UK
Half of first-time buyers in their 20s get help from Bank of Mum and Dad


Melissa Lawford
Thu, 7 December 2023

Bank of Mum and Dad

The Bank of Mum and Dad is behind almost half of first-time home purchases by buyers in their 20s, research has found.

A total 45pc of new buyers aged between 20 and 29 said they received loans or cash gifts towards their first homes, according to analysis of official data by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

Of these, eight in 10 said the money came from their parents, with a further 7pc saying they received help from their grandparents.

The IFS found that those getting financial support for their first home are receiving an average of £25,000 from their family.

Soaring house prices are placing home ownership increasingly out of reach, but the IFS said many buyers receiving financial support are using the money to ease the burden on mortgage repayments.

Bee Boileau of the IFS said: “The role of parental transfers extends beyond just making homeownership possible. First-time buyers who receive larger amounts in transfers tend to use this to put down larger deposits rather than buying a more expensive home.”

The average rate on a two-year fixed-rate mortgage has nearly tripled from 2.34pc in December 2021 to 6.01pc today, according to Moneyfacts.

This means the monthly cost of taking out a typical £200,000 loan is now £1,290, £409 more than two years ago.

Based on 2019-2020 average mortgage rates, a first-time buyer who received a gift of £25,000 could reduce the size of their mortgage on a typical home from 90pc to 74pc.

Over the course of a five-year fix, this means they would save £8,500 in mortgage payments. This would be equivalent to a total real return of 15pc on the £25,000.

The IFS based its analysis on responses to the Office for National Statistics’ Wealth and Assets Survey between 2018 and 2020.

Previous analysis by the ONS showed the share of first-time buyers who had financial help from family members swelled from 22pc to 29pc in the decade to 2015-16.

Ms Boileau of the IFS said parental support for first-time buyers in their 20s has likely climbed more rapidly in recent decades than for other age groups because younger buyers have lower incomes and fewer savings.

She said: “They’re therefore less likely to be able to meet the increased financial demands required to get onto the housing ladder from their own resources when house prices are high.”

It came as prices unexpectedly increased in November, by 0.5pc on a month earlier, according to the Halifax house price index.

It was the second monthly gain in a row after six consecutive falls before that. It means a typical home is worth £283,615, up around £1,300 on the previous month.

On an annual basis, prices were down 1pc compared to November last year, a sharp fall from the 3.1pc decline in the year to October.

House prices are on track to defy gloomy expectations of a double-digit drop this year. The Office for Budget Responsibility had previously predicted in March that house prices would crash close to 10pc in 2023.

But in its latest forecast unveiled alongside the Autumn Statement it said prices are now expected to be up almost 1pc for the year.

UK

CEOs will moan about Government behind closed doors — so why won't they tell it like it is in public?

Jonathan Prynn

EVENING STANDARD
Fri, 8 December 2023 

The skyline of the City of London. (Yui Mok/PA) (PA Archive)

Today Rob Perrins, the boss of Berkeley, one of our biggest housebuilders, tells it as he sees it. And good for him.

In blunt language he warns that a minefield of planning, tax and regulatory obstacles threatens to “drive investment away from urban areas, restricting growth and preventing homes and other tangible benefits being delivered.”

We need more of that from the leaders of the wealth generating sector who for too long has been happy to moan behind closed doors about how much they feel betrayed by the Government but rarely have the courage to speak out in clear simple terms in public.

A symptom of that are the now barely readable results announcements from the majority of quoted companies.

Too often they are an impenetrable soup of numbers, industry jargon and financial acronyms - topped by that dread phrase “in line with guidance” - with barely a hint of the broader social, economic and human context in which these major employer organisations operate.

Lord Wolfson at Next is a rare exception and his company’s financial statements are a treasure trove of insights into “what is really going on out there.”

But the majority of CEOs who run UK plc have become too risk averse, persuaded by a protective phalanx of advisers that it is better not to speak out for fear of upsetting the ministers and regulators of their sector.

They are happy to sub-contract their fears and concerns to trade bodies and business organisations that, with rare exceptions, do not carry the weight of the C-suite individuals actually running the show.

