Category Archives: Business

Sydney CBD sees uptick in commuters as big banks lead push to return workers to offices

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City train stations at 70% of pre-pandemic capacity amid warnings of potential effects of bringing workers back full-time

Workers are returning to offices in inner Sydney as a handful of large companies, including big banks, tell employees to come back from their kitchen tables.

The corporate-led trend is observable in public transport usage figures that show a recent uptick in office returns. It marks a shift in working arrangements after Australians appeared to have largely settled into their new hybrid habits.

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UK government to invest in film and TV AI special-effects research

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Almost £150m to be spent on research labs to help future-proof industry and lift creative economy

Ministers are seeking to future-proof the UK’s multibillion-pound film and TV production industry by investing almost £150m in a network of research labs across the country tasked with developing the next generation of special effects using tech such as artificial intelligence.

The scheme aims to build on Britain’s reputation for producing hi-tech hits from Star Wars to Harry Potter, and is part of wide-ranging plans to drive the UK creative economy. The government has earmarked millions to support grassroots music venues hammered by the Covid pandemic, and is tripling a fund designed to find and support the next generation of homegrown superstars like Adele and Ed Sheeran.

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Australia politics live: Morrison addresses Higgins discrepancy; PM says bus crash a ‘tragedy beyond comprehension’

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Katy Gallagher hits back at Coalition attacks, saying she conducted herself with ‘highest levels of integrity’ over Higgins allegations. Follow live

First Nations people call on government to sign nuclear weapons prohibition

A group of people are on their way to Canberra to call on the prime minister to sign the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and speak to MPs about their experience surviving the British nuclear testing program in Western Australia and South Australia in the 1950s.

Our mob were not informed of those tests that were about to take place on our traditional lands.

Consent was never given by Anangu for the Emu Field tests. The government did not come and ask Anangu if it was okay to test on our traditional lands.

Everyone knows the commonwealth doesn’t have the power to cap rents. There’s eight different states and territories across the country all doing different things. Some of them have ruled it out.

We have data and evidence it doesn’t work and it puts downward pressure on supply. What we need to do is add to supply. That’s what we’re doing, not just with our housing Australia future fund and our other investments. We have homes under construction today because we made that money available.

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UK wage growth jumps, making interest rate rise more likely

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Unemployment rate unexpectedly falls to 3.8% in three months to April, in sign of strength for jobs market

UK wages grew at a faster than expected pace in April, reinforcing expectations the Bank of England will raise interest rates next week.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show growth in average regular pay, excluding bonuses, strengthened to 7.2% in the three months to April – the highest level on record, excluding the Covid pandemic.

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Gold bars used to lure Chinese homebuyers amid market slowdown

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Property developers struggle to rebuild confidence in housing market after three years of economic pain

Gold bars, new cars and mobile phones are among the incentives being offered to potential homebuyers by Chinese property developers as they grow increasingly desperate to boost sales.

Huafa Tianfu, a developer in the eastern city of Hangzhou, has been offering up to a kilo of gold bullion to tempt people into buying its flats.

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UK business leader diversity has not increased since George Floyd death

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Nearly 70% of office workers say their firms have not increased number of black, Asian or ethnic minority leaders

The number of senior business leaders from ethnically diverse backgrounds has not significantly increased since the death of George Floyd sparked global protests and $50bn (£40bn) of corporate pledges to address racial inequality in the workplace.

Three years on from the killing of Floyd at the hands of US police officers, which prompted chief executives including Apple’s Tim Cook and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs to declare that leaders also need to do more to address racial disparities in their own companies, nearly 70% of office workers say their firms have not increased the number of black, Asian or ethnic minority leaders.

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Economic growth to pick up but risks to recovery ‘elevated’, say UK forecasts

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Households and firms can expect more financial pain despite Britain dodging technical recession, says KPMG

Britain will be left with deep scars from the pandemic despite narrowly escaping a second recession within three years and growing signs of an economic pick up, according to new forecasts.

A new report by the accountancy firm KPMG has found that the economy has enjoyed a better start to the year than it had thought, and is now expected to grow by 0.3% this year, compared with its previous prediction of an uplift of just 0.1%.

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Australia’s leading super funds halt future contracts with PwC amid tax scandal fallout

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AustralianSuper, Australian Retirement Trust, Hesta and Aware Super say they won’t enter into new contracts with the firm

Australia’s biggest superannuation funds have either frozen, or are reviewing, future work contracts with PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia, as the fallout from the tax leaks scandal proves costly for the embattled firm.

Four of the country’s biggest funds, AustralianSuper, Australian Retirement Trust, Hesta and Aware Super, say they will not enter into new contracts with PwC, after the professional services firm used confidential information obtained through its work for the government for commercial gain.

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North Sea oil and gas industry offered ‘get-out’ clause on windfall tax

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Jeremy Hunt hopes suspending tax on oil profits if Brent crude falls below $71.40 a barrel will aid investment

Jeremy Hunt has offered the North Sea oil and gas industry a ‘get-out’ clause from the windfall tax on fossil fuel profits if wholesale energy market prices fall back to normal levels.

The chancellor hopes to boost investment in the North Sea by agreeing to suspend the windfall tax on oil profits if the market price for Brent crude falls below $71.40 a barrel, and gas prices fall below 54 pence a therm, for a period of six months. The global oil price is currently about $75 a barrel, and the UK’s gas price is about 64 p/th.

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What were they smoking in Woking? Council tax payers need to be told

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Residents will no doubt have to pay a price for their authority’s risk taking and subsequent bankruptcy

Winning in the rollercoaster business of commercial property development is hard. Look at the share prices of the two FTSE 100 titans, regarded as the most diversified and solid operators in the sector. Since the financial crisis of 2008-09, which caused commercial property prices to crater, Landsec’s shares have been as low as 350p and as high as £13 and are currently 626p. British Land’s trajectory is similar.

