Water company Severn Trent is clearly willing to roll up its sleeves. In January, it told investors it would exceed forecasts for its full-year “customer outcome delivery incentive” — the financial reward, or penalty, handed out by the regulator...
Read morePolice probe self-storage investment ‘fraud’
A police investigation has been launched into an alleged investment fraud involving self-storage units, after more than 1,000 investors are believed to suffered losses totalling £120m. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is appealing for investors to...
Read moreRestaurant Group falls as analysts struggle to digest new menu
Concerns over a menu redesign sent Frankie & Benny’s owner The Restaurant Group tumbling on Tuesday. The group is recovering from a string of profit warnings last year, which chief executive Andy McCue blamed on his predecessors raising...
Read moreSecom breaks ranks to highlight reform failures of Japan Inc
Last Friday a link to a one-page chart appeared on an obscure corner of the corporate website of Secom, Japan’s largest security services company. Depending on your stance on corporate Japan, it was either encouraging, depressing or terrifying...
Read moreMarkets Live: Tuesday, 23rd May, 2017
11:03 am Tuesday, then. And a picture. That’s the Unknown Pleasures mosaic outside Afflecks Palace, in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. 11:04 am And I’m afraid it comes with a footnote. The internet’s a big place, of which...
Read moreCompanies need to develop flexibility to keep older workers
The obsession with how to manage millennials is obscuring another potentially larger problem: how to manage their parents. It is reassuring, then, that a group of UK businesses, including Barclays, Boots, Aviva and the Co-op, have started to...
Read moreSir Paul Judge, businessman and entrepreneur, 1949-2017
Business, politics and education permeated the life of Sir Paul Judge, who died in hospital in London on Sunday after a short illness. He was 68. His name will live on thanks to an £8m donation in 1990 to the University of Cambridge, his alma...
Read moreUK companies pay staff less as they plug pension deficits
Companies in the UK have held down staff wages as they plug pension deficits, including those of lower-paid workers excluded from the schemes. An average 10 per cent of the money that has been paid into defined-benefit schemes over the past 16...
Read moreSenior Tories were kept in the dark over ‘dementia tax’
May 21, 2017 by: Jim Pickard, Chief Political Correspondent Theresa May failed to consult some of her most senior colleagues over plans to overhaul the social care system, which has become the most criticised policy included in last week’s Tory...
Read moreFred Goodwin to take centre stage at RBS trial
Disgraced former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Fred Goodwin will be back in the spotlight in a High Court trial starting this week that will delve into the disastrous events at the bank in 2008. The £700m High Court case has been brought...
Read moreTrump’s foreign visit, eurozone PMIs, M&S reports, G7 in Sicily
Monday Car workers strike BMW, which also makes the Rolls-Royce and Mini cars, faces 24-hour strikes at factories across the UK in a row over pensions. The Unite union has urged the German manufacturer to enter talks to resolve the dispute. The...
Read moreChurch of England delivers divine returns
As a pension fund trustee, I greatly envy people who oversee perpetual endowments. They have the luxury of being able to capture illiquidity premia in alternative investments such as property, forestry and commodities, taking decisions that may...
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