Britain faces a chronic growth crisis that, ultimately, only the private sector can liberate the country from.

The boss class needs to find its voice and forcefully engage with the debate about the multiple long-term challenges facing the UK. Otherwise, the powers that be will continue to believe, in the famous words of one previous Prime Minister, that it can F*** business.

The Squad review: AOC, the rise of the left and the fight against dark money



Charles Kaiser

The Guardian
Sat, 9 December 2023

Photograph: Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock

Ryan Grim’s sprawling new book is called The Squad, but it is about much more than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her progressive allies in the US House. It does provide mini-biographies of AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, but it should have been called The Squad and Its Enemies, given the amount of space it devotes to their adversaries.

Related: ‘She got so mad at me’: book on the ‘Squad’ details AOC-Pelosi clashes

Grim also gives a blow-by-blow replay of the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, and extremely detailed accounts of how Joe Biden’s infrastructure and domestic spending bills finally made it through Congress.

The book seems to have been written at great speed without much time for editing. At times that makes it a little hard to follow. For example, on page 30, we learn that Justice Democrats, an organization founded in 2017 to elect “a new type of Democratic majority in Congress”, suddenly pulled out of AOC’s first race because she wasn’t raising enough money herself.

“She was crushed and considered dropping out,” Grim writes. But then, two pages later, we learn that Justice Democrats “just went all in and just diverted it all” to AOC. “We stopped raising money for anybody else,” an organizer explains.

There are small, easily checkable errors. The Rayburn House Office Building, we’re told, was “built in the 1950s during the postwar boom”. Actually its cornerstone was laid in 1962 and the building opened in 1965.

Grim is a big fan of hard-left, hard-edged judgments against middle-of-the-road Democrats. On the very first page, we are told of the “rubble of the Obama administration’s pivot to austerity in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis”. Nine pages later, Obama is accused of encouraging more home foreclosures “to keep the bailed-out banks alive”.

According to Grim, the present House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, has a “visceral hatred toward the radical left”; gets “roughly half” of his campaign money from corporate political action committees; and has the additional sins of being a “vocal supporter of charter schools”, an ally of the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and a supporter of Hillary Clinton.

Grim is on more solid ground when he attacks the Problem Solvers, a group that “claimed it would solve problems by bringing together moderate Democrats and reasonable Republicans for common sense solutions” but whose primary goal is to block “tax increases on private equity moguls and hedge fund executives” who funded dark money groups linked to No Labels, the “centrist” group threatening to run a third-party candidate for president, potentially hurting Joe Biden and helping Donald Trump.

Grim offers very long sections about the debilitating effects of dark money on the entire political system, and the negative effects of the extremely large amounts spent by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and the rest of the lobby for Israel. He is at his best when he describes Washington alliances that are mostly invisible to casual students of the Capitol scene. There is a long narrative about Josh Gottheimer, a former Clinton intern and speechwriter turned New Jersey congressman elected with the support of Aipac, a Problem Solvers founder .

Gottheimer’s most important ally is Mark Penn, a key Hillary Clinton strategist and the former head of the PR powerhouse Burson-Marsteller. Gottheimer, a congressional champion of Israel, was paradoxically aided by Penn’s longtime work for Saudi Arabia. The Saudis and the United Arab Emirates “built an alliance with the Israeli lobbying operation in Washington”, Grim explains. “Israel won Arab cred from the two autocracies even as its settlements in occupied Palestinian territory were rapidly expanding. And the autocracies were helped by association with one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies.”

“Israel and the Arabs standing together is the ultimate ace in the hole,” an Israeli embassy official tells the author.

Because of this unholy alliance, Gottheimer became one of the “top recipients of cash” from lobbyists and lawyers working for Saudi Arabia in his first re-election cycle.

