Wednesday 8 March 2023

LONDON’S BUSINESS NEWSPAPER

IN DEFENCE OF CAPITALISM THE LATEST GUEST ESSAY IN OUR EIGHT-PART SERIES P12

BANK: WE’RE ON LOOKOUT FOR GOUGING

FIRMS FORCED TO HIKE BY INFLATION, SAY CAMPAIGNERS

BUSINESS groups said many businesses had no choice to rise prices after a Bank of England rate setter yesterday said that some companies are pursuing so-called ‘greedflation’ by pumping up prices to exploit strong consumer spending.

Catherine Mann, an external member of the Bank’s rate setting monetary policy committee (MPC), said she is concerned firms’ “strong pricing power” risks keeping inflation high.

“Even in the face of the cost of living crisis there are still a lot of people out there who are willing to pay higher prices, and firms are willing to set their prices high,” she told Bloomberg. Companies have been squeezed by soaring energy prices, wage bills and transport costs over the last year, strengthening incentives for them to raise prices to protect their bottom lines.

Producer inflation –a broad measure of input cost increases calculated by

the Office for National Statistics –is running at more than 14 per cent, above consumer price inflation of 10.1 per cent.

Bank governor Andrew Bailey and the rest of the MPC’s ten straight interest rate increases to a 15-year high of four per cent has also lifted the cost of repaying debt for firms.

A big chunk of UK businesses’ debts are on floating rates, meaning their interest bills are highly responsive to changes to official interest rates.

Mann yesterday reiterated she thinks “more needs to be done with rates”, a position she has vocalised a few times over the last month.

Markets suspect the MPC will bump rates up 25 basis points at its next meeting on 23 March.

“Although many businesses have been increasing their prices, they have also absorbed a significant level of cost increases into their margins,” Alex Veitch, director of policy and public affairs at the British Chambers of Commerce, told City A.M.

Companies that do take advantage of pricing power typically hold high market share and are big players in their industries.

Britain’s small businesses “have been hammered by a cost of doing business crisis since inflation started soaring around this time last year,” Tina McKenzie, policy chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, told City A.M.

“Small business margins are balanced on a knife-edge and small firms are only raising prices as a last resort to keep themselves afloat, having already absorbed as much as they possibly can in order to stay competitive,” she added.

There have been instances of big companies hoisting prices far and above headline inflation.

Regulator Ofcom has launched a probe into mobile phone providers after it emerged customers were facing an up to 14 per cent bill increase. Tesco chair John Allan got into hot water last month for suggesting food producers were hiking prices above inflation.

LOUIS GOSS

LONDON’s cabbies will have something else to talk to you about the next time you step into the back of a black taxi –their green ambitions. The number of electric cabs now outnumbers the diesel-powered fleet on London’s roads.

Electric taxis have boomed over the past five years, following Transport for London’s edict requiring all new cabs to be “zero emissions capable”.

The London Electric Vehicle

Company’s purpose-built hackney carriage, the LEVC TX, is currently the only black cab capable of meeting TfL’s emissions requirements.

LEVC TX taxis now account for 40 per cent of all black cabs in London, meaning they are now more common than their diesel-powered counterparts for the first time.

The electric taxi’s rise to dominance comes just six years after the London Electric Vehicle Company first started producing the cars at its Coventry manufacturing facility in 2017.

Now even Foxtons tells young Londoners to look further afield for a house

THE BOSS of London-focused estate agent Foxtons has warned “people are going to have to move” due to a lack of available properties in the capital –with London’s business groups saying the city’s competitiveness was at risk.

Foxtons boss Guy Gittins told the BBC yesterday that the shortage of rental options is now “dramatic”, with prices spiking significantly over the past year.

Paul Swinney, director of policy and research at Centre for Cities, told City A.M. the capital has already seen a “squeeze” on the pool of

talent it has been able to recruit from in the last 15 years and that a lack of suitable homes for aspiring professionals is “bad for its economy overall”.

He explained:”The difficulty in trying to find accommodation points to a

long-running challenge in the capital – it hasn’t built enough homes to house the people who want to live here.

“If they [look elsewhere] it’ll be bad news for London’s businesses,” he continued.

Soaring inflation and a hike in utility bills have been blamed

for an increase in rents in the past few months, however Gittins said that a disparity between supply and demand was the real issue.

“The main issue is not affordability for the majority of the market – it’s the stock issue.”

£ CONTINUED ON P2

LAURA MCGUIRE

JACK BARNETT

STANDING UP FOR THE CITY

Britain’s appetite for risk appears muted, and that’s a real risk

THIS time next week, no doubt, your fingernails will be bitten to the quick in anticipation of Jeremy Hunt’s budget. Should you be able to wait no longer, we offer you our best informed prediction: don’t get too excited.

In some ways, a muted ‘fiscal event’ sums up Britain and Westminster at the moment. There is a lack of va va voom. It seems to have infiltrated vast swathes of the public and private

sector. Regulators dally on introducing Solvency II changes. The Treasury seems to have put even the mild reforms of the Austin, Hill and Kalifa reviews out to pasture, lest they rock the boat. Politicians fear spooking the bond markets, again, confusing

the reaction to Liz Truss’ recklessness with what it would be considered to be risk. Everybody from planners to local councillors manages to find ways to avoid building desperately needed houses. Investors, too, seem perturbed, undervaluing London-listed assets and preferring value-protection to value-creation. Chief executives are terrified of asking staff to come back to work more often, or challenge the orthodoxy of the

ESG puritans. It is as if the entire country has heard the words “returns may go down as well as up” and decided it’s not worth the faff. This post-pandemic malaise cannot continue. A willingness to innovate, to invest, has been behind Britain’s post1980s economic revival, but post-Brexit and post-pandemic it seems in shorter supply than ever. Government policymakers seem intent on managing Britain’s decline, incapable of taking on

the knotty issues that are holding Britain back (exhibit a: our absurd health system and the demands it makes on all other public spending) and instead grandstand on how they’re going to stop the ‘small boats’ (spoiler: they won’t, unless your policy starts a lot further away from the English channel than currently planned). Perhaps Jeremy Hunt will surprise us next week, but we would not bet the farm –perhaps we’ve lost our appetite, too.

THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM National Grid fires up emergency coal plants to keep the country’s lights on as a heavy cold snap puts pressure on the UK’s energy supplies

THE NATIONAL Grid’s electricity system operator yesterday maintained its order for two of the UK’s five emergency coal-fired generators to produce electricity as a cold snap and planned nuclear shutdowns in France put pressure on the UK’s energy supplies. The two coalpowered units in West Burton, Lincolnshire, operated by EDF, began feeding into the national grid yesterday afternoon. National Grid wants to ensure there is enough electricity to go round as the North has been hit by snow and ice. This has seen wind power generation dip significantly.

Currently, only two per cent of the country’s energy mix is made up of coal, chiefly from Kilroot Power Station in Northern Ireland. Its previously dominant role has been replaced with gas and wind power over the previous decade.

Recession danger forces London firms to shelve their full-time hiring plans

JACK BARNETT

LONDON businesses are the most reluctant to take on new staff in the UK due to uncertainty over whether the country will eventually tip into recession, a closely watched survey out today reveals.

The capital’s firms are trimming intentions to expand their workforce due to concerns over a looming drop in consumer spending amid the economic slump.

Consultancy KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation’s (REC) permanent employment

index slid to its lowest level since October last year, down to 42.2 points last month, the lowest of any region in the UK.

The reading is far below the 50 point threshold that separates growth and contraction, meaning London companies are hiring permanent staff at a slower pace.

February’s reading was also a big drop from January’s 47.9 points.

Experts said that the capital’s firms are taking on part-time staff to ensure they can keep running smoothly without baking in higher fixed costs that could hit them if the country does slip

into recession.

“As hirers work out what variable economic forecasts might mean for their business and staff, it makes sense that we continue to see temp billings hold up so well. Temporary staffing ensures firms can continue to provide goods and services, and people can grow their careers – even when the economic outlook is unclear,” Kate Shoesmith, deputy chief executive of the REC, said.

The temporary hiring index remained in expansionary territory at 52.2 points, although it fell quickly from 55.2 points.

WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

THE CITY VIEW FLIGHTS TO FRANCE CANCELLED AMID BIGGEST FRENCH STRIKE

Britons travelling to and from France have been caught up in mass strikes with dozens of trains and flights cancelled and ferries delayed on Tuesday as people took to the streets.

THE FINANCIAL TIMES WINCANTON SHARES PLUMMET AFTER IT LOSES CUSTOMS CONTRACT

Shares in logistics group Wincanton yesterday plunged by a quarter after the company said it lost a £71m government contract that involved managing postBrexit customs arrangements.

THE TIMES

SUPPRESS US AND RISK CONFRONTATION, CHINA TELLS US

China has warned that confrontation with the US will have “catastrophic consequences”, insisting it will “fight back” against efforts to contain its ambitions.

Rent spikes set to put talent off the capital, say experts

CONTINUED FROM P1

Jonathan Seager, policy delivery director at BusinessLDN, told City A.M. its “vital” the capital can deliver a mix of homes across tenures and price points so that housing becomes more affordable to all Londoners, “helping to retain talent already in the capital and attracting it”.

It comes as a study by charity Trust for London showed that more than one in five people living in inner London are aged between 25 and 34 – with many traditionally

flocking to the capital and inhabiting in flat shares to better their careers. The rapid decline of supply can be seen in data shared with City A.M. by house sharing platform Spareroom which shows that the average price for a room in London has spiked almost £200 per month in a year.

Matt Hutchinson, Spareroom director, said: “The last 12 months has seen rents across the UK hit record highs and, unless new supply comes into market over the coming months, it’s hard to see how those rents will come down.”

Wood knocks back latest US takeover offer

CHARLIE

CONCHIE

SHARES in energy and consulting firm Wood Group surged yesterday after it revealed a £1.6bn takeover swoop from US buyout giant Apollo, its fourth bid for the firm.

The London-listed engineering and energy consulting firm, which has rejected the three previous cash offers on the grounds they undervalued the firm, said it was set to refuse the latest 237p per share cash bid for the same reasons.

“The board believes this latest proposal continues to undervalue the group and is therefore minded to reject,” Wood said in a statement.

“The board will continue to engage with its shareholders and intends to engage further, on a limited basis, with Apollo.”

The announcement yesterday came after Wood Group chiefs revealed on

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL? RMT suspends Network Rail strike action

THE RAIL, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) union last night suspended all industrial action for Network Rail workers after receiving a new pay offer. Strike action had next been due to take place on 16 March. The RMT said further updates on all aspects of the national rail dispute would be given “in the coming days”.

ASHTEAD HIKES CAPITAL SPEND AS IT BETS ON US SUBSIDY PACKAGES

22 February that Apollo had made three bids for the firm, the latest coming on 26 January.

Takeover interest in the firm has kicked shares up more than 50 per cent since the start of February, when Apollo’s bids first became public. That upward trajectory was boosted by a 13 per cent uplift yesterday on news of the fourth offer, to 219p, still short of Apollo’s current number.

