Category Archives: Business

Peacetime constraints ditched in the war for economic survival | Larry Elliott

Posted on by

The Covid-19 outbreak is forcing politicians and central bankers to set aside ideology and orthodoxy to prevent a global collapse

It is as if the lights have been switched off. The global economy has been plunged into darkness as countries hunker down in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Most recessions develop gradually over time. When the last one started in 2008 it took the Bank of England six months to spot it. This time it is different. Then it was a financial virus, this time it is the real thing. Commentators often say the economy is hitting the wall or is falling off a cliff on the weakest of evidence. Today the cliches are horrifyingly true.

Continue reading...

Amazon to suspend non-essential shipments to UK and US warehouses

Posted on by

The company is prioritising five categories of goods which it classifies as essential products

  • Coronavirus – latest updates
  • See all our coronavirus coverage

    • Online retail giant Amazon is stopping sellers from sending non-essential items to its UK and US warehouses until 5 April, to make space for vital items needed by its customers during the coronavirus outbreak.

    Amazon wrote to its third-party sellers, some of whom use the company’s logistics to store and dispatch their products, to inform them that stocks of medical supplies and certain household items are running low due to increased demand from online shoppers.

    Continue reading...

    TikTok ‘tried to filter out videos from ugly, poor or disabled users’

    Posted on by

    Documents from the Incercept show social media app put pressure on moderators

    TikTok moderators were told to suppress videos from users who appeared too ugly, poor or disabled, as part of the company’s efforts to curate an aspirational air in the videos it promotes, according to new documents published by the Intercept.

    The documents detail how moderators for the social video app were instructed to select content for the influential “For You” feed, an algorithmic timeline that is most users’ first port of call when they open the app. As a result, being selected for For You can drive huge numbers of views to a given video, but the selection criteria have always remained a secret, with little understanding as to the amount of automation involved.

    Continue reading...

    British American Tobacco circumventing ad ban, experts say

    Posted on by

    BAT seems to be running accounts to promote e-cigarettes after crackdown on hiring influencers

    British American Tobacco (BAT) is marketing e-cigarettes and heated cigarettes with pictures of attractive models and using hashtags such as “I dare you to try it”, despite a crackdown last year after it paid social media influencers to promote its products.

    BAT had come under fire after hiring young models to sell its products despite having an explicit policy banning under-25s from appearing in adverts.

    Continue reading...

    Apple fined record €1.1bn by French competition regulator

    Posted on by

    Tech giant conspired with wholesalers Tech Data and Ingram Micro to align prices, says watchdog

    Apple has been fined a record €1.1bn (£990m) by antitrust regulators in France for engaging in anti-competitive agreements with two wholesalers. The penalty imposed on the US tech giant is the largest ever handed out to a company by the Autorité de la Concurrence.

    Commenting on the move, Isabelle de Silva, head of the French competition watchdog, said: “Apple and its two wholesalers agreed to not compete against each other and prevent resellers from promoting competition between each other, thus sterilising the wholesale market for Apple products.”

    Continue reading...

    Markets plunge despite coordinated action by central banks

    Posted on by

    Sharp losses recorded after US interest rate cut, as Bank of England hints at further support to combat turmoil

    The FTSE 100 fell below 5,000 points on Monday and trading on Wall Street was suspended for the third time in a week as markets were gripped by mounting concerns over the threat of a global recession, despite a coordinated effort by central banks to protect growth and jobs.

    In an escalation of the worst turmoil since the 2008 financial crisis, stock markets suffered further sharp losses on Monday despite dramatic action taken by the US central bank late on Sunday in an attempt to limit the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

    Continue reading...

    Airlines make dramatic cuts to services and call for state bailouts

    Posted on by

    Aviation consultancy warns that international industry could collapse within months


    Major airlines including British Airways, Ryanair, easyJet and Virgin Atlantic announced a dramatic scaling-back of their operations on Monday, including plans to cancel the majority of their flights and ground thousands of planes, with experts and industry executives calling for government bailouts to avoid bankruptcies.