Related: The Fabulist review: timely tale of the rise and fall of George Santos

We also learn in detail how the mere threat of opposition by Aipac in his Florida congressional primary transformed Maxwell Frost’s position on the Middle East. The young Democrat had signed a pledge to “heed the call of Palestinian civil society for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) and called for “an end to US political, military and economic support to Israel, and to all military security and policing collaborations”. But after Richie Torres, a New York Democrat, befriended Frost, the Floridian ended up “a candidate who wanted no strings attached to military aid to Israel” and who considered BDS “extremely problematic and a risk to the chances of peace and a two-state solution”.

Stories like this lend credence to the judgment of Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, who survived her own “near-death experience” at the hands of the Israel lobby. She tells Grim she knows people deterred from running for office “because this is a topic that they know will bury them. There’s absolutely a chilling effect”.

Lee continues: “It’s very hard to survive as a progressive Black, working-class-background candidate when you are facing millions and millions of dollars.” This also “deters other people from ever wanting to get into it. So then it has the effect of ensuring that the Black community broadly, the other marginalized communities are just no longer centered in our politics”.

As Grim demonstrates convincingly, that is one of the many big costs the US pays thanks to the gigantic role of dark money in its politics.

The Squad is published in the US by Henry Holt & Co

‘Excess profits’ made by big firms boosted inflation – report

Rebecca Speare-Cole, PA sustainability reporter
Fri, 8 December 2023 



“Excess profits” made by large international companies could have exacerbated inflation and passed on higher costs to consumers, according to a report.

Researchers from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and Common Wealth – both British think tanks – analysed the financial statements of 1,350 firms listed on the UK, US, German, Brazilian and South African stock markets.

They found that UK-listed firms such as Shell, Glencore, Vodafone and Barclays saw their profits outpace inflation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while ordinary families’ real incomes plummeted.


The report, released on Thursday, argued that because energy and food prices feed so significantly into costs across all sectors of the wider economy, this exacerbated the initial price shock – contributing to inflation peaking higher and lasting longer than had there been less market power.

Firms in other sectors such as tech, telecommunications and finance also saw high profit increases, the report said.

The researchers cited work by University of Massachusetts assistant professor Isabella Weber, who has argued that profits in “systemically significant” sectors – such as energy and commodities – can have an outsized impact on inflation across the wider economy.

The report said that large companies in these sectors have been able to protect their profit margins or even increase them during the period of inflation, setting prices higher than are socially and economically beneficial, and generating “excess profits” through a combination of high market power and global market dynamics.

It noted that nominal profits averaged at least 30% higher at the end of 2022, compared to the end of 2019 before the pandemic.

It also found that in the UK, 90% of nominal profit increases during this period occurred in only 11% of publicly listed firms.

UK oil major Shell’s average annualised profit rose from £15 billion to £44 billion, while BP’s rose from £7.7 billion to £23 billion.

Oil and mining giant Glencore’s average annualised profits rose from £1.9 billion to £14.8 billion, while Rio Tinto saw its own rise from £9 billion to £15.5 billion.

Vodafone, British American Tobacco and British banks Barclays, Natwest and HSBC were also among the top 10 UK-listed companies which saw increased profits over the period.

Firms across the world in other sectors such as tech, telecommunications and finance also saw high profit increases, the researchers found.

The report said a rise in nominal profits does not mean that firms have raised their profit margins, since for many it is the result of passing on their higher costs to consumers while maintaining the same degree of profitability as a percentage of nominal sales.

But it added that there is evidence some stock market-listed firms not only protected their margins but also increased them, which meant they not only passed on inflation but further amplified it.

The researchers found that if companies accepted a hit to their profit margins, similar to that endured by wage earners, then “pass the parcel” inflation would decrease.

The think tanks are now calling for policymakers to deploy a much broader range of policy tools to dampen inflation caused by external shocks and prevent a repetition of profiteering from big companies.

They recommended a new international approach to taxing excess profits, which could form part of pro-investment tax reforms to reduce inefficient behaviour by dominant corporations and encourage productive investment instead.

The organisations also called for a new direction for competition policy to stop overly powerful companies from taking advantage of economic emergencies, and more interventions such as price caps and excess profits taxes to help stabilise markets during economic emergencies.

