FINANCE BUSINESS EXTRA Sun spots UNIVERSITIES and tech compa nies will receive £4.3 million (€5 million) in funding from the government to develop space based solar power, which col lects energy from the sun using satellitemounted panels and beams it to Earth. The scheme has huge potential, Energy Se curity Secretary, Grant Shapps, said.
Shanghai deal GRIFOLS, Cataloniabased multinational pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturer, is taking steps to reduce its debt with a corporate manoeuvre within the Chinese company, Shanghai RAAS. If the transac tion goes ahead, Grifols will re ceive $1.5 billion (€1.4 billion) while remaining ‘a significant’ Shanghai RAAS shareholder.
Shell payout SHELL intends to boost its divi dends by 15 per cent as part of the company’s plans to hand back more cash to its share holders under its new chief ex ecutive Wael Sawan. Shell has told investors that the dividend increase would become effec tive from the second quarter of its financial year.
No vote PORTUGUESE company West ern Gate, with a 2.18 per cent stake in the Dia supermarket chain, will vote against Ben jamin Babcock as a major shareholderdirector represent ing LetterOne, which owns 77 per cent of the company. Mi nority shareholders should have more weight on Dia’s board, Western Gate said.
Not the same FREETRADE, the investment app, has slashed its premoney valuation by 65 per cent while blaming current conditions and a “different market environ ment.” Freetrade’s valuation rose to £650 million (€760 mil lion) during the pandemic, but the company announced that it has since fallen to £225 million (€263 million).
Linda Hall THE UK economy recovered from the impact of strikes and returned to growth in April. Official figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) registered a 0.2 per cent upturn owing to increased car sales and more spending in shops, bars and restaurants. Growth over the first quarter increased by 0.1 per cent. “Gross domestic product (GDP) bounced back after a weak March,” announced Darren Morgan, ONS’ direc tor of Economic Statistics. Bars and pubs had a com paratively strong April while car sales rebounded. Edu cation partially recovered from the effect of the previ
50
STAT OF WEEK
WAITROSE has invested £100 million (€116.9 million) in low ering the price of its ownbrand range. After cutting the prices of more than 300 items in Febru ary, the supermarket chain has reduced another 200 products as it competes with cheaper ri vals like Aldi and Lidl. More than 100 items have been slashed by at least 10 per cent, Waitrose announced, as it hopes to woo shoppers looking out for bargains. “We want customers to benefit every time they shop with us,” Charlotte Di Cello, Waitrose’s commercial director said.
€649 million
was the record turnover figure which Ayesa, the Sevilla-based IT consultancy firm, announced for 2022, a 130 per cent increase on 2021 following a year that included several acquisitions.
The road to recovery ONS HQ: UK’s Statistics Office, based in Newport (Wales). Photo credit: ONS
ous month’s industrial ac tion, he said, although health output was affected by the junior doctors’ strikes. “There were also falls in computer manufacturing and the oftenerratic phar maceuticals industry,” Mor gan added. April was a poor month
HAWALA has existed for centuries as an informal method for transferring mon ey. “It is used to transfer funds from one location to another through service providers, known as hawaladar, regard less of the nature of the transaction and the countries involved,” according to an International Monetary Fund report. Requiring no documentation, it is an anonymous way of moving money in Muslim communities in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa and India although its use is not limited to Muslims. Illegal in the US, and some EU mem ber nations, the practice is allowed in the UK, where the hawala system must comply with regulations set in England
More Waitrose reductions
euroweeklynews.com • 22 - 28 June 2023
for house builders and es tate agents, under pressure from rising interest rates and falling property values, the ONS report revealed. The latest ONS figures co incided with the certainty that the Bank of England was about to hike interest rates for the 13th time in succession from its current
4.5 per cent. Analysts explained the regulator is concerned that core inflation, which does not cover energy and food, remains stubbornly high. The UK’s Chancellor, Jere my Hunt, said he backed the Bank over increased in terest rates, and the country was in a situation very dif ferent from last autumn’s. “The International Mone tary Fund, the international commentators, think the British economy is on the right track and the govern ment is doing the right thing to support the Bank of Eng land.”
