UK pension funds need to start pumping cash into London’s stock market “fast”, City minister and economic secretary to the Treasury Bim Afolami will say today in a speech to think tank Bright Blue. In his March budget, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt threatened pension funds with “further action” if they did not boost their investment in UK equities. “Pension cash is seen as key to reviving the UK’s stock market after a drop off in investment over the past two decades. Around four per cent of the London-listed shares are now held by pension funds, a sharp drop-off from the 39 per cent held at the turn of the millennium,” City AM’s Charlie Conchie writes this morning. Meanwhile, the BBC reports that Hunt will hold a summit of finance chiefs today to brainstorm how to boost the appeal of the UK markets to domestic and international companies. “The chancellor and the London Stock Exchange chief insist London isn’t burning, but Mr Hunt clearly thinks it’s important enough to fetch the engines to a special summit at his country residence on Thursday,” Business Editor Simon Jack says. A Treasury spokesperson told the broadcaster the UK was "already one of the best places in the world to grow and secure investment" and it was working on ways "to improve the UK's competitiveness further”. Meanwhile, Peter Jackson, CEO of FTSE 100 gambling firm Flutter has said the Government should remove the 0.5% stamp duty charge on share purchases, calling that a “simple change” which “would have a big impact on the volume of shares that are traded.” Flutter shareholders have voted to shift its main listing from London to New York at the end of this month.

Smart water meters must be made compulsory across all households to protect the UK against climate change, the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has warned. The Government agency is urging ministers to ramp up the roll-out of devices, as it claims water supplies were becoming one of the country’s biggest challenges. Without smart water meters, the NIC said the UK is at heightened risk of drought.

Landlords and Tenants: More than 2,000 households a month are facing homelessness in England when private landlords sell up, often blaming delays and uncertainty around the Renters’ Reform Bill which promises a ban of ‘no-fault’ evictions, The Guardian reports. Official figures show that more than four in 10 families who have asked their Local Councils for temporary housing after a private landlord ended their tenancy are in the predicament because the owner told them they were putting the property on the market. Meanwhile, almost a third of landlords plan to reduce their rental portfolios and only 9% say they likely to grow them, a survey by the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) found. Stubbornly high interest rates are another key cause of sales, the association said. Despite increasing demand, the supply of private housing available to rent is still 50,000 homes below pre-pandemic levels, figures from Rightmove show.

Hundreds of oil rig workers have been left stranded after helicopter pilots responsible for transporting offshore staff to and from dozens of locations in the North Sea went on strike, The Telegraph reports. The two-day walkout by pilots at Bristow Helicopters, which began at midnight on Monday, will disrupt more than 80 scheduled flights, according to the British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa). While other helicopter operators serving the area are providing extra capacity, Balpa said oil companies are being forced to review operations and adjust rotas. However, some workers have been left stranded after a typical two-week shift, or are unable to fly out to the rigs, it said.

Thames Water: Representatives of Thames’ multinational syndicate of shareholders are reportedly set to quit as directors of its corporate entities after refusing to inject more than £3bn to help upgrade its ageing infrastructure and shore up its debt-laden balance sheet. According to Sky News, a number of board members at companies connected to Kemble Water Finance, Thames's parent, are expected to resign in the coming days, a move City sources described as "the logical next step" after the refusals to stump up fresh funding to avoid special administration, a form of insolvency that would effectively leave the government liable for managing the utility firm which serves nearly a quarter of Britain's population. Thames Water is owned by a group of sovereign wealth funds and pension funds from countries including Abu Dhabi, Australia, Britain, Canada and China. Thames Water and a spokesman for Kemble declined to comment to Sky.

Royal Mail owner International Distributions Services (IDS) has received a second takeover proposal from billionaire Daniel Kretinski's EP Group for the remaining 72.4% it doesn't already own, in the sum of 360p per share, which the board is “minded to recommended,” IDS chair Keith Williams said in aa statement, as it is considered "fair" and reflects the business's current growth plans. The revised offer values the company at £3.5bn. Williams added: "The board has sought, and EP Group has agreed to offer as part of the proposal, a set of contractual undertakings to protect key public interest factors and recognise Royal Mail's status as a key part of national infrastructure".  These include retaining the Royal Mail brand name, keeping its headquarters in the UK, and maintaining a "one-price-goes-anywhere" service for the entire UK as well as the continuance of six-day delivery for first-class letters. EP Group also has to honour employees' current rights and recognise the existing unions of both Royal Mail and GLS Group, which provides parcel services in Europe and North America and is also owned by IDS. "While these and other aspects of Royal Mail's status as a key part of national infrastructure are ultimately the government's responsibility to protect, the board feels a duty to raise these issues and seek to protect the public interest as well as the interests of employees before recommending a bid that would take IDS into private ownership," Williams continued. "It is however regrettable that despite four years of asking, the government has not seen fit to engage in reform of the Universal Service and thus improve our financial position and ensure that Royal Mail could provide an economically sustainable service to the British public," he also said.