Carsten Jung, senior economist at IPPR, said: “Our research finds that markets aren’t working efficiently, enabling large companies to make profits that likely amplified inflation.

“This has made the cost of living crisis worse for most people, and for many smaller firms across the economy.

“The original inflation spike was driven by global supply chains gumming up post-pandemic, and then by the energy price shock following the Ukraine invasion.

“Now economists considering the knock-on effects of ‘home made’ inflation have been focussing too much on the labour market.

“We should be scrutinising the role profits have played in amplifying inflation.

“If external shocks are made worse by business behaviour then new policy tools are needed to tackle this.”

Chris Hayes, chief economist of Common Wealth, said: “Inflationary shocks cannot be avoided, but they need not persist so long.

“Our analysis of companies suggests many large firms, beyond just the commodities sector, are using their power to preserve their profit margins. This pushes the shocks downstream to workers, consumers and labour-intensive industries that are less able to absorb them.

“This is not only unfair but has destabilised the economy and undermined growth.

“We need a new set of targeted and strategic macroeconomic policies to encourage companies to behave differently and bring down inflation, both now and in the future.”

Spotify ousts its finance chief after cutting 1,500 jobs


James Warrington
Fri, 8 December 2023

Mr Vogel has served as chief financial officer since 2020 - Variety.com

Spotify has ousted its finance chief as founder Daniel Ek overhauls the streaming service in a bid to strip out costs.

The Swedish music company said chief financial officer Paul Vogel will step down at the end of March.

It marks the latest effort by Mr Ek to shake up Spotify, which has struggled to deliver consistent profits.

The company earlier this week announced it would slash 17pc of its workforce – around 1,500 jobs – in the third round of job cuts this year.

The overhaul comes as tech companies face pressure from investors to demonstrate profitability after years of growth funded by low interest rates.

In a statement late on Thursday announcing Mr Vogel’s departure, Mr Ek said: “Spotify has embarked on an evolution over the last two years to bring our spending more in line with market expectations, while also funding the significant growth opportunities we continue to identify.

“I’ve talked a lot with Paul about the need to balance these two objectives carefully. Over time, we’ve come to the conclusion that Spotify is entering a new phase and needs a chief financial officer with a different mix of experiences.”

Spotify chief Daniel Ek says the company ‘needs a chief financial officer with a different mix of experiences’ - TORU YAMANAKA/AFP

The Spotify chief added that the company would select a “strong financial leader” as its next chief financial officer.

Spotify’s most recent job cuts raised eyebrows given the streaming service swung to a rare profit in the third quarter thanks to price rises and subscriber growth around the globe.

However, Mr Ek said Spotify needed to focus on efficiency, adding: “We still have too many people dedicated to supporting work and even doing work around the work rather than contributing to opportunities with real impact.”

He added: “Our cost structure for where we need to be is still too big”.

Spotify has been looking for new avenues of growth to help boost its profitability after a troubled $1bn (£800m) foray into podcasting.

The company spent heavily on shows by celebrities including Meghan Markle and Michelle and Barack Obama, but the gamble has so far failed to pay off.

In October, Spotify announced a move into audiobooks in a fresh effort to attract more subscribers.

Mr Vogel, who has served as finance chief since 2020, cashed in £7.2m of shares following the announcement of job cuts earlier this week but prior to news of his departure being made public.

He was one of several top executives to take advantage as Spotify’s shares spiked by as much as 8pc.

Ben Kung, Spotify’s vice president of financial planning and analysis, will take on an expanded role while the company looks for Mr Vogel’s successor.

CRYING WOLF

US retail group retracts claim that half of $94.5bn inventory loss was from theft

Edward Helmore
Thu, 7 December 2023 

Photograph: AndreyPopov/Getty Images

The powerful National Retail Federation (NRF) lobbying group has retracted a claim that “organized retail crime” accounted for “nearly half” of the shopping industry’s $94.5bn losses due to theft or “shrink” in 2021.

Related: Teens need malls. Malls need crowds. Why are they pushing kids away?