Apollo’s interest in the firm has fuelled fears that cheap UK firms are vulnerable to foreign takeovers this year, as cashed up private equity firms and corporates take advantage of suppressed prices in London.

London firms were subject to a bargain hunt from foreign buyers last year, with Ted Baker and Aveva among the firms to be picked off from overseas. This year has seen a further bid for Hyve, the events firm, amid widespread City concern.

Sale of fintech Railsr ‘around the corner’ amid financial troubles

CHARLIE CONCHIE

BELEAGUERED fintech Railsr yesterday said a sale was “around the corner” as it scrambles to find a new owner amid financial troubles. Railsr, previously regarded as a darling of the UK’s fintech scene, has been hunting for a buyer over the past few months as funding dries up.

Bloomberg reported last week that the embedded banking platform was close to a sale via a pre-pack insolvency process, which would allow the firm to line up a buyer before entering administration.

A spokesperson told City A.M. that a sale was now “around the corner” and that it hopes to continue under new ownership.

Ashtead Group yesterday forecast annual results ahead of its own estimates and raised capital spend outlook for the next year as the equipment rental giant bets that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will boost construction in the US, its largest market. The Biden administration’s $430bn IRA, a green energy subsidy package, and the $52bn chips law, for subsidising US chip manufacturing and expanding research funding, are set to boost investments in the world's largest economy and attract capital from abroad. Shares in Ashtead rose to close up over two per cent yesterday.

PREMIER FOODS HAS A SWEET ANNUAL OUTLOOK

Mr Kipling cake maker Premier Foods yesterday hiked its annual profit outlook as sales growth remains in double digits thanks to a strong performance in its grocery arm. The group, which makes a raft of wellknown brands such as Oxo cubes and Bisto, said it is on track for sales in its fourth quarter to be at least 10 per cent higher than a year ago. This is putting it on track to beat earnings expectations, with underlying pre-tax profits set to be around £135m over the year to April 1, according to the firm. Trading profit is expected at around £155m, up from £141.2m the previous year. Investors welcomed the update, with shares bouncing to close up over 10 per cent.

Bankers’ bonus cap didn’t work, says BoE offical

CHRIS DORRELL

THE IMPOSITION of the bankers’ bonus cap has had “precisely the opposite effect” to what regulators intended, the head of the UK’s main banking regulator said yesterday, as he sought to defend the government’s decision to scrap the cap.

Sam Woods, head of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), said that while scrapping the bonus cap is probably the “single most unpopular thing we have proposed”, he defended the policy, suggesting that it could actually lower the total rate of bankers’ pay.

“The only effect of that cap has been to increase the fixed pay of bankers,” Woods told MPs yesterday. “As bankers come up close to the cap… in the following year, their base pay gets a boost of about 15 per cent.”

Dropping the cap would make banker’s total take home pay more closely related to their performance, as bonuses could be handed out or withdrawn on a more frequent basis, Woods suggested.

Regulations on the bonus cap were imposed by the EU in 2014 after the finan-

Labour tells Jeremy Hunt to ‘get a move on’ with Solvency II reforms

JESSICA FRANK-KEYES

LABOUR has hit out at the government over delays to overhauling EU-era Solvency II rules, demanding that it needs to “get a move on”.

cial crisis. It caps bonuses at 100 per cent of annual pay, or 200 per cent with shareholder approval.

But the government said it would scrap the cap as part of the wider Edinburgh Reforms – a package of over 30 reforms designed to free up the UK’s financial services sector after Brexit and boost growth – that were announced in early December.

Other regulatory revamps under discussion include overhauling the EU’s Solvency II rules and reforming the bank ring-fencing regime.

The PRA and the government have been at loggerheads on the implementation of Solvency II reforms, but Woods told MPs that “we accept the government has reached its final view… we need to get on with this”.

The government is also looking to increase the threshold at which the bank ring-fencing regime applies to £35bn and to allow banks with a small amount of exposure to bypass the rules.

Woods conceded that the government’s proposals on the issue would not have a major impact on financial stability, but he warned that going any further would pose risks.

Shadow city minister Tulip Siddiq called on Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to reform the rules – which govern the sums of money insurers

Fed’s Powell prepared to accelerate interest rate hikes to tame inflation

JACK BARNETT

JEROME Powell, chair of the US Federal Reserve, said the world’s most influential central bank is “prepared to accelerate rate hikes” if the pace of price increases in America stays high. His words are likely to be the final nail in the coffin of investors’ hopes that the Fed was drawing its aggressive campaign to fight inflation to a close. But a batch of hotter-than-forecast economic data over the past couple of

months indicates Americans are still spending and are willing to swallow price increases by firms.

Businesses are still trying to snap up workers, leading to supply and demand friction in the jobs market that is pumping up wages, which risks baking in elevated prices over the long run. To tame those dynamics, “the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously expected,”

Powell said in a testimony at the US congress.

must hold on their balance sheets to protect themselves against bankruptcy – in order to unlock billions for investment.

“This failing government needs to get a move on with Solvency II,” Siddiq said. “The Chancellor hasn’t even set out his plan for ensuring that the bulk of the money released will be invested in Britain.”

“The Conservatives have promised reform 10 times in the last three years with nothing to show for it,” she said.

“The next Labour government will unlock capital in the insurance industry and give financial services the certainty they need to invest this money in the industries of the future through our Green Prosperity Plan.”

Federal Reserve chair Powell said interest rates are likely to peak higher than expected

Greggs on a roll with plans for 150 new stores

LAURA MCGUIRE

SAUSAGE roll favourite Greggs said it expects to become a “significantly larger” business as it announced plans to open 150 new bakeries in 2023 following stellar sales figures.

The budget bakery chain saw total sales up 23 per cent to £1.5bn in 2022, compared to £1.2bn the previous year, as consumers craved the brand’s new food offering of pizza and chicken goujon share boxes.

Greggs also saw pre-tax profit up 1.9 per cent to £148.3m compared to £145.6m in 2021.

The sales boost came despite inflationary pressures, which saw the bakery raise prices in both 2022 and 2023 on the back of rising costs.

The high street favourite said its decision to extend opening hours

City developers must go green to win approval

LAURA MCGUIRE

LONDON developers will now be urged to refurbish existing buildings rather than knock them down, or it could impact their chances of being granted planning approval.

had boosted earnings – with 500 shops now open until 8pm or later and further development planned for 2023.

Greggs chief executive Roisin Currie said: “We have an exciting, ambitious plan for the years ahead and, by continuing to nurture what makes Greggs special, I believe we are extremely well-placed to realise the opportunity to become a significantly larger, multi-

For the year ahead, the group said it is looking to expand its presence in retail parks and central London as well as key transport hubs. It added that it hopes to expand its presence from 2,300 to 3,000 stores in the coming years.

Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, put the brand’s success down to its “crucial ingredient in cash-strapped

A tough consumer environment has spelled trouble for the fast fashion brand

In The Style shares plummet as brand forced to sell up for £1.2m

LAURA MCGUIRE

INVESTORS fled In The Style yesterday after the embattled fast fashion brand revealed that it was forced to sell its business for just £1.2m to avoid administration.

The fast fashion retailer, which was once valued at £105m when it floated on the London Stock Exchange, yesterday said it had

accepted a £1.2m offer from private equity firm Baaj Capital LLP for the brand, sending shares down a staggering 78 per cent.

Founder Adam Frisby will become chief executive of the business upon completion of the deal.

It comes after the company launched a strategic review in December after posting a £3.1m loss for the first half of the year.

In an announcement made yesterday, The City of London Corporation said that developers will be expected to carry out a “detailed review” of the carbon impact of new developments, as the planning authority looks to reduce the Square Mile’s carbon footprint.

The new guidance applies to major developments – those greater than 1,000 sq m – and developments which propose knocking down most of the existing structure.

“This pioneering planning guidance puts the City at the forefront of the growing drive to give substantial, detailed consideration to retaining and refurbishing buildings rather than simply knocking them down and starting from scratch,” Shravan Joshi, City of London corporation planning and transportation committee chairman, said.

THE NOTE BOOK

It’s not all doom and gloom in Blighty

YOU wouldn’t be blamed for thinking that the UK economy is in a dire position with the cost of living crisis, sky-high inflation, rampant industrial action and rising mortgage rates. While the war in Ukraine and the Covid19 hangover have undeniably caused economic headwinds, there is still reason for optimism.

The FTSE 100 hit a record high last month. Amid last year’s global equity market volatility, the UK index proved its resilience, in part thanks to a lack of exposure to technology, a sector which sold off heavily in 2022. It has benefitted from sky high profits from BP and Shell off the back of a surge in oil prices. UK banks meanwhile profited from the rising rate environment, helping to lift the FTSE 100. Standard Chartered is in fact one of the best performing stocks on the UK blue-chip index over the past year.

In August, the Bank of England predicted the UK was facing the longest recession since the global financial crisis, however the central bank has since upgraded its view

on the economy. The latest official figures saw the UK stave off a recession in 2022 and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research now forecasts the economy will in fact grow marginally by 0.2 per cent this year.

Inflation has arguably been the biggest economic threat to the UK post-pandemic, with soaring food prices, expensive energy bills and falling real wages causing widespread economic pain. Fortunately, it looks like the UK’s headline rate of inflation is starting to come down.

Other economic data points are also improving including consumer confidence, retail sales and PMI figures.

With the Spring Budget on 15 March, public finances are in a much better state than they were last year following the fiscal fiasco around the disastrous mini-budget.

The UK government achieved an unexpected budget surplus in January, arguably providing some leeway when Chancellor Jeremy Hunt delivers his red box next week.

Where interesting people say interesting things. Today, it’s Victoria Scholar, head of investment at Interactive Investors

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE

Both Costa Coffee and Pret A Manger are giving workers their third pay increase in a year.

Beginning in April, Pret’s shop staff will have benefitted from a 19 per cent raise year-on-year while around 16,000 UK Costa workers will enjoy a jump of around 14 per cent. Meanwhile, Starbucks is planning to open 100 new UK sites as part of a wider expansion across Europe. The US coffee chain has a total of 1,066 UK sites with plans to invest £30m over the next three years.

£ Wandisco is the latest Londonlisted firm to mull a US flotation. Responding to press speculation, the big data firm said it is proactively exploring the United States to create a dual listing. It follows similar decisions from chipmaker Arm and building materials supplier CRH which are both looking at listings in New York. Betting and gaming group Flutter Entertainment has also been eyeing a move stateside. This has raised concerns that London could be losing its appeal on the global stage.

£ On International Women’s Day, it is worth celebrating the announcement that 40.2 per cent of FTSE 350 Board positions are now held by women, meeting the 40 per cent target three years ahead of the 2025 deadline. Women hold a third of all leadership roles in FTSE 350 companies as the glass ceiling finally begins to crack. Just over ten years ago, 152 boards on the FTSE 350 index had no women whatsoever, highlighting the progress made over recent years with more and more females reaching the top jobs.

THE REST IS POLITICS

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CAN I QUOTE YOU ON THAT?

