Published: 05 April 2023
By Suzanne Evans, Director, Political Insight
The ongoing lack of a functioning government in Northern Ireland is making life especially hard for small businesses and the hospitality sector in particular, The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) says. It points to a "perfect storm" as the new financial year brings an increase in costs such as wages, water bills, corporation tax and business rates, and a reduction in energy bill support. Although in England, retail, hospitality and leisure properties will get 75% in business rates relief, up to a cash cap of £110,000, a receipt by Stormont of £163m has not gone towards business rates relief because there was no minister or executive to allocate it. A Department of Finance spokesperson said: "Any decisions in relation to new rate relief measures for business in Northern Ireland would be for the secretary of state or a future executive to make, having considered the full competing priorities for public funding," they said. Alan Lowry, policy chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses in Northern Ireland told the BBC: "That money has been given to the Northern Ireland economy through the Barnett consequential, but we actually need to see that hitting the ground here and actually getting to our members and the other people who really need that support right now." The Bank of England’s Chief Economist, Huw Pill, has claimed that record high inflation is “largely a manifestation of ‘bad luck’– a series of unfortunate events” and that the central bank had to be sure prices were coming down before it could stop hiking interest rates. "On balance the onus remains on ensuring enough monetary tightening is delivered to 'see the job through' and sustainably return inflation to target," Pill said in a speech in Geneva. Last month, the BoE raised interest rates for the 11th consecutive time to 4.25%. Pill voted with the majority on the BoE's Monetary Policy Committee last month to raise the interest rate. Most British businesses expect their sales to rise over the coming year despite seeing no sales growth over the past three months, the British Chambers of Commerce said yesterday. Its survey of 5,200 mostly small and medium-sized businesses showed gloom was concentrated in the retail and hospitality sectors. The slump in business confidence in the second half of 2022 has waned as political turmoil and inflationary pressures show some signs of easing, David Bharier, the BCC's head of research, said. 52% of firms surveyed between 13th February and 9th March expected sales to rise over the coming year, up from a low of 44% in the third quarter of 2022. A BBC report analysing reports made on the Gender Pay Gap Service website has concluded that men still earn more than women, despite a continued push for equality. The difference in wages has remained at 9.4%, the same level as in 2017/18, when figures were first published, the broadcaster says, based on inspection of the median pay gap - the difference in pay in companies between middle-ranking woman and middle-ranking man. Banking and finance remain among the worst offenders, with women earning, on average, 22% less than their male colleague. However, the BBC noted there are some businesses that pay women more than men, including Airbus Operations (17.7%), Azebra Pay (16.9%) and DHL Services (12%). By law, companies, charities and public sector departments of 250 employees or more must now publish their gender pay gap figures on the Gender Pay Gap Service website. By yesterday afternoon, 9,824 employers had reported. The survey did not look at unequal pay - paying women less for the same work - which is of course illegal. Meanwhile, separate analysis of the same data by Reuters shows that within the banking and finance sector, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Standard Chartered reported a widening in the gap between what they paid women and men in 2022. HSBC - already one of the most unequal banks in Britain in terms of gender pay - reported a wider mean average gap for the year, disclosing women were paid 45.2% less than men. This was up from 44.9% the prior year. The British arm of Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs' gap increased to 53.2% - remaining the largest among major finance employers reviewed by Reuters and up from 51.3% the prior year. Morgan Stanley's UK arm's gap widened to 40.8%, up from 40.5%, while Standard Chartered's gap increased to 29% from 27%. The data also showed that, at the banks which detailed their pay gaps by ethnicity, the gap was widest between Black staff and their white colleagues. TikTok has been fined £12.7m by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for using children’s personal data without parental consent. The ICO said the social media giant allowed up to 1.4 million children under the age of 13 to use the app without parental consent in 2020, breaching its own rules and UK data protection law. The Home Office confirmed yesterday that a new body will take over management of its Global Talent Visa programme from Tech Nation, the start-up which shut at the end of March after the Department for Culture, Media and Sport pulled its funding and handed it to Barclays. More people are using bus services since the introduction of a £2 fare cap, a survey by transport watchdog Transport Focus concludes. Transport Focus surveyed more than 1,000 people and 40% said bus journeys were replacing ones they would have made by car. The cap was introduced as a cost of living measure and to help bus firms bring passenger