Old custom, new uses
Photo credit: audiovisual.ec.europa.eu
HAWALA: Exact scale unknown, said EC’s Executive vice-president Valdis Dombrowskis.
and Wales, register with HMRC and comply with UK money laundering. Although routinely used by legitimate businesses, hawala’s anonymity and
minimal documentation make it vulner able to abuse by individuals and groups transferring funds to finance illegal activ ities. Misuse of the system has been linked to the financing of terrorism and mon eylaundering, although it is also used to bypass sanctions against Iran. Valdis Dombrowskis, the European Commission’s Executive vicepresident admitted in 2020 the hawala system was regarded as a matter for concern. “Its exact scale in the EU is unknown,” he said. “Tracing the value flow is virtu ally impossible for law enforcement agencies.”
Everest not climbed Far reaching CARMINE DI SIBIO, global chief executive at Ernst & Young (EY) will retire next year. Di Sibio, aged 60, was responsible for Project Everest, a plan to separate the con sultancy and audit divisions of the London based company, which was scuppered by EY’s New York office. This would have involved spinning off EY’s consulting arm and listing it on the stock market, bringing multimilliondollar windfalls to the firm’s partners. The initiative cost more than $600 mil lion (€554.2 million) but Di Sibio still main tains that the deal was necessary to free consultants from conflictofinterest rules that restricted them from advising audit clients. Di Sibio will not step down immediately, he said, but would oversee the organisa tion through a transition period lasting un til the end of the next financial year in June 2024.
LEADING aerostructures company Aernnova is taking part in building the new Honda Jet 2600. The Basque company will de sign the aircraft’s wings and their components, including the flaps, ailerons, the spoilers that open during landings, and the empen nage or tail fin. The Honda Jet 2600 takes its name from the aircraft’s range target of 2,625 nautical miles (ap proximately 4,861 kilometres) and is designed to be the world’s first light jet capable of nonstop transcontinental flight across the United States. Honda plans to market the air craft, which will have seating for 10 passengers and cost between $11 and $13 million (€10.1 and €12 million), in 2026.
Networks merge VODAFONE and the owner of Three will merge their British net works to create the UK’s largest mobile phone operator. The companies are the UK’s third and fourthbiggest opera tors respectively and, once the merger is completed, will have more than 27 million subscribers between them. This will put them ahead of EE, owned by BT, and Virgin Media O2, jointly owned by Spain’s Telefonica and the USlist ed company Liberty Global. The deal will be closely exam ined by competition regulators, al though the UK’s telecommunica tions’ regulator, Ofcom, announced last year that it was less opposed to consolidating the sector than in the past.
Mega-station DIF has announced a €514.3 mil lion contract connecting the high speed networks linking northern and southern Spain. The project will create a huge Madrid station with terminals in Chamartín and Atocha connected by a tunnel, explained the state owned company which maintains and manages Spain’s rail net works. The project will ensure maxi mum capacity for the second phase of Spain’s rail liberalisation, providing Atocha with four new tracks and two platforms under the existing station and Calle Mendez Avaro. This will connect with the new highspeed southern access op erational since July 2022 and al low trains to stop at either Chamartin or Atocha.
Bending rules ANTONIO GARAMENDI, the Span ish Confederation of Business Or ganisations (CEOE) president, al legedly wants to lift restrictions on the number of terms a president may serve. When reelected in November, Garamendi was adamant changes to the statutes, were “out of the question.” Seven months later, however, Garamendi has met the CEOE’s vicepresidents to discuss altering the rules and “mod ernising” the election process. All involved insisted any modifi cations were at an early stage and would first need to be discussed at the June board meeting and the General Assembly in July.
