Business Bites
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Feb- 2020 -18 February
HSBC to cut 35,000 jobs, new chancellor sticks to schedule, Bezos creates $10bn ‘Earth fund’
HSBC has announced plans to cut 35,000 jobs over the next three years after a dire set of financial results. Profits have fallen by 33% year on year and that is before the impact of the coronavirus can even be fully measured in Q1 and the months to come. The…
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14 February
German stagnation, Javid out, RBS gets environmental, Norton no-show
The German economy has stagnated due to significant falls in spending and exports. New figures show that GDP ‘flat lined’ (financial jargon for neither growing nor contracting) in the final quarter of 2019, bad news since economists and analysts had hoped that it would grow about 0.1%. It means Germany’s…
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12 February
Parasite boosts Spanish crisp sales
Now that’s the kind of headline journalists like to write. But unfortunately, now that you’re reading the article, the subterfuge must be exposed. We’re not talking about parasites that look for hosts, and we’re not talking about infected food. Instead we’re talking about the Korean movie sensation that just won…
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11 February
Yes, the trade barriers are coming
I think both Leavers and Remainers probably expected this in the long run – Michael Gove announced yesterday that businesses should “accept” that frictionless trade with the EU will be impossible whatever agreement is finally reached by the deadline of 31 December this year. This is the cost, he says,…
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10 February
Ocado ditches Waitrose; Bill gates orders £500m beast-yacht; Boris to lower immigration wage threshold
A busy start to the week in the business pages. As the coronavirus story unfolds I am reluctant to spend every day providing updates on it, but it is worth noting quickly that there is likely to be some worldwide economic turbulence due to the latest developments. A slew of…
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5 February
Tesla, Macy’s and organic food: serious change is afoot
Sometimes change is sudden and surprising, but sometimes it bubbles away under the surface for decades before making a serious impact, and in today’s roundup I have a few examples of the latter to highlight. First, there is Tesla. The firm led by billionaire space-AI Elon Musk has long been…
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Jan- 2020 -31 January
The whole Amazon thing is getting scary now
The ‘growth of online retail’ is now so proverbial that the phrase itself is nearly redundant. Is anyone surprised to learn this morning that Amazon has absolutely rampaged through the Christmas retail season, while scores of well-known bricks-and-mortar retailers reported a torrid set of financial results for the same period?…
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28 January
Coronavirus dampens markets but boosts mask producers
Some years ago Bill Gates was asked in an interview what future scenario it was that kept him awake at night. To the surprise of the interviewer, he did not say climate change, or financial collapse, or nuclear war. He said he most afraid of the next major pandemic, in…
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22 January
Ted Baker hanging by a thread amid £58m balance sheet black hole
If you have shares in Ted Baker, you are probably not having a good morning. The price has tanked by almost 7% after news broke that the fashion brand has found a £58m black hole in its accounts. There’s being a few hundred thousand or a few million short, but…
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17 January
The trillion-dollar club has gained Google as a member
Remember at school when teachers used to explain how one million was an essentially incomprehensibly large number? I recall one of mine showing the number represented on a huge rolled out piece of paper as wide and long as a carpet, with precisely one million individual dots. I was about…
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