Martin Lewis on whether the government will step in again on energy bills

This is a newish podcast from former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesperson and campaign director Alastair Campbell and former Tory MP Rory Stewart. It is the latest addition to their existing two weekly podcasts which analyse current developments in Westminster and further afield, giving “an insider’s view on politics at home and abroad”. In Leading, Campbell and Stewart sit down with people who are leading in their field from politicians to sports stars to religious leaders. This week’s episode is a long- form chat with Bertie Ahern, former Taoiseach and a key architect of the Good Friday agreement. Previous guests include four-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson and the shadow foreign secretary David Lammy.

We are at 85 per cent likelihood that the price won’t be going up

Chase: We are not here to be a small challenger

CHRIS DORRELL

JP MORGAN’s digital challenger bank Chase has set its sights on becoming a major retail bank in the UK, even if it costs a lot, a top executive at the bank told City A.M.

Shaun Port, managing director for everyday banking said:“We haven’t entered the market just to be a small challenger.”

“We believe we can offer an alternative to the main high street banks… I think there is an opportunity in the UK market to offer a really compelling proposition,” Port said.

Most challenger banks have failed to “cross the Rubicon” of becoming the primary bank for a large majority of customers, Port said, but this is what Chase wants to achieve despite the likelihood of hefty costs.

Chase has previously said it does not expect to break even until 2027-2028,

and warned that losses could top $1bn this year after it launched in the UK in September 2021.

But Port said the losses are “a strategic investment in a business which has significant growth potential”, suggesting it “underlines our commitment to creating a full-service bank here in the UK.”

Port is confident, however, that Chase will succeed where others have failed, arguing that JP Morgan’s name recognition will help inspire confidence and trust in the digital lender – something that can take other challenger banks years to build.

JP Morgan has also been able to build Chase from a “technology first perspective”, he said, enabling it to offer customers simpler features.

Port said Chase is unlikely to break the trend on physical branches, adding that there were “no plans” to open a physical branch, although it would keep “an open mind”.

Miliband previously described oil titans’ record profits as the ‘windfalls of war’

Ed Miliband looks to the future with North Sea chief Whitehouse

NICHOLAS EARL

ED MILIBAND has held talks with David Whitehouse, the new chief executive of industry group Offshore Energies UK, City A.M. has learned.

It is understood that the pair met for the first time earlier this month, with the shadow secretary of state for climate change and the North Sea industry boss hoping to develop

Just Group up on pensions buyout boom

LOUIS GOSS

JUST Group saw shares soar yesterday after the company revealed the boom in pensions buyout deals had helped boost its underlying profits by 19 per cent.

The Surrey firm completed 56 pensions de-risking deals, worth £2.6bn, successfully profiting on the pension’s buyout boom.

Shares closed up nine per cent.

Company chief David Richardson said the “very strong results” marked a “record start to the year”.

dialogue between each other.

Miliband has been highly critical of the sector, calling for the windfall tax to be strengthened, and Kier Starmer has even said there should be a ban on new investment in North Sea oil and gas fields.

With Labour ahead in the polls, North Sea firms are increasingly eager to get a lookahead on Labour’s evolving plans for the industry.

Higher interest rates over the previous year have improved pension scheme funding levels, in a shift that has let them pass liability over to specialist insurers through bulk annuity deals.

This has in turn driven a boom in pensions buy-out deals that analysts have said could see £200bn worth of bulk purchase annuity deals over the next three years.

Earlier this month, Just Group completed its most valuable pensions buyout deal after finalising a £513m buy-in to the GKN Group pensions scheme.

Almost all London councils to raise taxes amid ‘unsustainble’ funding

JESSICA FRANK-KEYES

MORE THAN half of local councils in England are set to make cuts to services while raising council tax by the highest possible amount amid an “unsustainable” funding system.

A fifth of London councils say budget cuts will be evident to the public and almost 95 per cent will raise residents’ council tax bills, the

Local Government Information Unit (LGIU) said in a new report.

The report said local authorities are facing “significant challenges” while confidence in local government finance is at an “all-time low”.

It comes amid growing pressure on Londoners after Mayor Sadiq Khan confirmed plans to hike City Hall’s share of tax by almost 10 per cent, or an additional £38.55 on average bills.

SMALL BOATS CRISIS Migrants to be detained ‘within weeks’, government says

“This is an unsustainable situation. Eventually, there will be no more cuts that councils can make without endangering their essential services. Our evidence suggests that for just under 10 per cent of councils, this is the situation they find themselves in now,” the report warned.

LGIU chief Jonathan Carr-West said local government was “crying out” for “fiscal devolution measures”.

Get the ‘great meeting’ feeling

UK tackles cost of living with £76m dormant assets

THE GOVERNMENT has committed

£76m of dormant assets to go towards tackling the cost of living crisis as it seeks to unlock over £800m for community funding over the next few years.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) confirmed yesterday that an initial £76m will be distributed to 69,000 people under the Dormant Asset Scheme.

Dormant assets are financial products, such as bank accounts, that a customer has not used for many years.

Fair4All Finance will receive £45m to expand the reach of its no-interest loans and offer more support to community finance providers. CEO Sacha Romanovitch said the funding will make “a real difference”.

A further £31m will be distributed by social investors Access and Big Society Capital to retrofit premises with cleaner, greener and more efficient energy systems.

Stephen Muers, CEO of Big Society Capital, praised the scheme, saying “every £1 from the dormant asset scheme to date spent on social invest-

ment has unlocked another £3 from other investors.”

DCMS also confirmed yesterday that, in future, ‘community wealth funds’ will be eligible to receive funding under the scheme as it expands.

A community wealth fund is a pot of money distributed to deprived communities and released over a long period.

Culture secretary Lucy Frazer told City A.M. that “some of the country’s most deprived areas will have access to this funding, with ‘community wealth funds’, to use exactly as they see best”. “Funding can renovate community or youth centres, for example and create better opportunities for future generations,” Frazer said.

Last year the government said that it aimed to unlock around £738m over the next few years as it expanded the scheme to include dormant assets in new sectors such as insurance and pensions.

“Funding has helped house nearly 400 of Manchester’s homeless population and allocated £6m worth of affordable loans in Liverpool,” Frazer also noted.

Malware attacks on government up 75 per cent, report reveals

JESSICA FRANK-KEYES

MALWARE attacks on UK government ‘internet of things’ devices have risen by 75 per cent, a new report has just revealed.

Attempted attacks on the so-called internet of things (IoT) devices used by UK government facilities and departments jumped from 38,334 in 2021 to 67,324 in 2022, according to a report by US cybersecurity company Sonicwall.

Cyber experts described IoT malware attacks on sensors and cameras as “low-hanging fruit” for hackers and warned they came with risks of “access to sensitive data and extortion”.

Terry Greer-King, from Sonicwall, told City A.M.: “The proliferation of cyberattacks in 2022 shows that hackers are willing to target anything and everything, from major retailers to hospitals and crucially key infrastructure like the recent Royal Mail attack.”

CHRIS DORRELL

MIGRANTS arriving in the UK on small boats from across the Channel will be detained and removed “within weeks” under stringent new laws, which the home secretary admitted were likely to be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

Chip industry: We need more UK fiscal support

NICHOLAS EARL

THE SEMICONDUCTOR industry has urged the government to outline an appropriate strategy and commit taxpayer funding to prevent the UK losing out on investment to rival markets.

Richard Price, chief technology officer of Pragmatic, welcomed the inclusion of semiconductors as one of the five technologies named in the £370m science and technology framework announced on Monday. However, he told City A.M. the continued absence of the long-awaited semiconductor strategy is “felt across the industry”.

“Without a robust and clear plan, the UK risks slipping further behind in the global market while countries like the US continue to announce incentives and subsidies,” he explained.

In his view, pledges for further funding were essential for an industry boost, and the government should be looking to help generate demand for the industry.

Price said: “Improving visa access policy simply isn’t enough

Oil industry invests in low carbon projects to rake in green subsidies

NICHOLAS EARL

THE OIL industry is positioning itself to take advantage of billions of dollars of US tax credits established through the US Inflation Reduction Act.

to make a noticeable difference at this point. The government must provide an adequate level of investment to maintain a level playing field with other countries, as well as play a more active role in driving local demand.

“Adopting significant public sector procurement initiatives could help create revenue opportunities for UK semiconductor firms to work with organisations like the NHS, making it easier for innovative businesses to scale with strong domestic demand.”

Dr Simon Thomas, chief executive of semiconductor rival Paragraf, was pleased the government had announced a new framework, which could help address challenges with hiring expertise from overseas.

However, he told City A.M. the government was still not taking the industry seriously compared to other sectors.

He said: “While the government has recognised them as one of the five ‘Technologies of Tomorrow’, it is disappointing this industry has been relegated in the funding outlines.”

President Joe Biden’s flagship climate law, which was passed last year, aims to slash greenhouse gas emissions through supercharging

Mirror, Star and Express publisher sees profits hit by current climate

HOLLY WILLIAMS

THE PUBLISHER of the Daily Mirror and Express newspapers has revealed that annual profits tumbled by more than a quarter as it saw costs surge by 40 per cent and a drop in advertising demand. Reach, which also owns the Daily Star and a raft of regional titles across the UK, yesterday posted underlying pre-tax profits down by 28 per cent to £103.3m. Underlying operating profits dropped 27 per cent to £106.1m.

It said soaring inflation pushed up its operating costs by around £40m over the year.

Reach saw ad revenues plunge 15.9 per cent in the year to December 25, while circulation fell 1.7 per cent.

Reach said: “The current trading environment remains challenging Although input costs remain elevated, we are confident that our plan will enable us to deliver a five per cent to six per cent like-for-like reduction in our operating cost base for year 2022-23.” PA

clean energy industries.

This includes $391bn (£329bn) in tax cuts and subsidies directed at renewable power generation and the manufacturing of clean energy technology such as electric vehicle batteries and solar panels.

However, the law also includes generous incentives for a set of lower-carbon technologies and fuels.

This is where oil and gas firms are

hoping to take advantage, according to The Financial Times.

The companies are starting to plough cash into projects to capture and lock away carbon dioxide and produce low-emission hydrogen.

Exxon Mobil in December ramped up planned low-carbon spending by 15 per cent and outlined plans to invest $17bn in its low-carbon business through to the end of 2027.

Reach, publishers of The Daily Mirror and Express newspapers, has seen a big profit drop

Richard Price, Pragmatic: level playing field is needed

IN DEFENCE OF CAPITALISM Dr Rainer Zitelmann

THE TWO American computer programmers Brian Acton and Jan Koum invented Whatsapp and sold it to Facebook for $19bn in 2014. Two billion people around the world now use Whatsapp to send not only messages and files, but also to make free phone calls. Thanks to their idea, the two Whatsapp founders have amassed a combined fortune of $16bn. Has inequality increased because there are now two more multibillionaires? Certainly. But has it hurt anyone, except perhaps providers of expensive phone plans?