The industry group had said the impact of organized retail crime, which it previously claimed had increased by 26.5%, had become increasingly violent. Retail giants like Target, Walmart and Walgreens said it was threatening their businesses.

The NRF said the figure was based on a congressional testimony from Ben Dugan, the former president of an advocacy group, the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail, and that an analyst from K2 Integrity, a risk consultancy that co-authored the report, inferred the “nearly half” claim.

The inclusion of the claim in the NRF’s report was “taken directly from Ben’s testimony” and “was an inference made by the K2 analyst linking the results of the NRF survey from 2021 and Ben Dugan’s statement made that same year”, NRF spokesperson Danielle Inman told Reuters.

In an updated report on organized retail crime, the body still maintained that organized crime is “a high-priority concern for the retail industry for decades, having a harmful economic impact on retail companies and endangering store employees and customers”.

The study added: “These concerns have grown in recent years, as criminal groups have become more brazen and violent in their tactics and have utilized new channels to resell stolen goods.”

A K2 database of 132 organized retail crime groups dating between 2014 and 2022 found that luxury goods, often well protected, are only targeted 11% of the time.

Instead, organized retail crime tends to target everyday goods available from big retail outlets and favor clothing, health and beauty products, infant products, accessories, housewares, home improvement products, eyewear and office supplies.

Homeland Security Investigations, the primary federal agency that tackles organized retail theft, defines organized retail crime as “the association of two or more persons engaged in illegally obtaining items of value from retail establishments, through theft and/or fraud, as part of a criminal enterprise”.

Retailers concede that the causes of “shrink” – as retail theft is known – are notoriously difficult to track and include employee theft, shoplifting, administrative or cashier error, damage and vendor fraud.

Still, organized or unorganized theft has remained a preoccupation of retailers and politicians, particularly on the right, where city and suburban crime is a potent political topic.

In December last year, the Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told told CNBC that if theft did not slow down, the company would close stores across the country. “Theft is an issue,” he said. “It is higher than what it has historically been” and “if that’s not corrected over time, prices will be higher, and/or stores will close”.

The New York City mayor, Eric Adams, told retailers last month that they must require shoppers to enter stores without face masks and launched a task force to support a plan to reduce retail theft outlined in a retail theft report.

“New York City’s retailers are the heart and soul of our city, and retail theft hurts everyone, from our mom-and-pop shops to large department stores – and especially consumers,” the mayor said. The New York attorney general, Letitia James, added that “retail theft continues to harm New Yorkers, threaten businesses and threaten the safety of our communities”.

But larger retailers are now conceding that they too may have exaggerated the issue of “shrinkage”. During a January earnings call, Walgreens’ then chief financial officer, James Kehoe, said the company had seen “lower levels of shrink” in the second half of 2022. The loss of inventory attributed to theft, fraud and damage was over 3%. Kehoe said the shrink rate is down to roughly 2.5% this year.

PRIVATIZED
Royal Mail pays £26m to customers as complaints surge

James Warrington
Thu, 7 December 2023 

Royal Mail

Royal Mail paid £26m in compensation to customers last year amid rising complaints about the quality of its postal service.

The compensation, which is paid out when customers experience loss, damage or delay to letters and parcels, rose by 46pc compared to 2022.

The total number of complaints leading to compensation jumped 37pc to almost 1m, according to new figures from Ofcom, which found that the average amount paid rose by £1.76 to £26.93.

The figures highlight how a worsening service is adding to Royal Mail’s financial difficulties.

The company was hit with a record £5.6m fine by the regulator last month after it failed to deliver more than a quarter of first class post on time.

Royal Mail’s most recent quality of service reports show it remains significantly below targets, with the company blaming this on high levels of staff absence and vacancies.

However, in its report, Ofcom said: “We are concerned that Royal Mail’s performance has not shown any signs of improvement in recent months and are disappointed that it has been unable to provide us with a timeline for when its performance will improve.”

Royal Mail posted a £319m loss in the first half of the year, which was partly due to a pay deal struck with unions in April - SOPA Images/Getty Images Contributor

Martin Seidenberg, who took over as chief executive of Royal Mail owner International Distributions Service in the summer, has vowed to “pull out all the stops” to avoid disruption over Christmas.