numbers back to pre-pandemic levels. It is due to expire in June. New car registrations in the UK rose for the 8th consecutive month in March, recording a more than 17% rise from a year earlier, according to preliminary industry data released by The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) this morning. The SMMT also said it was the biggest month ever for battery electric car registrations. Thousands of workers employed by the Environment Agency in England will strike for four days this month over a pay dispute, Unison said this morning. London fintech Clearbank saw revenues triple to £58m last year as financial firms sought its Bank of England-backed deposits amid market turmoil and sharp rate hikes. Clearbank, which launched in 2015 as the first new clearing bank in 250 years, recorded a 43% surge in net transactions and a 23% jump in fees during 2022, City A.M. says. CEO Charles McManus told the newspaper that the recent banking crisis which saw the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank also spurred a 20% jump in the amount of cash it holds for customers as firms fled to safety from smaller lenders; and CFO Mark Fairless said Clearbank’s policy of holding its balances “securely at the Bank of England remains a core part of our client proposition.” The Co-Operative Group has maintained an operating profit of £100m in 2022, it says, although its report came with a warning of ‘volatile external environment and turbulent economic headwinds, including inflationary pressures’ in the year ahead. Entain has bought 365scores in a deal worth up to $160m (£128m) as the betting giant hopes to expand its global reach, City A.M. reports. The Ladbrokes owner will pay $150m plus contingent payments of up to $10m for the Israeli sports media company. US private equity firm Apollo Global Management said yesterday it has made a fifth and final takeover offer for FTSE 250 engineering firm Wood Group at £1.66bn. The new offer, of 240p per share in cash, represents a 59% premium to the closing undisturbed share price of 151p on 21 February 2023. Okyo Pharma has applied to delist from the London Stock Exchange, telling investors yesterday that the decision was prompted by the costs connected with 'negligible' trading volumes of its shares on the main market. The ophthalmology drugmaker’s shares reached a ten-month low in the wake of the announcement, falling 14.6% to 1.75p and bringing 12-month losses to around 66%. More than 26,000 people reported their Virgin Media home broadband was not functioning yesterday morning. The firm said the problem was resolved by mid-afternoon, although later reports disagree. Virgin has around 5.8 million home broadband users across the UK, according to its latest figures. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has cancelled all its public engagements and events because of fresh sexual misconduct claims against the business lobby group which emerged yesterday. The cancellations include it annual dinner, at which the Chancellor is usually the keynote speaker. However, sources told the BBC that Jeremy Hunt was not due to attend on 11th May this year as he will be out of the country, but Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey had been set to go instead. More than half of Britons feel encouraged to buy products because of discounts offered through store loyalty cards, a survey from market researcher NIQ released yesterday showed. According to NIQ, 54% of Britons said that loyalty card discounts were most likely to encourage them to buy a product. More than a third of them also picked a "special price discount" for loyalty card holders as a promotion bound to influence where they shop. Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has agreed to pay $8.9bn (£7.12bn) to settle tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging that talc in its iconic Baby Powder and other products caused cancer, the company now says. Originally, it offered $2bn to settle the claims. The fresh agreement follows a US appeals court ruling in January invalidating J&J’s controversial “Texas two-step” bankruptcy manoeuvre, in which it sought to offload the talc liability onto a subsidiary that immediately filed for Chapter 11. However, Reuters reported that earlier on Tuesday, J&J was exploring placing its talc subsidiary into bankruptcy proceedings for a second time. It announced in 2020 that it would stop selling its talc Baby Powder in the U.S. and Canada due to what it called "misinformation" about the product and later announced its intent to discontinue it worldwide in 2023. The pharma giant has maintained throughout that its products are safe and do not cause cancer. The price of dogecoin soared 35% yesterday to sit at $0.09 per token, according to data from Coingecko, after Twitter changed its logo from the iconic blue bird to an image of a Japenese Shiba Inu dog breed associated with the cryptocurrency. Twitter owner Elon Musk followed up the development with a tweet suggesting the change was "as promised". He has long been an advocate of dogecoin, arguing that the meme-based cryptocurrency might surpass bitcoin in terms of payment capabilities, and Yahoo Finance says the move has reinforced the persistent rumours that Musk is planning to allow dogecoin payments on the social media platform. About a year ago, Musk suggested there could be "an option to pay in doge", when discussing the need for Twitter Blue subscriptions. Dogecoin was launched in 2013, by two software engineers as a light-hearted project.
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