fined Grant Thornton £1.3m for "serious failings" in its audit of Sports Direct in 2022, and the year before, a £2.3m penalty for "serious lack of competence" in relation to its work on Patisserie Holdings, the owner of the collapsed cafe chain Patisserie Valerie. The firm has 200 or so UK partners, who would have a vote on any transaction.

Canary Wharf Group’s (CWG) credit rating has been slashed even deeper into “junk” territory by ratings agency Fitch. It has been downgraded three notches from BB to B, or “highly speculative”, and its senior secured debt rating has been cut from BB+ to BB-. As of June, CWG had £4.2bn of gross debt through complex structures including two other bonds maturing in 2026 and 2028 respectively. The value of CWG’s office portfolio has also fallen by around £1.5bn to £4.27bn since 2021.  The iconic South East London block has seen an exodus of major tenants: second quarter 2023 data showed Canary Wharf’s office occupation was just under 85%, down from pre-Covid levels that were consistently above 90% per cent, City AM reports.

Dovid Efune, the owner of the New York Sun, is weighing a takeover bid for The Daily Telegraph, Sky News reports.  

Firstgroup has appointed Lena Wilson as Chair, with effect from 1^st February 2025. Wilson is currently a non-executive director at NatWest Group, and will succeed the public transport group’s interim chair, Peter Lynas, who took over the job following David Martin's retirement on Tuesday.

In Germany, Volkswagen is scrapping its guarantee of jobs until 2029 at six German plants, raising the prospect of redundancies from next year. Volkswagen is also cancelling its decades-old employment guarantees as part of a cost-cutting drive forced by its struggle to compete against cheaper Asian rivals.

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