In China, thanks to the introduction of private property and features of the market economy, the number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen from 88 to less than one per cent since the early 1980s. At the same time, the number of rich people has increased more than in any other country. Today, only the USA has more billionaires than China. Inequality has gone up, poverty has gone down. Does anyone think people in China want to go back to life under Mao simply because people were more equal?

The fact that inequality is discussed more than poverty in the public debate is an expression of envy, even if the critics of inequality deny this motive. Envy is the most commonly denied, repressed and “masked” emotion. When envy becomes recognisable as such, or is openly communicated, the envious person automatically disqualifies their intentions. The anthropologist George M Foster asks why people can admit to feelings of guilt, shame, pride, greed and even anger without loss of self-esteem, but find it almost impossible to admit to feelings of envy. He offers this explanation: anyone who admits to themselves and others that they are envious is also admitting that they feel inferior. This is precisely why it is so difficult to acknowledge and accept one’s own envy.

How strongly the topic of inequality and the “gap between rich and poor” inflames the media – and not only them – was shown by the outstanding success of French economist Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the 21st Century. Piketty concedes that inequality decreased, not increased, during most of the twentieth century. Only from 1990 onwards has there been a negative development towards more inequality. The years that are particularly bad from Piketty’s point of view were actually the best for hundreds of millions of people all around the world. In the 20 years for which Piketty claims inequality increased (1990-2010), as many as 700m people were lifted out of extreme poverty.

Criticism of inequality in Britain, especially of high managerial salaries, also often works with false figures.

INEQUALITY OR POVERTY?

In the second of an eight-week series, German historian and sociologist Dr Rainer Zitelmann makes the case that capitalism is the answer to many of the world’s problems –not the cause. This week, he mythbusts the idea that free markets lead to growing inequality

Damien Knight and Harry McCreddie have shown that many statistics published in the media about executive pay inflation or about the development of the ratio between executive pay and that of ordinary employees are grossly flawed because those who make these calculations frequently lack even a rudimentary understanding of mathematical or statistical methodologies. For example, averages and medians are often confused, or no distinction is made between pay awards granted and actual pay awards, and so on. Taking the UK as an example, they explain how an actual increase in executive salaries of six per cent in a given period quickly becomes an increase of 23 per cent in the media, or an increase of two per cent becomes one of 49 per cent. Their con-

clusion: “Our view is that poor research and analysis has done more damage to social cohesion than the companies themselves have done by paying their top executives highly.”

The American economists Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund and John Early also make the same point in their book The Myth of American Inequality. They criticise the fact that transfer payments and taxes are ignored in US statistics on inequality. If the substantial taxes paid by high earners are not reflected in the statistics and the substantial transfer payments received by low earners are also largely disregarded, then this logically leads to the data on growing inequality being wrong. If taxes and transfers are included, then the relationship between the income of the lowest and the top

20 per cent of Americans is 4.0 to 1 rather than the 16.7 to 1 reported in the official census data.

So, inequality has not risen nearly as much as is often claimed. In any case, I believe that we should be less concerned with the issue of inequality and more concerned with the problem of poverty.

£ Dr Rainer Zitelmann’s new book, In Defence of Capitalism, has just been published and is widely available.

New rebuttals to tired arguments as old as capitalism itself

IMAGINE someone programmed a Twitter bot which, every time somebody describes a problem of some sort, responded with some variation of “I think you will find that the root cause of the problem is capitalism!”

That bot would easily get tens of thousands of likes, retweets and supportive replies every time. Anti-capitalist platitudes, no matter how lame and clichéd, almost always do. More, the bot would probably soon receive invitations to appear on Question Time and Good Morning Britain,

and to write for the Guardian and the Independent.

Anti-capitalism is extremely in vogue: it is the conventional wisdom of our age. This is

not limited to the social media bubble. A recent report by the Fraser Institute, Perspectives on Capitalism and Socialism, shows that one in three British Millennials believe that “the ideal economic system for the United Kingdom is communism”. This makes Dr Rainer Zitelmann’s latest book In Defence of Capitalism: Debunking the Myths all the more timely and relevant. Dr Zitelmann takes aim at ten of the trendiest anti-capitalist clichés, and rebuts them thoroughly. This includes some which are as old as capitalism itself (e.g.

“capitalism is responsible for hunger and poverty”), some recent additions (e.g. “capitalism is responsible for environmental destruction and climate change”), and some which have been added to the mix at various stages in between.

Dr Zitelmann is not preaching to the converted. He engages seriously with the arguments he is rebutting, and quotes their proponents at length, giving them a fair hearing. He neither misrepresents his opponents, nor does he pick on their weakest arguments.

You can read this book at more than one level. It is accessible enough for someone who is new to these arguments, since Dr Zitelmann does not expect extensive previous knowledge from his readers, and keeps economic and sociological jargon to a minimum. But a more advanced reader, who is already familiar with the basic arguments, will still find plenty of new information.

£ Dr Kristian Niemietz is head of political economy at the Institute of Economic Affairs

The fact that inequality is discussed more than poverty in the public debate is an expression of envy, even if the critics of inequality deny this motive

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US Federal rate future uncertainty pushes FTSE 100 into the red

London’s FTSE 100 was muted yesterday as investors sweated over whether Fed chair Jerome Powell’s warning that US interest rates will stay higher for longer means other central banks will follow.

The capital’s premier index closed 0.13 per cent lower at 7,919.49 points, while the domestically-focused midcap FTSE 250 index, which is more aligned with the health of the UK economy, skidded 0.54 per cent lower to below the 20,000 point mark.

Signals that central banks are likely to keep raising borrowing costs to tackle inflation have been popping up over the last month or so, reversing market hopes that the likes of the US Federal Reserve and Bank of England were nearing the

end of their respective campaigns.

“It had been a fairly subdued session for European markets for most of the day, chopping between positive and negative territory amidst a backdrop of caution ahead of today’s comments from Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, where he struck a hawkish tone in contrast to his last post FOMC press conference,” Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK, said.

Fed chair Jerome Powell burst investors’ hopes that the central bank is nearing the end of its aggressive rate hike campaign to tame inflation. He warned of a “higher than expected” rate peak and put steep increases of at least 50 basis points back on the table.

Industrial equipment firm Ashtead topped guidance yesterday as pre-tax profits hit $1.78bn in a trading update on the nine months of the year. Analysts at Peel Hunt said the outlook from the firm was “confident” as it hiked its revenue growth guidance for the year. Peel Hunt set a target price of 5,200p and say buy the stock.

Revolution Bar said sales were still trading down 9.4 per cent on pre-pandemic levels in its latest update. Analysts at Peel Hunt said the group’s focus is on work streams including new customer relationship platforms to optimise its 3.7m guest database. They tell investors to buy and slap the stock with a target price of 20p.

Nothing to Pret about: Chain retires blended drinks but has it hit its brand?

ON 21 February, Pret A Manger announced that it was phasing out blended drinks such as smoothies, frappes, and milkshakes in favour of iced drinks. According to The Mirror, it’s a move that dealt “a blow to customers”, with some complaining that it devalues their £25-amonth subscription on social media. But data from YouGov BrandIndex UK suggests that the public aren’t overly fussed. Looking at 20 February – the day before Pret announced the changes – and 5 March shows that, while Buzz scores (which track whether consumers have heard anything positive or negative about a brand in the past fortnight) saw a slight dip of 2.2 points (halving from

3.4 to 1.2), other measures didn’t see much more in terms of movement. Impression, for example, which measures overall sentiment, went from 16.0 to 16.6 over this period (dipping to 10.2 on 27 February but quickly rebounding). It might be natural to assume that Value for Money scores would decline, given that blended drinks will no longer be available at Pret locations nationwide, but

they actually saw an increase, jumping from -5.0 to -1.3 (+3.7). Purchase Intent declined from 6.6 to 6.0 (-0.6) and Recommendations were nudged down by nearly a point from 12.1 to 11.2 (-0.9), but overall the impact appears to have been minimal. It may well have been mitigated by the good headlines Pret is receiving for giving its staff a pay rise.

But while removing the items may have been reported as a problem for customers, the general impact on Pret’s public perception appears to be negligible. Index scores, which measure overall brand health, went from 12.0 to 12.8 (+0.8), while customer satisfaction metrics saw negligible movement (falling -0.2 points from 16.6 to 16.4). If making milkshakes, smooth-

add

up to an easy win for the chain.

STANDING UP FOR BUSINESS

NO ESCAPE FROM COLD SNAP AS MARKETS FEEL THE CHILL “Whilst Wall Street shivered London markets also felt the chill coming across the Atlantic, but the UK is likely to be more focused on the temperature outside than on the trading floor. ”

DANNI HEWSON, AJ BELL

Stephan Shakespeare

OPINION

EDITED BY SASCHA O’SULLIVAN

Twitter’s doom loop will banish us to even more politically partisan corners

Josh Williams

IN aviation, they call it a “death spiral”. A pilot loses their ability to judge direction and altitude, and with each wrong move they draw their plane into a tighter downward spiral. Once entered, there is no escape.

The most common cause, to use another term that has entered popular parlance, is that the pilot is “flying by the seat of their pants”. This is to say they are flying without maps, a plan and reference to vital information on their dashboard. Instead, they rely, disastrously, on observation and instinct.

With only one name, the metaphor writes itself: Elon Musk. The eccentric billionaire’s Twitter takeover meets every condition of seat of the pants flying.

During the on-again, off-again deal, Musk set a share price that was at least in part a joke. The takeover price was $54.20. Rather than a carefully calculated evaluation of future earnings, the last three digits refer to online slang for cannabis.

After attempting to renege on the deal, Musk only completed his acquisition under the threat of legal action. Seeking cash to fund his extravagant folly, Musk loaded $13bn of corporate debt onto Twitter. In the process, he saddled the company with an annual interest payment of $1.5bn.

In 2021, before Musk arrived, Twitter made a loss of $221m. His takeover saw revenues plunge further still. Considering the platform toxic, advertisers are abandoning it. Revenues were down 40 per cent in December last year. As earnings plunge and costs rise, Musk has been forced to take evasive action, firing great swathes of his staff.

Even loyal deputies, like Esther Crawford, who publicly illustrated her commitment by posting a photo of sleeping at the office, have been cast out. Crawford had been leading Twitter Blue, the paid subscription service that Musk had hailed as Twitter’s saviour. This new service is said to be bringing in an additional $27.8m to the company.

That figure is just 3 per cent of Twitter’s annual interest payment.

A BBC Panorama documentary on Monday night showed the true cost of these sackings. Twitter staff revealed

to the film-makers that they are now unable to police trolling and hate on the platform. Data, provided by academics to the BBC, suggests that trolling and harassment is indeed rising.

This is the archetypal death spiral. Each attempt to correct a problem only makes it greater. Companies now consider Twitter so toxic, they are pulling their advertising. To reduce costs in response, Twitter sacks its employees, and the platform grows more toxic. More advertising disappears, and the doom loop tightens.