Their investors collect dividends (most of the time), largely funded from rental income, but they also know that the value of the assets can be volatile. Less diversified firms have done much worse. Intu, a former shopping centre giant, collapsed in 2020 and an air of financial crisis has hovered over Hammerson for years. This is territory for conservative financing and strong risk-management safeguards.

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Eurozone sinks into recession as cost of living crisis takes toll

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GDP shrank 0.1% in first quarter of 2023 and final three months of 2022 after revisions to earlier estimates

The eurozone slipped into recession in the first three months of the year, after official figures were revised to show the bloc’s economy shrank as the rising cost of living weighed on consumer spending.

Figures from Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency, showed gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.1% in the first quarter of 2023 and the final three months of 2022 after revisions to earlier estimates. A technical recession is generally defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

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‘Former estate agents’: the strange life of the Barclay twins

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Losing Telegraph newspapers will not turn remaining twin Frederick Barclay into a pauper, but it’s a bitter end to brothers’ empire-building

From humble beginnings growing up in a west London house so close to the railway line the window frames rattled when a train passed, the Barclay twins, Frederick and David, became an extraordinary, energetic and eccentric power couple.

They built an empire of glitzy hotels and made many millions in shipping and retail before plunging into the world of newspapers but – largely – eschewed the trappings of life in the London fast lane to live in strange isolation in a sprawling mansion on a small rocky island just off the French coast.

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‘Absolute scandal’: UAE state oil firm able to read Cop28 climate summit emails

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Exclusive: UN conference president Sultan Al Jaber is also head of oil firm, which was consulted on how to respond to a media inquiry

The United Arab Emirates’ state oil company has been able to read emails to and from the Cop28 climate summit office and was consulted on how to respond to a media inquiry, the Guardian can reveal.

The UAE is hosting the UN climate summit in November and the president of Cop28 is Sultan Al Jaber, who is also chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc). The revelations have been called “explosive” and a “scandal” by lawmakers.

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Communist party accessed TikTok data of Hong Kong protesters, former executive alleges

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Ruling party accessed user data including Sim card ID and IP addresses, former executive alleges in legal filing

A former executive at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has alleged that the Chinese Communist party accessed user data from the social video app belonging to Hong Kong protesters and civil rights activists.

Yintao Yu, a former head of engineering at ByteDance’s US operation, claimed in a legal filing that a committee of Communist party members accessed TikTok data that included the users’ network information, Sim card identifications and IP addresses in a bid to identify the individuals and their locations.

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Australian economy grew 0.2% in first three months of the year, the slowest since Covid lockdowns

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Jim Chalmers says higher interest rates and cost-of-living pressures are squeezing household budgets and slowing the economy

Australia’s economy slowed in the March quarter as households dipped into savings to keep spending amid a record run of interest rate rises and imports rose faster than exports.

The country’s gross domestic product expanded at a quarterly rate of 0.2% in the first three months of the year, and by an annual rate of 2.3%. Economists had expected GDP growth of 0.3% for the quarter and 2.4% for the year.

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Interest rate pain felt ‘unevenly’ but that’s not a reason to avoid rises, Philip Lowe says

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The Reserve Bank governor says rates will keep being lifted if necessary, despite 'significant financial pressure’ for some

Philip Lowe concedes interest rate pain is being felt “unevenly” across Australia but he says that is not a reason to avoid using the one tool the Reserve Bank has to tame inflation and raise rates further.

The RBA governor has also warned against the idea that all workers should be compensated for inflation, saying “we have to make sure that higher inflation doesn’t translate into higher wages for everybody”.

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Shell’s ‘green’ ad campaign banned in UK for being ‘likely to mislead’

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Advertising Standards Authority says ads do not make clear company’s business is mostly based on fossil fuels

An ad campaign by Shell promoting its green initiatives has been banned for not telling consumers that most of its business is based on environmentally damaging fossil fuels such as petrol.

Shell, which has set goals to become a net zero carbon energy company by 2050 while also expanding its gas business by a fifth, ran a TV, poster and YouTube campaign pushing renewable electricity, wind and car charging point initiatives.

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England ‘4,700 years from building enough onshore windfarms’

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Thinktank says effective ban on planning permissions means country is way behind on much-needed renewable energy

It would take almost 4,700 years for England to build enough onshore windfarms to help meet the UK’s clean energy needs unless the government lifts an effective block on new turbines, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

Only 17 small-scale onshore windfarms have been approved in England since 2015 when the government changed planning laws to create a de facto ban on onshore windfarms, according to the thinktank.

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Housebuilders cut back on construction as UK mortgage rate rises spook buyers

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Work on residential building sites slips in May to weakest level since 2009

Britain’s housebuilders are cutting back on the construction of new homes amid signs that potential buyers are being spooked by the prospect of increases in mortgage rates over the coming months.

The latest report on the construction sector found that work on residential building sites slipped in May to the weakest level since 2009, apart from when sites were locked down during the Covid pandemic.

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Political point scoring over latest RBA rate rise won’t help those feeling the ‘painful squeeze’

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How high must rates go to choke inflation? Blaming Labor’s budget, price-gouging businesses or the national wage increase isn’t an answer

The Reserve Bank is all about “seeking to keep the economy on an even keel” as it cranks up interest rates to crush inflation – but the effect of multiple rate rises is anything but even.

The central bank again surprised most economists and investors on Tuesday by hiking its cash rate another 25 basis points to 4.1%.

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