Royal Mail has said posties will be paid a bonus of up to £500 if they meet delivery targets over the crucial festive period.

The company will also hire 16,000 seasonal workers and open five temporary sorting centres.

The downturn in delivery performance comes as Royal Mail attempts to stem deepening losses, which have been sparked by lengthy strike action and a decline in letter sending.

Royal Mail posted a £319m loss in the first half of the year, an increase of £100m compared to the same period in 2022.

This was partly due to a pay deal struck with unions in April, which saw workers handed a 10pc pay rise over three years and a one-off payment of £500.

But Royal Mail is also facing structural issues as fewer Britons send letters and as competition from couriers grows.

The Ofcom figures show that Royal Mail lost market share over the year, as parcel volumes were down almost 8pc on pre-pandemic levels, while letter volumes dropped by a quarter.

Royal Mail has called for a relaxation of its universal service obligation, which requires the company to deliver letters from Monday to Saturday.

Ofcom is currently reviewing the rules but any changes will ultimately require Government approval.

A Royal Mail spokesman said: “Royal Mail takes every complaint seriously. To some extent the compensation figures reflect the market trends of increased parcel volumes and lower letter volumes.

“As people send more parcels over letters - which may contain items of higher value - we are likely to see increased compensation figures.”

UK

Aldi announces pay rises for staff

Aldi has announced new pay rates, saying it will be the first supermarket to guarantee all store and warehouse workers earn at least £12 an hour.

The minimum rate will increase by 40p an hour, and by 70p to £13.55 within the M25, with the increases taking effect from February.

Aldi said it is investing £67m in pay, adding it is also the only supermarket to offer paid breaks, which for the average store worker is worth more than £900 a year.

Giles Hurley, chief executive of Aldi UK and Ireland, said: “Just as we promise to provide the best value to our customers, we are also committed to being the highest-paying supermarket in the sector.”

Aldi is the UK’s fourth-largest supermarket and has more than 1,000 stores, 11 regional distribution centres and 40,000 employees across Britain.

Aldi staff will all earn at least £12 an hour - Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Games Workshop hands staff £2,500 bonus as half-year profits rise 12%

Sarah Butler
Thu, 7 December 2023 

Photograph: May James/Reuters

The fantasy figurine retailer Games Workshop is handing its shop workers, model makers, designers and support staff a £2,500 Christmas bonus, £1,000 more than a year ago, after half-year profits rose more than 12%.

The Nottingham-based company behind the popular table-top gaming series Warhammer and Lord of the Rings figures said its workers would split a £7.5m bonus pool, up from £4.5m a year ago.

Games Workshop, which runs about 530 stores, said it was increasing the bonus as it expected half-year profits to be at least £94m as sales rose 9% to £247m. There was strong growth in its core gaming sales but a drop in licensing income.

Started nearly 50 years ago by three schoolfriends, Games Workshop enjoyed a boom during the pandemic and has continued to thrive despite tough times on the high street as hobbies and small treats that can be enjoyed at home have benefited from the cost of living squeeze.

Analysts said the company had recorded a slowdown in the second quarter of its financial year but had enjoyed the benefits of a strong first quarter helped by the launch of the 10th edition of its Warhammer 40,000 game, which features characters such as Space Marines and the squid-like Neurotyrant.

Shares in the group fell almost 11% to just under £95 as Andrew Wade, an analyst at Jefferies, said investors were likely to be disappointed that the business had only delivered sales and profits in line with expectations.

In the summer, analysts upgraded forecasts after strong early sales of the latest 40,000 edition while the cost of shipping goods and some materials fell. Wade said it appeared there had been “a pull-forward of demand” in the summer and Games Workshop now faced tougher trading conditions.

Warhammer maker Games Workshop pays staff £2,500 bonus — but £450m knocked off market cap as shares tumble

Daniel O'Boyle
Thu, 7 December 2023 


Warhammer maker Games Workshop has agreed a right deal with Amazon studios 

(Games Workshop/PA)

Warhammer maker Games Workshop is to pay all its staff a £2,500 Christmas bonus as half-year profits rose to nearly £100 million.