With Musk at the controls, schadenfreude - the pleasure in another’s failure - is a natural response. We

Toblerone doesn’t need the Matterhorn to scale the heights of chocolatier success

IN THE early twentieth century, the German sociologist Max Weber described three kinds of power in society. There is traditional power, passed through generations, such as a monarchy; bureaucratic power based on adherence to rules, such as the law, and charismatic power which pertains to the ability to influence based on the full merits of the source itself. John F Kennedy, for example, exhibited charismatic power. As does Elon Musk, whether you love him or loathe him. A truly great leader may benefit from all three.

The business of design is almost exclusively about the deployment of charismatic power. And so we meet the latest saga between Toblerone and the Matterhorn. The image has been an icon for the chocolate label since 1908, but Toblerone will now no longer be able to use the image because much of its manufacturing has left Swiss shores.

It’s a familiar position for many: Champagne must be from Cham-

Jim Prior

pagne, Parma ham from Parma, and Cornish pasties never from Devon. It’s not necessarily unfair, either. To continue to use the image suggests some affiliation with Switzerland. But under Switzerland’s “Swissness” laws, 80 per cent of raw materials for food must be sourced from the country to use the label, or 100 per cent for milk or dairy products. Toblerone, owned by US-multinational Mondelez since 2012, will now boast of being “established in Switzerland” instead of “from Switzerland”.

Toblerone does have a distinct design, which has separated it from its chocolate competitors. But the power

of it doesn’t rest in the idiosyncrasies of the mountain on the package and the new plans for a generic mountain are unlikely to dent its influence. It has always deployed charismatic power as a marketing tool, and now must accept the co-existence of traditional and bureaucratic power.

Toblerone has weathered several storms. After Mondelez reduced the size of the peaks of its cocoa pyramids, sales continued to climb. So in commercial terms, the Matterhorn isn’t a make or break. The charismatic power of the Toblerone brand identity is not the topography of the mountain. It’s the colour and summit-conquering confidence of the typography contrasted against the pack. It’s the shape of the chocolate and the box. And it’s the cleverly concealed face of the bear hidden in the mountain side that is always there, whether you acknowledge that you’ve seen it or not. These features are where the charisma lies. A rational comparison of the mountain on the box to a real-world mountain that

few people would even recognise, really doesn’t matter a jot.

In fact, its exclusion from the “Swissness” rules may even be liberating: freed from a graphic tradition – ironically by bureaucracy – perhaps Toblerone can extend its line of sight toward even more ambitious ideas. So long as Mondelez keep their focus on charismatic design, the commercial future of Toblerone will be just fine.

In all honesty, it has been a storm in a teacup in the truest sense of the phrase. It’s true, Swiss products can command a higher price. But Toblerone has the benefit of legacy, even if it is being forced to give up a label.

The responsibility of design in a case of change is not just to adjust, but to add power and value. I don’t worry about Toblerone’s mountain not being the Matterhorn, so long as their new design landscape has the Weberian charisma this iconic brand deserves.

£ Jim Prior is chair of Design Bridge and Partners

shouldn’t, however, allow ourselves to fall for it.

For all its flaws, Twitter adds something important to the world. For all the talk of toxicity, it is more often a place of enjoyable inanity. Twitter’s users are, quite often, extremely funny, bringing a little joy to a humdrum day.

More seriously though, Twitter has become a place of public record. Twitter offers little in the way of considered analysis, but it has added to our understanding of the world. The war in Ukraine, the earthquake in Turkey, our experience of Covid-19. While cranks and trolls have spread disinformation on each, more often Twitter has cast light in on the otherwise unknown.

For all the fears of “echo chambers”, where Twitter users hear only from those they already agree with, the evidence suggests the opposite. Twitter more often breaks a bubble than forms one, connecting those with different opinions more in their online lives than in their offline ones. As such, Twitter has become a public marketplace, often rambunctious, but also drawing together those who disagree. Today, it is hard to see how Twitter pulls out of its downward spiral. Each move it makes seems likely only to bring its demise a little closer. Should that happen, when confronting the wreckage, we will be forced to ask: what next? If the answer is a world that splits between platforms for the right and left, for one part of the world and not another, we will be worse off for Twitter’s demise.

£ Josh Williams is a columnist at CityAM and deputy director of Labour Together

I’M ON WHATSAPP, GET ME OUT OF HERE!

Elon Musk has claimed Twitter Blue is bringing in an extra $27.8m

Matt Hancock has taught us many things: not to snog your colleague, not to break lockdown rules and not to eat a fish eye taco. Now the former Health Sec’s leaked lockdown whatsapps have also taught MPs to use the auto delete function

Twitter is in the archetypal death spiral as each attempt to fix it only makes it worse

WE WANT TO HEAR YOUR VIEWS

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Science for the everyman

[Re: Donelan: Tech success must make Brits’ lives better, yesterday]

This is exactly the type of initiative the healthcare industry in particular needs. With an ageing population, post-Covid backlogs, and staff resignations, Britain needs an innovation-first mindset to ensure that our investments in datadriven, digital healthcare can effectively improve patient outcomes and enhance the well-being of the nation.

Past funding has been too broad and dispersed without clear objectives. We must focus our resources on specific areas where we can fine-tune solutions and quantify their impact on society. This requires emulating the success of targeted investments, such as the £50m funding granted to the National Pathology Imaging Co-Operative (NPIC)

in 2019 through the 'Data to Early Diagnosis and Precision Medicine' strand of the Government's Industry Strategy Challenge Fund. That investment alone is helping digitise up to 2.3m scans per year, making it easier for clinicians to use AI to optimise time to diagnosis, enable preventative care, more effectively collaborate with other healthcare professionals and labs, regardless of location, and – ultimately – saving lives. This funding makes it possible to replicate this success in other areas of healthcare, including A&E and biomedicine. But we must ensure that our investments in science and technology are targeted and our research is conducted within specific parameters to be effective and tangibly benefit society. By doing so, we can bring concrete benefits to patient outcomes, healthcare delivery, and society as a whole.

David Lozdan, Exponential-e

EUR-NO STAR Trains to Paris hit by a second day of strikes in France

We should be concerned about privacy - but we still need to introduce digital IDs

Rosie Beacon

PUBLIC debates in the UK on proof of identity have always been fraught with hostility. Enter digital identity, add in the unknown unknowns of technology, the concerns about excessive data collection that comes with it and the civil liberties and these debates are gaining a new lease of life. While there are adamant opponents of digital identity, it does also have its loyal advocates. It’s intrinsically efficient and slick when it works well, which it often does. It scales easily, and could enable a new age of efficient, digitally enabled services – whether that’s energy payments being delivered seamlessly or stopping criminals from opening multiple bank accounts under different identities to execute fraud.

On the checklist of things public policies should achieve, it ticks a lot of them – its cost relative to impact is fairly impressive.

However, the arguments against state-imposed ID systems are well known: data will be hacked, leaked or misused; citizens will have to share sensitive personal information with every man and their dog; and the system will be used to collect and share new information about citizens, such as location data, with government bodies or private companies.

EXPLAINER-IN-BRIEF: WILL SUELLA BRAVERMAN REALLY STOP THE BOATS?

Home secretary Suella Braverman admitted laws to prevent almost all illegal immigrants from settling in the UK would “push the boundaries” of our international obligations. But the strength of the new legislation will be a legal fight. That Braverman felt the need to stress the involvement of “some of the finest legal minds” in drawing up the laws is a testament to the fact it will be the real courts – and not the one of public opinion – which will be the test of the bill. Alongside the legislation,

Braverman published a statement - using a little know lawn called 19b - which seeks to disapply parts of the European Convention on Human Rights which might threaten the force of the rules.

Last June, the Strasbourg court had stopped a flight full of migrants bound for Rwanda.

Previously, the existence of continued legal challenges to decisions by the Home Office meant migrants were willing to take a chance. It put the Home Sec at odds with so called “lefty lawyers”.

Unsurprisingly, given my previous columns, I fall into the pro digital identity school of thought, but I don’t think the concerns in and of themselves are unreasonable. Dismissing them without acknowledging them does little to further the argument. Equally, these concerns, while valid, are not enough of a reason to not innovate and improve services. Instead, they should motivate the government to ensure they have robust privacy and security systems - a fairly basic expectation in an already digital world. For absolute clarity, digital identity is not merely a digital version of an identity card. It can be if it is designed to be, but that is not its sole purpose. And even if it was, the government remains the original issuers and source of truth for most official identity documents anyway. Digital identity is more a type of infrastructure than it is an ID card – connecting public services from the NHS to HMRC together and enabling them to work better.

These problems have rarely materialised in other countries, if at all – and it is used in pretty much every European country as well as Canada and Australia. Digital identity is actually a well established policy now and so these problems have largely been designed out of the system. Estonia’s digital identity is “self sovereign”, in that citizens choose who to share specific ID attributes with (like age or postcode) but can also see which entity has accessed information about them without consent.

In fact, it’s increasingly easy to see digital identity as the more secure option. Australia is considering rolling out digital identity for private sector use following a hack and data leak from Optus, a telecoms company, on the basis that digital identity would prevent the need for citizens to provide sensitive data multiple times to multiple entities.

Similarly in the UK it is the willingness to share data for very specific purposes that makes us need digital identity more. Polling from the Tony Blair Institute in 2021 found that 58 per cent of respondents thought it was

acceptable for their personal data to be collected for a Covid passport, contrasted with 32 per cent who trust government agencies with their data.

This has led to a chaotic data landscape across government, and actually ended up undermining how governments use data to improve public services. If information is fragmented in different databases, joining up that data to a coherent whole remains impossible, so someone looking to get the service they need has to start from scratch with each authority.

Digital identity is quickly becoming an obvious opportunity for any radical but sensible policymaker. As ever, implementation requires thought and painstaking care, but there are enough examples out there to show us how to minimise the risks and maximise the benefits. If in ten or twenty years’ time people have a more positive experience of public services, save time nearly every day and are protected from fraud, they may well ask why we didn’t get our IDs sooner.

£ Rosie Beacon is a senior analyst at the Tony Blair Institute

A majority of Brits were happy handing over personal data during the pandemic

Eurostar will run another day of revised timetable as French transport workers continue to strike today. The rail unions in France have called for ‘rolling strikes’ to protest plans to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62.

USE YOUR ISA ALLOWANCE TO INVEST AGAINST THE CHANCELLOR’S ‘BUDGET RAID’ ON SAVINGS

What are your options if you plan to use your ISA to buy stocks and shares? Samantha Downes explores the different assets and explain why it’s more important than

More taxpayers than ever are falling into the higher rate tax bracket of 40 per cent.

According to Bestinvest at least 5.5 million will pay the 40 per cent rate this tax year, an increase of 15 per cent compared to last year.

Add in inflation and frozen personal tax thresholds and it is more important than ever that savers use their taxfree Individual account savings allowance (ISA).

Jason Hollands, managing director of Bestinvest said savers and investors face a “looming pincer movement” as the amount of dividend income that can be received tax-free outside of Isa and pensions is set to be halved in the new tax year, from £2,000 currently to £1,000; it will then be reduced to a meagre £500 from April 2024.

The amount of capital gains that can be crystallised tax-free each year also faces a cut with the annual exemption being slashed from £12,300 this taxyear to £6,000 on 6 April, and then a further halving to £3,000 by April 2024.

