Category Archives: Business

Harrods stops selling Ganesha handbag after backlash from Hindus

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US label Judith Leiber’s depiction of the god on £6,340 leather clutch criticised as ‘demeaning’

Harrods has stopped selling a luxury handbag after the accessory caused offence among the Hindu community.

The bag, from the New York label Judith Leiber favoured by Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez, sculptures the Hindu god Ganesha into a leather clutch. Many Hindus saw the image of the god on a handbag as demeaning and commodifying their religion. They believe in non-violence against animals, so the use of leather is considered insensitive, especially in this context.

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‘Super app’ Grab to go public in record $40bn Spac merger

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Singapore-headquartered firm offers one-stop shopstyle service, including ride hailing, banking and food delivery

South-east Asian “super app” Grab, which offers services from ride hailing and food delivery to online banking, is to float in the US in a record deal with a so-called Spac investment company that values the business at almost $40bn (£29bn).

Singapore-headquartered Grab, which intends to list on Nasdaq in the US, has struck a $39.5bn merger deal with US-based Altimeter Growth Corp. It is by far the biggest deal to date involving a special purpose acquisition company (Spac) – a so-called “blank cheque” shell company that raises money first and seeks businesses to buy later – which has become the latest trend in global finance over the last year.

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‘This is all we could get’: Dutch tourists arrive in Rhodes for locked-down holiday

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In experiment organised by Dutch government, travellers will have to take regular Covid tests and are barred from leaving resort

A regime that might, in more normal times, resemble a boot camp has been happily embraced by 189 Dutch tourists who traded lockdown in the Netherlands for eight days of voluntary confinement at a Greek beach resort.

In an experiment devised by travel industry experts determined not to lose another season to Covid-19, the tourists arrived on the Aegean island of Rhodes on Monday as part of a test run to see if safe holidays can be arranged during the pandemic.

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AstraZeneca blood clotting: what is this rare syndrome and how is it caused?

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Evidence is growing of a link between the Covid-19 vaccine and a deadly thrombosis – and theories are emerging as to why

Since rare but severe clotting was seen in some people following vaccination with AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, researchers worldwide have been grappling to understand why the clotting syndrome, known as “thrombosis with thrombocytopenia” (clotting with a low platelet count), occurs.

Most cases of these clots occurred in veins in the brain (a condition called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, or CVST), though some occurred in other veins, including those to the abdomen (splanchnic vein thrombosis). It has a high death rate.

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Alibaba shares jump after record $2.8bn anti-monopoly fine

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E-commerce firm feels penalty by Chinese regulators means focus on company is at an end

Shares in Alibaba surged on Monday after the e-commerce company said that a record $2.8bn fine handed down by Chinese regulators marked the end of an investigation into anti-competitive practices at the company.

Top executives at the company, founded by the billionaire Jack Ma, told investors that while Chinese regulators continued a wider investigation into the sprawling conglomerates in the country’s tech industry, they believed the multibillion dollar fine announced at the weekend marked the end of the focus on Alibaba. The company is listed in Hong Kong and its shares climbed as much as 9% on the management’s comments.

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France to ban some domestic flights where train available

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MPs vote to suspend internal flights if the trip can be completed by train within two and a half hours instead

French MPs have voted to suspend domestic airline flights that can be made by direct train in less than two and a half hours, as part of a series of climate and environmental measures.

After a heated debate in the Assemblée Nationale at the weekend, the ban, a watered-down version of a key recommendation from President Emmanuel Macron’s citizens’ climate convention, was adopted.

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Gordon Brown calls for G7 to act on Covid vaccine ‘apartheid’

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Former prime minister says group should commit to global vaccine drive and slams UK’s foreign aid cut

Preventing poor countries suffering from vaccine “apartheid” will require the G7 group of rich nations to commit $30bn (£22bn) a year to a global immunisation drive, Gordon Brown has said.

The former Labour prime minister said the UK should use June’s G7 summit in Cornwall to rekindle the moral purpose of the Make Poverty History campaign of 2005, paying for its share of the new fund by reversing the government’s “misguided” cut to the foreign aid budget.

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Covid listener surge sees podcast firm’s results perking up

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Shares and revenues at UK-based Audioboom are soaring despite stiff competition from the world’s digital giants

A year ago, podcast producer Audioboom was facing an uncertain future as management sought, ultimately unsuccessfully, to find a buyer to inject cash to expand the business. When the company gives its latest financial update this week, it will be telling a very different story: in the past 12 months its market value has more than tripled and a maiden profit is looming as Audioboom joins the ranks of the pandemic winners.

Digital entertainment services from Netflix to Spotify have been supercharged by lockdown viewing and listening, and Audioboom has been no exception. It now draws 25 million listeners a month with content from partners ranging from Formula One to the former Bake Off presenter Sue Perkins.

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China fines Alibaba billions for alleged market abuses

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Platform co-founded by Jack Ma, who has criticised Chinese authorities, misused its dominance, say state regulators

Chinese regulators have hit e-commerce company Alibaba with a fine of 18.2bn yuan (US$2.78bn) over practices deemed to be an abuse of its dominant market position, according to state-run media.

The Xinhua news agency said the state administration for market regulation had assessed the fine after concluding an investigation into Alibaba that began in December.

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Aid agencies can be harmful, says Somaliland tycoon

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Ismail Ahmed, a refugee turned multimillionaire, says his country has had to battle ‘negative PR’

Aid agencies are hindering development and undermining efforts to attract investment in Somaliland, according to a former World Bank and UN official turned entrepreneur.