The payout, a combined £7.5 million, is up from £1,500 per employee last year. It comes as profit grew by 12.4% to £94 million, on sales of £235 million, also up on last year.

But investors, who have become used to upgrades, were not impressed. Jefferies analysts Andrew Wade and Grace Gilberg flagged “markedly slower” growth in the second quarter.

Peel Hunt analysts were less negative, saying that the numbers were “consistent with our full-year forecasts”.

The shares tumbled by as much as 13% to 9224p, knocking £450 million off the multi-billion-pound company's market cap. That’s 21% off their July peak, but still up more than 200% over the last five years and 20 times the price they were trading at in 2016.

The bonus is enough for a fan of Games Workshop’s flagship — and famously expensive — Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game to build the two-foot tall Mars Pattern Warlord Titan and equip it with a pair of power claws and a set of laser blasters.

Sold in parts, the figurine costs £1,674.50 to assemble and paint. It’s the most pricey model listed on the Warhammer website, which describes the Titan as “among the most ancient and feared of the Imperium's war machines”.

“Forged on the Red Planet itself, it is worshipped and venerated as the Omnissiah's will incarnate and each god-engine is encased in layered armour and powerful void shielding, and armed with weapons that are capable of reducing entire armies to ash,” the Warhammer website reads.

Tesla loses legal challenge against Swedish strikes

Chris Price
Thu, 7 December 2023 

Emma Hansson, chairman of IF Metall, stands on strike outside Tesla's Service Centre in Segeltorp in Stockholm, Sweden - Jessica Gow/TT News Agency/via REUTERS

Tesla has lost a legal battle with Sweden’s postal service as its fight with Scandinavian trade unions escalates.

A Swedish court said postal operator PostNord does not need to deliver licence plates to Tesla that are being blocked by the postal service’s workers, for the time being.

The latest twist in a fight over collective bargaining agreements comes as Tesla is facing growing pressure in Sweden, Norway and Denmark from unions.

They are backing mechanics who work at Sweden’s IF Metall, who went on strike on October 27 demanding a collective agreement with the company.

A large Danish pension fund on Wednesday said it would sell its holdings in Tesla over its refusal to enter into such deals.

The court’s decision comes after Tesla sued PostNord as workers stopped delivering plates for its new cars in a sympathy strike, and is an interim decision ahead of the court’s final ruling.

Tesla’s Scandinavian union rows prompt Danish pension fund to sell stake in protest

One of Denmark’s largest pension funds has dumped its shares in Tesla because of the carmaker’s failure to agree collective bargaining agreements with its workers.

PensionDanmark, which is known for prioritising climate change in its investment strategy, said that it had attempted to influence Tesla’s union policy “directly and coordinated with other shareholders”, but without success.

“In the light of the conflict spreading to Denmark and Tesla’s latest and very categorical denial to reach collective agreements in any country, we have reached the conclusion that we as investors for the time being are unlikely to influence the company. And therefore, we are placing Tesla on our exclusion list,” the company said.

The pension manager’s exclusion list is dominated by fossil fuel businesses, such as ExxonMobil, Gazprom and China’s CNOOC. The addition of Tesla, while continuing to include other companies known to discourage union membership such as Amazon and Starbucks, is an indication of just how acrimonious the fight has become between unions and Tesla in Denmark, Sweden, Norway.

The row began with 130 Swedish mechanics, responsible for servicing Teslas, who wanted the American carmaker to follow the Nordic norm whereby unions and employers jointly set wages and working conditions. Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, described their decision to strike as “insane”.

Dockworkers quickly joined in secondary action against Tesla, refusing to unload the Tesla cars at Sweden’s ports, while postal and courier businesses refused to deliver Tesla licence plates.

Earlier this week, Denmark’s largest trade union, 3F, joined the boycott of Tesla, with its dock workers and drivers refusing to transport Tesla vehicles. Norway’s largest private sector union, Fellesforbundet, has also pledged to join the boycott.