Hollands added: “In his Autumn Statement, the Chancellor set out plans for a Viking-like raid on people’s savings and investments and so it has never been more important for people to make use of the tax-free allowances available to them, to shelter what they have worked hard for from future taxes. In this respect, ISAs and pen-

sions are the two key pillars of tax-free long-term savings in the UK.

Unused pensions allowance can be carried back but ISA allowances are very much ‘use or lose it’.

“If you don’t use your 2022/3 ISA allowance by midnight on 5 April, it will be lost for good – so the clock really is ticking.”

Savers who want to invest in the stock market are being advised to spend time reviewing how they can use their allowance across different asset classes, regions and investment styles.

Hollands said: “In recent years, many DIY investors rode the crest of the ‘growth stock’ wave, investing heavily in global and US equity funds with high exposure to sectors like technology and communications services. At the same time, markets with a skew to more traditional sectors and industries, and dividend generating companies – like the UK – have been widely shunned. And bonds have also been an asset class that have been off the radar for several years when interest rates and bond yields were at ultra-low levels. However, the investment environment has changed dramatically over the last year and so it is time to reassess.”

UK EQUITIES - A BARGAIN?

Retail investors have been ditching UK equity funds as fears of recession haunt the UK economy. But for bar-

gain hunters now may be a good time to look at using their ISA allowance to invest in British companies listed on London markets.

Hollands said low valuations, attractive dividend yields and the UK market’s exposure to energy and commodities mean some UK companies are worth considering.

“Investors should not confuse the UK stock market with the domestic economy as the largest UK publicly listed companies – those in the FTSE 100 –generate around 79 per cent of their revenues outside of the UK, and have more exposure to the US, or indeed Asia, than they do to the UK economy.

“Even the more domestically exposed medium-sized companies that are listed on the London Stock Exchange earn more than half of their revenues internationally,” Hollands told City A.M. this week.

Blue chip UK shares are trading at prices of 10.6 times their forecast earnings for the next 12-months.

This compares to global equities, which are trading on price/earnings ratio of 15.9 times.

While UK shares trade at a hefty 33 per cent discount compared to global equities, the market offers investors a circa 4 per cent dividend yield which is attractive compared to global equities (2.3 per cent dividend yield) and which is also higher than that on UK government bonds (3.8 per cent on 10year gilts).”

GROWTH OR INCOME?

For growth seekers, those who don’t need to draw a monthly or annual income, then Hollands points out the Artemis UK Select and Liontrust UK Growth funds, as well as the Fidelity Index UK fund may be worth a look.

“The Liontrust fund targets large and medium-sized UK companies with strong pricing power and qualities that are hard for competitors to replicate which makes them resilient across the economic cycle.”

He added that the Artemis UK Select fund was a portfolio of ‘best ideas’ which seeks out undervalued companies with re-rating potential.

The Fidelity Index UK is an index tracker which provides exposure to the largest companies with very low annual costs of 0.06 per cent on the P share class.

For income seekers, Bestinvest highlights the BlackRock UK Income fund, which is invested in large, dividendgenerating UK companies, such as AstraZeneca, Shell and RELX, as well as two investment trusts: Murray Income Trust and Temple Bar Investment Trust.

“Murray Income Trust, which is celebrating its 100th birthday this year, invests mainly in large and medium sized companies with attractive valuations and robust earnings potentialits shares can be snapped up at a 6 per cent discount to the underlying net asset value of the portfolio currently.

The investment environment has changed dramatically so it’s time to reassess

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 17

ASIA AND EMERGING MARKETS BOOSTED AS CHINA’S ECONOMY RECOVERS FROM COVID

Hollands points out the last couple of years have been particularly tough ones for investors in emerging markets, dragged down in large part by the performance of China – the largest country constituent of Asian and Emerging Market benchmarks.

“While a number of concerns about China haven’t gone away – including its deteriorating relationship with the West –the abrupt ditching of China’s lockdown approach in December, following mass demonstrations, has led to renewed investor optimism to-

wards China and the wider Asia and Emerging Market regions on the back of this.”

“It is estimated that over the last few years of harsh restrictions, the Chinese population have amassed 5.7 trillion Yuan (£690bn) of excess savings, much of which is expected to come pouring back into goods and services as we saw in other countries when they reopened their economies.”

Funds on Bestinvest’s top-rated list include Aubrey Global Emerging Market Opportunities, which is focused on the rise of the emerging market consumer and currently has 41 per cent in Indian and 30 per cent in Chinese companies; FSSA Asia Focus, which has 26 per cent in India and 22

per cent in China. Investment trust fans might consider Templeton Emerging Markets Investment Trust, which has 29 per cent exposure to China and is trading at a 13 per cent discount to NAV.

BONDS ARE BACK

Bonds have traditionally been a mainstay for more cautious investors who are seeking a combination of reliable income and a buffer against the performance of more volatile equities.

“However, in recent years, they had fallen off the radar of many investors due to very low yields as a result of central bank bond-buying stimulus programmes that were designed to keep borrowing costs extremely low.”

Keep investing in

Rises in interest rates and the ending of the bond-buying spree by central banks, hitting bond prices hard as both equity and bond markets declined in tandem .

“However, this has now created a much more favourable environment for investors contemplating adding bonds to their ISAs,” said Hollands. He offered a caveat by cautioning that “investors should however be a little wary of ‘high-yield bonds’ bonds – those issued by companies with weak or no credit ratings, as there could be a rise in companies unable to repay their debts in full, or on time, or needing to skip interest payments if economies slip into recession, so focus on bond funds that primarily target high-quality issuers”.

What to choose: TwentyFour Corporate Bond fund, yielding 3.6 per cent is, managed by TwentyFour Asset Management and fund invests primarily invests in investment grade bonds (those issued by high quality, financially robust companies). An alternative choice is the Invesco Tactical Bond fund, currently yielding 3.6 per cent, which has

a wide and flexible ‘strategic bond’ remit to invest in government and corporate bonds from across the globe.

WHAT ABOUT PROPERTY?

Uma Rajah, chief executive of property investment specialist CapitalRise, urged savers to really get to know the different types of ISA and the investments that they can potentially include.

There are four different types of ISAs – Cash ISAs, Stocks and Shares ISAs, Lifetime ISAs, and Innovative Finance ISAs (IFISAs).

“It is important that you research each of these, so you understand which type best suits your personal needs. One type worth considering is the IFISA, the variety that is offered by CapitalRise. Introduced in 2016, the IFISA is a tax wrapper for money invested in certain alternative investments.

“With these types of ISA funds may be invested in a loan to a developer, for example, who is looking to fund new prime property projects in areas such as Mayfair or Chelsea.”

A FOUR-STEP GUIDE TO YOUR ISA

1: Use your Isa personal tax allowance. ISAs provide a personal tax-free allowance of up to £20,000 per tax year – this can be split between different ISA types or put all into one. You do not need to pay income tax, tax on dividends, or capital gains tax on funds in an ISA, potentially saving you a lot of money. If you can afford to do so, you should aim to max out your tax-free ISA allowance each year, because whatever is not used is lost.

2: It’s flexible and easy to open different types of ISAs, just so long as you remember the rules and restrictions. There are some guidelines that must be considered when managing investments. One is that you are restricted in the number of new ISAs you are permitted to open each tax year. Currently, you can open one of each ISA type per year; the £20,000 personal tax allowance can be divided between ISAs or all put into one product. For example, you can open a new IFISA, Cash ISA, Stocks and Shares ISA, and a Lifetime ISA in a given

year, but you are not able to open more than one of each type.

3: Stay organised with your accounts. You may find keeping track of your ISAs difficult – in fact, it is not uncommon to forget about an ISA you might have opened years ago. Now is the perfect time to dig through your records, locate where your money is, and assess whether it can be put to better use elsewhere.

4: You can move your ISA funds as much as you like, at any time, without it affecting your current tax year allowance. If you already have an ISA, an ISA transfer is a process that lets you move money you have built up in ISAs over previous tax years to a new provider, while retaining its tax-free benefits. Moving existing funds around does not impact the present tax year’s allowance, either. A common mistake to make is to not actively manage your ISA – instead, you should regularly monitor whether making a transfer would be worthwhile.

LIFE&STYLE

WINE-DOWN WEDNESDAY

When attending a wine event, it is not uncommon to be met with a sea of men in grey and blue suits. The occasional woman is like a beacon, nodding in solidarity across the room. Wine may more often be consumed by women yet the industry itself can feel very male. There are, of course, many talented women working in wine, yet one can still hear that unfortunate, unhelpful (and untrue) assumption that women, having traditionally held fewer seats at the table, are nastily competitive towards each other. This isn’t my experience at all, something I was reminded of recently at Hallgarten & Novum Wine’s “A Taste of South Africa” dinner, where I witnessed what can only be described as a ‘love-in’ between two female winemakers, both at the peak of their game.

Elizma Visser, winemaker for Olifantsberg and winner of South Africa’s Young Winemaker of the Year 2021 Award, described how she first heard of Lismore’s Samantha O’Keefe.

“I was told, there’s this lady who makes the best Viognier in South Africa” said Visser. “And she still does”. The unashamedly vocal support of each other was mutual with no whiff of competition over their individual businesses. “She’s the first person I call when something’s wrong, and the first person I call when something’s right,” agreed O’Keefe.

This kind of solidarity is key at the other end of the industry too. In fine

WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

MARIMAR ESTATE, MAS CAVALLS PINOT NOIR 2017

£38.40 VINVM

The dream made reality of the fabulous Marimar Torres, this Pinot Noir is silky, voluptuous, and also a little wild. An immediate hit at any dinner table this is a red wine of class, complexity and character, much like the founder herself.

Wine without the snobbery, by Libby

Brodie

THE WONDERFUL WOMEN IN WINE

wine investment circles, where creating relationships is so important, doors are not always as open to women.

“Women get tested a lot,” says collector Queena Wong. “It’s not always friendly and it’s taken me a few years to break into some significant circles”. This led Wong to set up Curious Vines, a network for women with a passion for wine, to foster community, confidence, and ultimately create a more balanced industry.

When it comes to buying wine, impressive women winemakers abound across the globe, from Louisa Rose, who forged Australian Viognier’s identity at Yalumba, to California’s Marimar Torres, who proved to her doubtful father she could make wine, set up the hugely successful Marimar Estate and still gets up to give 2am pep talks and cook the harvest workers’ 6am breakfast.

Let us not forget the prolific Provence style of rosé was invented by Régine Sumeire in the 1980s while the men of the region scoffed that no one would want to drink rosé so pale a pink.

It’s a style currently being championed on our own shores by Elisha Cannon of award-winning rosé brand FOLC. Only five per cent of the Chef du Cave of Champagne are female, so AYALA’s Caroline Latrive is a real pioneer in the area, launching three Brut Cuvées, with new blends to highlight her precise, elegant style and love of Chardonnay. This International Women’s Day let’s celebrate and support women in wine with some savvy sipping.