Ismail Ahmed, founder of the money-transfer company WorldRemit, claims Somaliland, his birthplace, has had to battle “negative PR” from aid agencies exaggerating their role to protect their interests. Somaliland declared itself a sovereign state independent of Somalia in 1991, but it is not recognised internationally.

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UK recognition of EU’s vaccine effort would not go amiss, says Brussels

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Europe could have fully vaccinated 70% of adults before UK reaches its target, says head of EU taskforce

The UK will be reliant on the EU to complete its vaccine rollout and a little recognition of that would not go amiss, the European commissioner leading Brussels’ vaccine taskforce has said – adding that Europe could have fully vaccinated 70% of adults before the UK reaches its own target of one dose for all over-18s by the end of July.

Thierry Breton also said AstraZeneca had agreed that almost all the Covid vaccine doses made in the Netherlands over which the UK has made a claim will stay in the EU.

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UK ministers silent on AstraZeneca vaccine shipment to Australia

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Downing Street will not confirm or deny report that more than 700,000 Covid jabs were sent after EU blocked export

British ministers and officials did not deny that more than 700,000 shots of the AstraZeneca vaccine were secretly dispatched from the UK to Australia a few weeks ago as the EU blocked the drug’s export.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that 717,000 AstraZeneca doses were dispatched in late February and March from the company’s British operations – also during a period when the EU was demanding the vaccine from the UK.

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Mining exploration surges in Cape York as scheme to return land to traditional owners stalls

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No new properties have been purchased under the Queensland government program since 2017, a report finds

Cape York Indigenous groups have warned that a successful Queensland government program to return land to traditional owners is on the verge of stalling, potentially leaving large and significant swathes of the peninsula at the mercy of mining speculators.

The Cape York land tenure resolution program has returned more than 4m hectares of land to traditional owner groups since 2007, including about 2m hectares that is designated as national park.

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G20 takes step towards global minimum corporate tax rate

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Meetings of finance ministers follow change in US stance, with consensus growing on tackling tax avoidance

G20 finance ministers are exploring a global minimum tax on corporate profits, amid growing international consensus on tackling avoidance after the pandemic.

The virtual meetings between the group of 20 major industrial nations come after the US made the case for an international base rate this week, in a move by the Biden administration to end US resistance to international tax reforms.

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Value judgment: Donald Trump tumbles down billionaires’ rankings

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While the richest got spectacularly richer during the pandemic, the ex-president plummeted nearly 300 places in the Forbes list

It’s been a glorious pandemic for the world’s richest people. Forbes annual billionaire poll includes a record-breaking 2,755 billionaires, with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once again topping the list, the media company said on Tuesday.

The ranks of the super wealthy swelled as the coronavirus pandemic threatened the lives and livelihoods of millions across the planet but stock markets continued to hit new highs.

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UK Covid passports – who’s for and who’s against?

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Labour leftwingers and Tory libertarians oppose them, while Keir Starmer’s position appears flexible

One of the most significant political controversies of the coronavirus period is likely to be over the idea of Covid “passports” – app-based, biometric certificates that would allow people entry to potentially crowded spaces. While they are sometimes referred to as “vaccine passports”, these would not just show vaccination status. Other ways people could prove they were safe to mingle would be a sufficiently recent test showing significant Covid antibodies, or a very recent negative test for the virus.

These are distinct from the idea of a proof of vaccination to be allowed to enter overseas countries, which is less contentious.

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The dogs keeping office workers company through lockdown

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Owners say taking four-legged friends to work helps tackle loneliness and livens up Zoom calls

“Dogs are just like ‘play, eat, sleep’ – they bring me back into the moment. I think we can all learn something from that,” says Carole Henderson, who has been taking her “furry backup” to the office for the last few months.

They are not so good at making the tea and things get a bit rowdy when the delivery man comes round, but Henderson’s labradors Barney and Rusty, and labradoodle Lily, have been her sidekicks for the last decade. As well as being excellent foot-warmers, they have helped her emotionally with getting through solo months in the office.

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Credit Suisse executives depart after Archegos and Greensill losses

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Directors’ bonuses scrapped as chief risk officer and investment bank chief exit

Credit Suisse has cancelled the bonuses of its directors, slashed its dividend and announced the departure of two senior executives as the bank revealed £3.4bn in losses from the collapse of the Archegos investment fund.

The Swiss bank is reeling from heavy exposure to Archegos and the business bank Greensill, which suffered successive but unrelated financial blow-ups.

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Bleak future for Crawley a year after first Covid lockdown

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The town in the shadow of Gatwick airport hopes the worst of the pandemic is over but fears for its jobs

The differences with the early stage of the Covid-19 pandemic are stark in Crawley. Plenty of people are milling around Queens Square in the town centre, enjoying the early spring sun, even though most of the shops remain closed; some permanently.

In the West Sussex town close to Gatwick airport, hopes are rising that the worst days of the pandemic have finally passed. But with global air travel still grounded, workers in Crawley fear there will be long-term damage for the local jobs market.

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If you like salmon, don’t read this: the art duo exposing a booming £1bn market

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Farmed salmon can end up deformed, blind, riddled with sea lice and driven to eat each other. Eco art activists Cooking Sections are highlighting their plight – and getting Tate to change its menus

A few months back, a book arrived in the post – tiny, not much larger than a bank card. Though the cover was grey, its pages were a riot of pinks, from deepest persimmon to pale rose. Printed on them were dense, technical essays referencing everything from fish farming to Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. The title was Salmon: A Red Herring.

Fish is an unexpected topic for an art book – but then the duo who created this little volume, Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe, aren’t really going for the coffee-table market. Operating under the name Cooking Sections, the pair have a thing for food. Their art is about what we eat and its impact on the Earth.

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