    The moves came as an aviation consultancy warned that the international airline industry will collapse within months, with the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, unless states worldwide inject billions of dollars of emergency funding to see it through the coronavirus “catastrophe”.

    Continue reading...

    West Saharan group takes New Zealand superannuation fund to court over ‘blood phosphate’

    Posted on by

    Independence movement lodges documents in high court arguing $45bn fund invests in illegally mined fertiliser

    The Western Sahara liberation movement has taken New Zealand’s superannuation fund to the country’s highest court over its investments in farms that use phosphate illegally mined in the occupied territory.

    New Zealand is one of the few remaining countries – and last western nation – that accepts imports from the contested territory in West Africa, forcibly occupied by Morocco since 1975. Morocco’s claims to the territory are largely unrecognised internationally.

    Continue reading...

    Jet2 planes turn around in mid-air as firm cancels Spain flights

    Posted on by

    LOT Polish Airlines has also suspended flights from Poland and Hungary for 10 days

    Jet2 planes heading to Spain turned back in mid-air on Saturday as the airline cancelled all flights to the country because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

    The decision follows a sharp increase in infections in Spain and a rise in the death toll to 120. The government has declared a two-week state of emergency and placed 60,000 people in four towns under mandatory lockdown on Friday.

    Continue reading...

    Fed bids to shore up confidence after worst week in 12 years

    Posted on by

    Pledges of help from EU, China and Germany plus declaration of US emergency produce mild rally after torrid week

    The world’s most powerful central bank, the US Federal Reserve, is preparing a fresh attempt to shore up investor confidence despite a late rally on Wall Street on Friday that ended a torrid week for stock markets on a more positive note.

    Fresh pledges of help from China, Germany and the European commission combined with Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency over coronavirus to reassure investors after an ordeal for equities on both sides of the Atlantic that echoed the depths of the banking crisis.

    Continue reading...

    BA says jobs will go as airline industry faces crisis ‘worse than 9/11’

    Posted on by

    Coronavirus memo says British Airways will be ‘parking aircraft in a way we never have before’

    British Airways has warned staff it is in a fight for survival and expects to make job cuts and ground an unprecedented number of planes, as it said the coronavirus pandemic has caused a crisis “worse than 9/11” for the airline industry.

    BA’s chief executive, Alex Cruz, said in a message to 45,000 employees entitled “The Survival of British Airways” that the airline would be “parking aircraft in a way we never have before” after the drop in demand was compounded by the shock US travel ban from Europe announced on Wednesday night. It came as the German media reported that the country’s flagship carrier, Lufthansa, might ground most of its fleet and ask for state aid in the wake of Donald Trump’s surprise move.

    Continue reading...

    Qantas repays more than $7m to staff it underpaid for up to eight years

    Posted on by

    Airline has so far paid back 638 head-office staff, Fair Work Ombudsman says, and agreed to give every affected worker an additional $1,000

    The Fair Work Ombudsman has said Qantas is paying back millions of dollars to hundreds of workers it underpaid for up to eight years.

    The airline had so far paid back $7.1m to 638 staff at head office who were underpaid between June 2011 and June 2019, the ombudsman said on Friday.

    Continue reading...

    Budget 2020: read the small print on spending pledge, urges IFS

    Posted on by

    Thinktank praises Covid-19 response but says ‘splurge’ relies on already announced plans

    Rishi Sunak’s first budget is not as generous as it seems and will leave many Whitehall departments worse off than they were before the spending squeeze began in 2010, according to Britain’s foremost economics thinktank.

    The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the chancellor made the budget sound more substantial than it was, while relying on previously announced spending plans.

    Continue reading...

    Budget 2020: UK to launch £800m ‘blue skies’ research agency

    Posted on by

    Brainchild of Dominic Cummings will seek to return Britain to its ‘pioneering scientific roots’, says chancellor

    The government will pump at least £800m into a new “blue skies” science research agency as part of a series of pro-business measures designed to boost Britain’s competitive edge.