CAMBRIA KATHERINE’S VINEYARD CHARDONNAY 2019

£27.99

MAJESTIC

Some serious feminist credentials with an all-female team headed by Barbara Jackson and named for one of her daughters. Californian sunshine and cooling ocean breezes brings out the best from the 50-year-old vines creating a deliciously complex and fresh wine.

LISMORE ESTATE RESERVE VIOGNIER 2021 £49.95

HANDFORD WINES

Arguably the best viognier coming out of South Africa. This elegant wine from renowned winemaker Samantha O’Keefe is flooded with sunshine warmed fruit and fresh spring blossoms. An absolute treat from start to finish.

TEXTURA DA ESTRELA, DĀO 2018

£18.68

JUSTERINI & BROOKS

A blend of local grapes from vines up to 60 years old, this complex and satisfying red wine is expertly made by Mariana Salvador from the slopes of Portugal’s Serra da Estrela. Surprisingly refined, this first vintage from the project shows it is one to watch.

AYALA LE BLANC DE

BLANCS 2015 £69.99

MAJESTIC

Known a “baby bolly” since Bollinger bought the house in 2005, this is a precise and refined champagne showcasing winemaker Caroline Latrive’s love of, and skill with, Chardonnay. Made using only Grand Cru grapes, this stunning wine is a class act.

AGlass of wine with: Charlotte Page, head sommelier at Joël Robuchon International

Recruiting the all-female team of Sommeliers at Mayfair’s glamorous fine-dining destination Le Comptoir Robuchon, and head of wine for Joël Robuchon International, Charlotte Page is the perfect drinking partner with whom to celebrate International Womens Day.

WHAT GOT YOU INTO WINE?

Not a “what” but a “who”. I was preparing to start a Master’s in HR in luxury hotels, but met Christian Stévanin, the Sommelier teacher at L’Ecole Hôtelière de Dinard and decided to put my studies on hold for a

year to study wines…

TELL US ABOUT YOUR ALLFEMALE SOMMELIER TEAM

I never intended to recruit a woman only team, they simply happened to be the best candidates. Noemie Favrat holds all the qualities I’m looking for in a head somm: passion, knowledge, kindness, and fun. Our company masters modern empowerment. It has not been easy raising kids while working crazy hours, there was a lot of judgement.

But why should we quit a job we are good at? Today, I’m in the position where I can help women achieve their professional

goals without neglecting their private life. Robuchon International is a place where women can grow.

FAVOURITE WINE ON THE LIST?

It is more about the dish and occasion but I would go with Cornas Reynard Thierry Allemand 1999.

FAVOURITE PAIRING AT THE RESTAURANT?

One of the most iconic by Robuchon: Langoustine ravioli with foie gras sauce. I still cannot find anything that competes with it and Les Argilliers Champagne by Guillaume Selosse.

FAVOURITE WINE BAR?

I love many places in London: 10 Cases, La Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels, Noble Rot…

BEST PLACE FOR A LATE-NIGHT DRINK?

Stereo in Covent Garden is amazing. Live music, food, great wine selection and the best bartenders in town.

BEST THING ABOUT YOUR JOB?

All the amazing people you meet, the winemakers, the chefs, and the amazing places you visit. This really is a dream job.

This International Women’s Day we take a look at some of the women helping to revolutionise the industry –not to mention making some of the most deliciously drinkable bottles out there

Elisha Cannon of award-winning rosé brand FOLC

THE WOMEN ESCAPING POVERTY BY STARTING A BUSINESS

Opportunity International is helping hundreds of thousands of women throughout the Global South.

This International Women’s Day we celebrate their success stories

Throughout the Global South, Opportunity International is helping underserved communities work their way out of poverty – not through handouts but by providing access to credit and education in financial literacy.

With the majority of its work focusing on women, International Women’s Day feels like the ideal time to celebrate some of the amazing people the charity has helped go from poverty to become successful business owners.

Opportunity International works by facilitating microfinance to those usually unserved by banks, as well as helping to sustain those businesses. They work with local partners, who work with projects in the long-term as well as offering insight into communities.

The charity says more than 60 per cent of its clients are women, who often face more barriers to starting a business as they are less likely to have access to the collateral or assets required for traditional credit. It’s also been shown that repayment rates are better when lending to women and that their businesses are more likely to have benefits for an entire family.

The relationship with Opportunity International gives women the skills and confidence to not only start a business, but grow it, from expanding their operations to negotiating more effectively with the next stage of the value chain.

“There is so much potential in women in the Global South,” says CEO Nana Francois. “We have ambitions to help at least another 100,000 women, be that through access to financial literacy training, or a loan of as little as £50. We would love the readers of City A.M. to contribute and help us however they can – it’s not all doom and gloom and a little help can go a long way.

“Opportunity International is an amazing confluence of expertise –we’re not just relying on goodwill, we have a knowledge of how to create financial literacy, how to create the right kinds of products for underserved populations, how to help more conventional banks and financial institutions understand what you might need in order to help a refugee with no access to collateral. We’re grounded in solid knowledge and skill in microfinance.

“The other attraction is really about the self-help model – giving a hand-up not a hand-out. It’s about helping people to sustain themselves and their community.”

So while the journeys undertaken by many of the clients Opportunity International works with are undeniably harrowing, we wanted to take the chance to celebrate these amazing success stories. Below are three clients who have turned around not only their own lives but the lives of their family and community by starting successful businesses.

£ To find out more about Opportunity International visit opportunity.org.uk

SEPHORA, HYGIENE PRODUCT ENTREPRENEUR

Sephora is 19 years old and from

Congo, North Kivu. She fled to Nakivale in 2017 after her uncle was murdered and her father was stabbed. She was able to partner with Opportunity International through Unleashed, a refugee-led organisation. She went through a programme of business training, learning about savings, loans, management and other necessary skills. She then started her business, which she called Her Pride. Her Pride Cream is made out of organic materials and is used to help prevent vaginal infections, allowing women to have a safe cycle and to reduce pain through their menstrual cycle. It enables girls to go to school and sit for a couple of hours while they study, instead of staying home in pain.

The products support women in the refugee settlement, where there is a

lack of proper sanitation or hygiene.

Sephora now has a source of income and can help her family, including sending her siblings to school. The business has helped 200-300 adolescent girls and women within the community and Sephora is now a source of inspiration to other girls and women. She says she would now like to create more job opportunities for pregnant teenage girls.

JANET, FARMER AND SCHOOL FOUNDER

Janet thought it was impossible to start her own business. Today she owns two. She first became a smallholder farmer, producing coffee, maize and beans. This provides a steady income for Janet, her husband and her two children.

She also has a teaching certificate

and keen interest in education. She thought she would need to move to a big city but our training motivated her to establish her second business, a local nursery school. She took out a loan and received financial training from Opportunity International to start it up.

JOLLY, HAIRDRESSER

Jolly is a single mother who used to struggle to pay her children’s school fees. On receiving a loan through Opportunity International, she was able to buy equipment such as a chair, cabinet and dryer to set up her own hair salon.

Seven years on, the business is thriving and she now owns her own home. All of her four children attend school, and she also employs one other person.

Clockwise from main: Schoolchildren at one of Opportunity International’s projects; Sephora with her feminine hygiene product; members of a trust group in Bugalobi market, Kampala; hair salon started by Jolly

THE PUNTER

Wally Pyrah previews today’s card from Happy Valley Fownes set to Rocket back to Winning ways

BANK on ‘King of the Valley’, trainer Caspar Fownes, to get back into the winning groove when he sends a handful of raiders to Happy Valley today.

While trainers Ricky Yiu, with 19 winners since the beginning of the year, and more recently, back-to-form David Hayes – with winning doubles at the Valley and Sha Tin last week – have been grabbing the headlines, Fownes has suffered a frustrating period.

Just three wins and 15 places in the last month will have done little to improve Fownes’ demeanour, especially while overseeing an unsuccessful

raid with frustrating galloper Senor Toba in Doha and Dubai.

Fownes, however, is always likely to bounce back to form, especially at his favourite track, where he has saddled 19 of his 28 winners this season.

With his once go-to jockey Joao Moreira now out of the equation, Fownes has built up a good relationship with star-pilot Hugh Bowman.

The combination has struck three times and made the frame on nine occasions from just 21 rides, suggesting when the stable fancy one of their gallopers, the former LONGINES World’s Best Jockey is the man to go for.

Fownes and Bowman team-up three

times on the nine-race programme, starting with Kokushi Musou who has a major chance in the opener, division one of the Leighton Handicap (10.45am) over six furlongs.

This looks a tough contest on paper though, with last-start winners Divine Era and Son Pak Fu in opposition, and Durham Star back near his last winning mark.

More attractive propositions come later on the card, when Bowman takes over from Luke Ferraris aboard WINNING ICEY, who bids to put behind him a series of unlucky and narrow defeats, in division two of the Russell Handicap (2.15pm) over six furlongs.

This son of Hinchinbrook has twice dashed too late over the course and distance in the past month, after getting too far back in the early stages, from either awkward or wide draws.

This time with a positive draw in stall four in his favour, he should be positioned in midfield from the off and then make his impressive trademark finishing kick count in the closing stages.

Bowman once again teams up with hugely talented but unpredictable ROCKET SPADE, who is given one last throw of the dice, in the Percival Handicap (1.15pm) over nine furlongs.

This former New Zealand Derby win-

ner has recently had his supporters tearing their hair out in frustration, after swooping too late over the extended mile in January, and then touched off on the post by rival Escape Route over the course and distance last month. His outside draw is of no consequence as he has to be ridden quietly at the back, and if Bowman can safely navigate an untroubled passage, he will be hard to beat.

POINTERS

Rocket Spade 1.15pm Happy Valley Winning Icey 2.15pm Happy Valley

Me Tsui and Vincent Ho to be blown away by Wind Speeder

TAKE a chance on veteran trainer Me Tsui saddling a welcome winner with WIND SPEEDER in the Craigengower Cricket Club Challenge Cup Handicap (12.45pm) over six furlongs.

The 62-year-old handler hasn’t found life easy this season, with only a modest five winners to his name, and his stable capacity under half-full.

Tsui however, is renowned for getting the best out of even the most average performers, and looks to have found an ideal opportunity for his Australian-bred five-year-old to record his second win at Happy Valley.

The son of Written Tycoon has taken plenty of time to reach his peak this season, but posted an encouraging effort when finishing

fast to lose by a narrow margin to See U Again three weeks ago, and on that form has an outstanding chance.

Jockey Vincent Ho, who rode him on that occasion, has a good record on the gelding, with a win and two places from five rides, and stays loyal to the five-year-old.

A low draw number in stall five is another plus to his chances, and he

finds himself racing just a couple of points above his last winning mark.

Ho, who performs better than anyone at the city track, bar Zac Purton, has a full-book of rides on the nine-race card, and his mounts are always worth close scrutiny.

Keep an eye on his mount and bottom-weight Brave Star in the highly competitive division one of the Russell

Handicap (1.45pm) over six furlongs. This is a difficult contest to be confident about, but the four-yearold finally gets a decent draw (two) after a series of wide and awkward stalls, and with luck must go close.