“Even if you are one of the richest people in the world, you can’t just make your own rules,” Jan Villadsen of the 3F union, said. “We have some agreements on the labour market in the Nordics, and you have to comply with them if you want to do business here.”

The decision by PensionDanmark to sell its Tesla investment, reportedly worth £46m, comes despite the pensions company’s commitment to foster greener technology.

Torben Möger Pedersen, its chief executive, said in 2021: “We are in a hurry. There is no time to waste. We have to address climate change now, and what is most needed is massive private investment in the green transition.”

In 2020, it pledged to cut the carbon emissions of its portfolio by at least 22pc by 2025.

Tesla was approached for comment.

A placard from the IF Metall union outside the Tesla service center in Segeltorp, Sweden, on Tuesday - Erik Flyg/Bloomberg

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

UK to remain global centre of ‘dirty money’ without offshore registers, MPs say

Rob Davies
Thu, 7 December 2023 

Photograph: Javier Fergo

Britain will remain the global centre of “dirty money” unless ministers revive stalled plans for public registers of who owns companies based in offshore havens such as the British Virgin Islands (BVIs) and Jersey, campaigners and senior MPs have said.

The veteran anti-corruption campaigner Dame Margaret Hodge MP said it was a matter of national security to do away with the secrecy offered by the 10 inhabited overseas territories and three crown dependencies.

In 2020, the government gave the overseas territories, which include the BVIs, Cayman Islands and Bermuda, a deadline of December 2023 to introduce public registers of corporate ownership. Only Gibraltar has done so.


Hodge called on the government to issue an “order in council” to compel them to comply and also suggested the crown dependencies could be forced to follow suit, a proposal that would test longstanding constitutional convention and law.

Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man had acted dishonourably by reneging on their own promise to introduce public registers, she said. Jersey said it exchanged information with authorities around the world “which it considers the most effective approach in the global fight against financial crime”.

But Hodge, who chairs a cross-party group of MPs examining corruption and tax, said that an “epidemic of tax avoidance, tax evasion and economic crime flourishes in an environment of secrecy”.

“If we are serious about trying to eliminate dirty money from Britain, we must have public registers so that we can … follow the money,” she said.

She cited the role of UK-linked tax havens in investigations published by the Guardian and international partners, including the Pandora Papers, Paradise Papers, and the Cyprus Confidential leaks that were published last month.

The Foreign Office minister David Rutley said the government was discussing an interim measure that would see offshore havens allow people with a “legitimate interest” to access records from next year, in line with the position across most of the EU. Those likely to be regarded as having a legitimate right to access records include the media and campaign groups.

He also promised to pursue fully public registers.

“The train is leaving the station, we know the direction of our travel,” he said.

UK-linked offshore havens deprived 79 countries of £250bn – equivalent to more than 20 years of the UK’s foreign aid budget, during the three decades leading up to 2018, according to the anti-corruption campaign group Transparency International.

The government appears to have accepted the need to crack down, but ministers could find themselves on a collision course with offshore centres because of the arcane nature of the UK’s constitutional relationships.

The government can order overseas territories to adopt public registers but Britain has typically not sought to exert control on crown dependencies, which are possessions of the crown rather than part of the UK.

The three dependencies tentatively committed to setting up public registers in 2019, once the European Union had reviewed its own plans.

The European court of justice ruled late last year that unrestricted public access to such information was a disproportionate infringement on individuals’ privacy.

The dependencies paused their plans in light of the ruling and have said they are taking legal advice.

In a written answer to a question posed by Hodge, the junior home office minister Tom Tugendhat said the court’s ruling should have no effect.

He said the government was “satisfied with the lawfulness of our own publicly accessible registers and continues to believe that [they] could legally implement public registers of their own”.

Britain threw its weight behind public registers in 2014 when the then prime minister David Cameron urged the crown dependencies and overseas territories to follow the UK’s example by publishing corporate ownership data.

MPs including Hodge and Labour’s Meg Hillier said Cameron’s recent appointment as foreign secretary presented an opportunity to apply renewed pressure.