    The UK agency, the brainchild of Boris Johnson’s closest political adviser Dominic Cummings, will fund “high-risk, high reward science” and will be modelled on theAdvanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the US.

    Continue reading...

    Wall Street ends 11-year ‘bull market’ as coronavirus fears spread

    Posted on by

    US stock markets have been on an unprecedented streak since 2009, a bull market of gains

    Wall Street’s record-breaking 11-year “bull market” came to an end on Wednesday as fears about the spreading Covid-19 pandemic hit stock markets again.

    US stock markets have been on an unprecedented streak since 2009, a bull market of gains. On Wednesday investors sold off shares across all sectors after the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic for the first time and criticized “alarming levels of inaction” by governments in corralling the virus.

    Continue reading...

    Businesses affected by coronavirus should have access to disaster relief funds, says Queensland

    Posted on by

    State says virus ‘is no different’ to floods, cyclones and bushfires as it prepares to ramp up pressure at Coag meeting

    Queensland will use the upcoming meeting of state leaders and the prime minister to appeal to the federal government to open up its natural disaster assistance payments to local industries impacted by the coronavirus.

    Scott Morrison has previously rejected Queensland’s request for the disaster recovery funding arrangements to be made available for businesses knocked by the economic slowdown resulting from Covid-19 on 4 February, and again on 28 February.

    Continue reading...

    Coronavirus live updates: Italy-wide lockdown comes into force

    Posted on by

    UK and US had worst days trading since 2008 GFC; Global cases near 110,000; Grand Princess passengers disembark. Follow the latest news.

    As the whole of Italy goes into lockdown, there are some reassuring signs that measures are starting to work. Across the 11 towns that went into quarantine over two weeks ago, the number of cases is beginning to fall.

    Virgin Atlantic has called on the European Commission and UK flight slots co-ordinator to relax rules amid the coronavirus outbreak, PA reports.

    Chief executive Shai Weiss said: “Last month Virgin Atlantic and industry partners committed to achieving net zero carbon by 2050.

    Continue reading...

    Human rights activist ‘forced to flee DRC’ over child cobalt mining lawsuit

    Posted on by

    Landmark legal action against world’s biggest tech companies lead to death threats, says activist Auguste Mutombo

    A Congolese human rights activist has said he was forced to flee the country with his family after being linked to a lawsuit accusing the world’s largest tech companies of being complicit in the deaths of children in cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

    In December, the Guardian revealed that a group of families from DRC were launching landmark legal action against Apple, Google, Tesla, Microsoft and Dell. They claim they aided and abetted the deaths and injuries of their children, who were working in mines that they say were linked to the tech companies.

    Continue reading...

    FTSE on course for biggest fall since financial crisis

    Posted on by

    World markets plunge on back of coronavirus-driven recession fears and threat of oil price war

    Global stock markets have suffered their biggest falls since the 2008 financial crisis and trading was temporarily suspended on Wall Street after an oil price crash rattled investors fearing a coronavirus-driven global recession.

    Dealing in shares on the main US indices was frozen within minutes of the opening bell, as circuit breakers were triggered by a 7% fall on the S&P 500. Once trading resumed 15 minutes later, the Dow Jones Industrial Average completed a fall of more than 2,000 points for the first time ever – a fall of more than 7%.

    Continue reading...

    Saudi Arabia price war wipes billions from value of major oil firms

    Posted on by

    Royal Dutch Shell and BP lose more than £32bn from their combined market value

    Saudi Arabia’s oil price war has wiped billions of pounds from the market value of the industry’s biggest companies after oil markets recorded one of the biggest price slumps in history.

    The decision of the world’s largest oil-producing nation to increase its production even as the coronavirus outbreak stalls global oil demand triggered a 30% drop in oil prices on Monday morning.

    Continue reading...