Postal agreement

ROYAL MAIL employees accepted an offer that ends their ongoing dispute over pay, jobs and working conditions.

Almost 76 per cent of Communication Workers Union (CWU) members voted for a 10 per cent increase spread over three years, plus a £500 (€584) lump sum.

The ballot result ended disagreements that culminated in stoppages by more than 115,000 workers at the end of last year.

“This has been the most challenging period in the history of the union and the company, and I want to thank every single member who has voted in this ballot,” the CWU’s general secretary Dave Ward said

At the same time, the below ­ inflation agreement will leave some Royal Mail employees worse off than a previously­rebuffed offer of 9 per cent over a year and a half.

Nevertheless, another £2.5 billion (€2.93 billion) will be required by 2030 as the company buttresses its finances, shareholders were told.

Thames Water, owned by a consortium of pension groups and foreign funds, has met censure for polluting rivers and was recently fined £3.3 million (€3.86m) for sewage spills in 2017.

At a time when Thames Water has paid huge dividends to shareholders and generous salaries to its executives, the company had also accumulated a £14 billion (€16.4 billion) debt.

Cryptic clues

A STUDY by cryptocurrency experts CryptoGambling.tv named Slovenia as Europe’s most ‘crypto­obsessed’ country.

Analysis revealed that approximately 100,000 internet searches each month were linked to cryptocurrency, averaging out at 4,789 crypto­related searches for information per every 100,000 people.

Spain, with a monthly 907,000 searches was ranked sixth, with around 1,927 searchers for every 100,000 inhabitants.

Luxembourg was the secondmost interested country with a monthly average of 2,634 searches, ahead of the Netherlands which sees 2,608 cryptocurrency searches for every 100,000 people although Holland is one of the few countries which taxes unrealised gains.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank calculated that parents would remove around 40,000 children from paying schools. These would then enter the UK’s state system, costing the taxpayer another £300 million (€350 million) annually.

The IFS also warned that the proposed tax raid could encourage tax avoidance as schools and families looked for loopholes that would enable them to cut bills.

Big surprise

IGNACIO GUTIERREZ­ORRANTIA will not, after all, be moving to the Spanish gas and electricity company, Naturgy.

Gutierrez ­ Orrantia has informed Citigroup that he plans to remain at the bank in his current role as the Londonbased head of the Banking, Capital Markets and Advisory Division for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Gutierriez­Orrantias’s decision, announced by Bloomburg on July 11, was met with generalised surprise as his move to Naturgy as chief executive, where he was to have shared executive powers with company president Francisco Reynes, was regarded as a certainty.

Indian buyer

INDIAN businessman Kabir Mulchandani is buying Pacha nightclubs and hotels through his Five company. The nightlife and tourism group, based in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, will pay a little over €320 million according to reports published in a local news outlet on July 12.

Initially, the Trilantic, GPF and MCH private equity funds, which owned the discos and hotels, had asked for more than €500 million, before accepting a significantly lower amount.

Trilantic, GPF and MCH, which entered Ibiza’s nightlife sector in 2017, are divesting themselves of Pacha after having survived Covid­19 thanks to a bailout using public money.

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Uber fast

WAITROSE has joined forces with Uber Eats in a deal that will deliver grocery orders in just 20 minutes. Available at present for online London shoppers in Finchley Road, West Hampstead, Clerkenwell, St Katharine Docks and Greenwich, the service will extend to more than 200 stores throughout the UK by the end of August.

Selling up

THE US real estate investment firm AEW is putting 22 Carrefour supermarkets up for sale in Spain in an operation expected to top €120 million. The majority are located in Madrid and Catalonia and some, which are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, have an ‘enormous turnover’ according to industry sources.