British shipbuilder Harland & Wolff (H&W) has dismissed as "misleading and inaccurate" a report in The Times alleging the Government is about to block a financial support package to keep the Belfast-based firm afloat. H&W is seeking an Export Development Guarantee (EDG), a Government initiative which enables access to high value loan facilities for general working capital or capital expenditure purposes for companies which export from, or plan to export from the UK. In a statement issued to "reassure shareholders", H&W said: "Management remain comfortable with progress on what is a complex and large transaction for all parties involved". It added it would update the market "in the next few weeks" on the £200m EDG, which the Times suggested was about to be blocked by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, despite Defence Secretary Grant Shapps hailing the "golden age" of naval shipbuilding only two days’ ago, and announcing a 28-vessel construction pipeline. H&W CEO John Wood said he was "disappointed to read this article” and that H&W’s EDG application “has not been rejected and continues to be work in progress." H&W has a £1.6bn contract to construct three Royal Fleet Auxiliary support ships with Navantia, the Spanish shipbuilder, which has a yard in Cadiz. It was founded 162 years ago and is famous for building the ill-fated Titanic and its sisters Olympic and Brittanic.  

BT Group has seen profit after tax plummet by 55% writing down a significant chunk of its business, which wiped £488m off the telecom’s value in the year to 31^st March 2024. Pre-tax profit totalled £1.19bn, 31% down from £1.73bn the year before. Revenue for the group remained stable, at £20.8bn compared to £20.7bn in the year before. However, shares in the FTSE 100 firm were up more than 10% in early trading on news that it had achieved its £3bn cost and service transformation programme a year ahead of schedule, meaning it also upgraded short-term cash flow expectations and achieve a further £3bn of yearly cost savings.  The company also increased its dividend for the year by 3.9%, bumping it up to 8p per share, taking the total payout to £750m. BT has 640,000 shareholders, many of them still smaller investors who bought in when the company was privatised in 1984.

Burberry has seen its debt pile more than doubled over the past year, up to £1.13bn at the end of March, compared to £460m a year earlier. The British fashion house warned shoppers were shunning its London stores because of Rishi Sunak’s tourist tax.  CEO Jonathan Akeroyd said: “The UK continues to significantly underperform continental Europe. Obviously, the absence of tax-free shopping is playing a part in that. London is really losing out to Paris and Milan, and the gap is widening.” The Telegraph reports that he also said Burberry’s internal figures indicated that spending by Chinese tourists at its London stores was less than half pre-pandemic levels, whereas it had more than tripled in Paris. It was a “shame,” Akeroyd said, that Britain was failing to stem the decline, and that “Without a scheme, the UK will continue to miss out on obvious post-Brexit benefits”.

The England and Wales Cricket Board has announced a record turnover of £336.1m in the financial year to 31^st January, together with an increase in profits from £21.1m to £27.9m, albeit mainly on the back of interest on existing assets. However, the bottom line has also been credited to the 110,000 tickets sold for last year’s women’s Ashes; over 500,000 sold for the Hundred and an overall cumulative year attendance of 3.1m, including a sell out five-Test men’s Ashes series. Richard Thompson, ECB chairman, said: “Ashes years are always special, and it’s great to see the impact that hosting the two series side-by-side had in capturing the nation’s imagination, and inspiring more interest in our sport”. He added: “Tickets for England Women’s fixtures this summer have been selling even faster than for the Ashes”.

Klarna, the buy now pay later firm has reportedly cleared a crucial hurdle on its journey towards a stock market flotation expected to value it at as much as $20bn (£15.9bn). According to Sky News, the Stockholm-based consumer credit provider has secured backing from shareholders and regulators to establish a new UK-registered holding company, which will see investors exchange their shares in Klarna Holding for Klarna Group plc stock in about ten days' time, with a New York float in New York flotation likely in the first quarter of 2025, after the next US presidential election.  

Easyjet has announced this morning that CEO Johan Lundgren is leaving the budget airline. It has also reported a £61m drop in losses over the key winter period and predicts a bumber summer season. The airline’s revenue per seat rose 5% overall, while its cost per sea declined 2%. The group’s holidays arm, Easyjet Holidays, also reported customer growth of 42% year-on-year. Lundgren will quit in early in 2025 after seven years in the top job, to be replaced by CFO Kenton Jarvis who will continue in his current job during the transition.

Marks & Spencer is adopting a recycling technology enabling it to trace what happens to its drinks bottles, cartons and other plastic packaging. The Polytag system prints an invisible tag on to containers, which can be picked up by electronic readers located at recycling centres, the Guardian reports. Products featuring the tags will begin appearing on shelves in the next three months.

Tesco CEO Ken Murphy’s pay almost doubled in the last financial year to nearly £10maccording to the supermarket’s latest annual report. He was paid ‘just’ £4.95m in 2023. The bulk of Murphy’s latest pay package comprised £8.3m in bonuses, plus a base salary of £1.64m. Tesco’s CFO Imran Nawaz also enjoyed a huge increase: his pay soared from £2.27m to £4.95m. The supermarket posted a jump in profits to £2.3bn in the year to February 2024, compared to £882m a year earlier. Luke Hildyard, executive director of the High Pay Centre think tank, told The Telegraph: “You couldn’t really get a better indicator of how the UK economy serves the interests of the super-rich at the expense of everybody else than this”. Tesco is currently battling thousands of equal pay claims from current and former workers, who argue that work done in its stores should be considered equal to that carried out by workers in its distribution centres, a claim the store says it will counter “vigorously”.

Press Contact

Why Media Press Department
Website: whymedia.com / marketingnewscast.com
Email: press@whymedia.com
Telephone: 020 3007 6002