POINTERS

Wind Speeder 12.45pm Happy Valley

GETS UNDER WAY WITH 9 RACES FROM 10:45

2021 New Zealand Derby winner Rocket Spade is looking for his first win in Hong Kong

Why punters may soon be betting on tech

DO YOU know that feeling when you’ve bet on your favourite team to win a match but, for some reason, they capitulate to a series of goals an under-11s side could have scored and you smell a rat? Well, what if you could eliminate all cheating from sport and sports betting?

As of 12 months ago, the gross gambling yield – the amount betting firms retain after payments to punters but before operating cost – in Great Britain was estimated to be around £14bn, up from £12.5bn the year before. So with the Covid-19 pandemic appearing to have fueled our betting habits, how do we ensure what we bet on is untainted?

Punters have seen allegations of match fixing in football and snooker recently, with entire sports being thrown into disarray by allegations.

Computer Vision is a form of artificial

Can AI trialed in table tennis be the answer to sports fans trusting the matches they bet on? Matt Hardy investigates.

intelligence by tech company Sportradar that can train machines to understand sports and automate data collection. Crucially, its chief product officer Luka Pataky says it can aid the reduction of suspicious activity.

“Computer vision can absolutely be used to improve the integrity of sports and alert to doping,” he tells City A.M.

“You’ve got to think that every athlete has a unique, signature style of play and certain characteristics which can be tracked over time.

“That signature will naturally evolve over their career but unnatural changes can also be identified.

“If there’s suddenly a marked change in performance on these mechanical

characteristics, it provides valuable insight into suspicious activity.”

At the ICE 2023 conference in London’s ExCeL last month the technology was demonstrated using table tennis.

A small surface area with two players means there are fewer data points to analyse, but the number is still well into its hundreds.

As the two players compete, data screens record possession, net contact, which hand the bat is in, the bounce and even distance from the table.

The point to all of this? To measure player activity across time and identify subtle changes which could be deemed suspicious. Thereafter investigations can take place to decide as to whether

the player in question is part of a larger web of cheating.

“Because of the markets we serve, we need to have [the technology] highly accurate,” Pataky adds.

“You have two levels of scoring [in table tennis], you see the umpire flipping the score – that’s 100 per cent accuracy.

“AI scoring on its own is, at the moment, about 99.3 per cent accurate. That means there’s enough information for even that to be really really accurate.

“The more you expand into bigger fields [and] bigger sports, you normally would have to go into more cameras –and that’s the main limitation.”

Betting habits are changing and punters are getting smarter. But the number of those looking to profit illegally from betting, match fixing and immoral behaviour continues to grow across a number of sports.

Sometimes fans want sports to remain traditional, to stick to their roots and reject technology, but what if AI advancements can ensure punters aren’t screwed over? Stamping out any form of sports doping can only be a positive. So if in future technology like this can help to eliminate fixing, it’s got to be worth a shot.

IF IN ANY normal season Premiership side Exeter Chiefs announced the mid-season departure of a brilliant young winger such as Facundo Cordero there would have been a slight feeling of disappointment among the fanbase.

But the Argentinian’s move north to Scotland’s Glasgow Warriors instead heaped further dismay on supporters of Exeter, because Cordero’s exit represents just the next one on a bandwagon of Chiefs players departing Devon.

Lock Ruben van Heerden and forward Santiago Grondona are among the others who have left the former European champions mid-season and come the summer the club will be shedding many more of their star players.

Sam Simmonds is off to Montpellier alongside Luke Cowan-Dickie and Harry Williams – all potentially giving up England selection to do so – while Sam’s brother Joe is heading to fellow Top14 outfit Pau.

Jannes Kirsten is off back to South Africa and Dave Ewers is bound for Irish province Ulster.

There are discussions about international trio Henry Slade, Stuart Hogg and Jack Nowell’s futures too, given recent links to overseas clubs.

The exodus at the Chiefs is plain for all to see, and it reflects both the strain on the English top flight given the new salary cap restrictions as well as the theory of rotating squad cycles.

Exeter featured in every Premiership final between 2015-16 and the 20202021, during which time they also won a domestic league cup and the Champions Cup.

Their miniature dynasty was one of the most dominant seen in English professional rugby, given they had only been promoted at the beginning of the last decade.

Of the 23 who won the 2020 Champions Cup final against Racing 92 during the Covid-19 pandemic, 14 have either left the club and are still playing, are confirmed to be leaving Devon, or rumoured to be ditching the Chiefs.

Rugby insiders tell City A.M. that a large chunk of the issue comes down

EXODUS CHIEFS

GOING OR GONE: THE LEAVING PLAYERS

CONFIRMED DEPARTURES

Sam Simmonds to Montpellier

Luke Cowan-Dickie to Montpellier

Harry Williams to Montpellier

Jannes Kirsten to Bulls

Dave Ewers to Ulster

Joe Simmonds to Pau

Ruben van Heerden to Stormers

Santiago Grondona to Pau

Facundo Cordero to Glasgow Warriors

RUMOURED DEPARTURES

Henry Slade to France

Jack Nowell to La Rochelle

Stuart Hogg to Scotland

contracts during the pandemic while other teams were making significant pay cuts.

This in turn has led to a number of players out of contract at the same time who are being offered a higher wage elsewhere at a time when more English clubs are having to tighten their purse-strings.

“We used to be a team who sought cast-offs and has-beens from other teams in the Premiership and other competitions,” one fan told City A.M.

“We seemed to have stopped looking for those kinds of players because our success enticed and signed [bigger] players like Hogg and Jonny Gray.

“The money went up massively for people like Cowan-Dickie, Slade and Nowell and that seemed to stop us from nurturing talent like we used to.

“I said at the time I would rather

left for Bordeaux in 2019] over signing Hogg and I stand by that now, however many years later.”

So has the club steered too far away from what made it so good? Saracens, too, have star players dotted through-

nipola and Theo McFarland while cherry-picking marquee signings. Exeter through the years has been a club of grit and determination, a team of bulldozing forwards who often seemed unstoppable to the opposition. But times change, so do tactics and club cycles come to an end. Exeter’s greatest cycle is coming to an end. So as the club backtrack on ticket prices following a season of low attendances and the team looks to rebuild itself into something fans can identify with again given significant changes off the field, maybe the exodus at Exeter should in fact be seen as a celebration.

A celebration of what happened, of what the club achieved across the past 10 years, and as a bookend to an era the club may never see the likes of again.

The Premiership once had an Exeter era, but that’s long gone now, writes Matt Hardy

We used to be a team who sought cast-offs and hasbeens. We’ve stopped looking for those players

Liam Pitchford is Britain’s No1 table tennis player

RUGBY UNION

SPORT

Liverpool have found potential investors, says owner Henry

FRANK DALLERES

LIVERPOOL owner John Henry says they have “identified potential investors” but that his group’s commitment to the football club “remains stronger than ever”.

Henry’s comments appear to open the door to the sale of a minority stake in the Premier League team, having appointed bankers to test the market late last year. But they also reaffirm his statement last month that a full sale of Liverpool was off the table.

“While we formalised a process that has identified potential investors for the club, we remain fully committed to the longterm success of the club,” Henry told the Liverpool Echo.

“That has been the case since day one in 2010. Our efforts every day have been and continue to be focused on the long-term health and competitiveness of the club.

“Investment in the club is never for the short-term. This approach has been successful over the long haul with patience necessary from time to time.

“In regard to Liverpool, our commitment remains stronger than ever. The club continues to make great progress with youth on the field and off.”

The stance of Henry and Fenway Sports Group (FSG) leaves north-west rivals Manchester United as the only Pre-

FOOTBALL

mier League club officially open to a full takeover. United’s owners, the Glazer family, have received bids for majority ownership from Qatari Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani and British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe.

Henry said Liverpool would spend money this summer amid the perception that an ageing squad needs refreshing but warned that FSG would not overcommit.

“We continue building at Liverpool in a responsible manner,” he added.

“We’ve seen many football clubs, including LFC previously, go down unsustainable paths. “We have and will continue to focus

Henry has said club has “identified potential investors”

our attention on investing wisely in the transfer market and we remain incredibly proud of our squad.”

Henry also urged English football’s authorities to consider tougher financial regulation in order to prevent clubs from overspending.

“There are ever-increasing financial challenges in the Premier League,” he said. “The league itself is extraordinarily successful and is the greatest football competition in the world, but we’ve thought for some time there should be limits on spending so that the league doesn’t go the way of European leagues where one or two clubs annually have little competition.”

Conte: My op had Tottenham docs really worried about me

FRANK DALLERES

TOTTENHAM Hotspur manager

Antonio Conte has revealed the club’s doctors feared for his health after he rushed back to the dugout following gallbladder surgery.

Conte needed an emergency operation last month but was back at work a week later and took his place on the touchline within days for the Champions League defeat at AC Milan.

It proved too soon and he was advised to stay in his native Italy to rest but is now back in charge for Wednesday’s return leg with Milan, which Spurs must win to reach the

quarter-finals. “I wanted to come back early but I had to respect the Tottenham doctors because they were really worried after the game against Milan,” Conte said.

“For sure I under-evaluated the recovery after surgery. For my sense of responsibility I wanted to come back early, so I maybe overevaluated my body.”

Conte has already seen Spurs through one must-win Champions League fixture this season, the final group stage match at Marseille. “We live for this kind of game,” he added.

“When the pressure is going up it means your level is going up.”

EXODUS CHIEFS

Why Premiership club is shedding players left, right and centre PAGE 23

CVC poised to add tennis to sports portfolio

THE WOMEN’S Tennis Association (WTA) is close to confirming a £125m investment from CVC Capital Partners, according to reports.

A deal would see prolific sports investors CVC take a 20 per cent stake in the WTA, which runs the main women’s tennis tour, Mark Kleinman reported for Sky News.

CVC and the WTA would also establish a new company to manage the tour’s broadcast and sponsorship rights.

Former Formula 1 owner CVC already has similar deals in place with Six

Nations Rugby, the English Premiership and Spanish football’s LaLiga.

It is the latest example of private equity pouring into sport, with tennis among those at the forefront of investment.

City A.M. revealed earlier this year that the International Tennis Federation was exploring a revamp of its Billie Jean King Cup competition.

The project would see a group led by Mark Walter, a business partner of Chelsea chairman Todd Boehly, invest in the tournament.

But the plans caused some concerns among tennis officials, having seen a similar venture around the Davis Cup

terminated five years into a 25-year deal. CVC’s deal with the WTA is said to have been two years in the making, and follows reports that it also looked at launching a new brand to merge aspects of the WTA Tour and its men’s counterpart, the ATP Tour. It is not clear whether it is still seeking to invest in the ATP.

CVC made billions from its decade owning F1 and then selling it to Liberty Media in 2017 but has not yet had the same success in rugby union, where its attempts to drag the sport’s commercial operations into the 21st century remain a work in progress.

Vice-captain Lawes out of Le Crunch with another injury

MATT HARDY

ENGLAND vice captain Courtney Lawes has suffered yet another injury set back as head coach Steve Borthwick confirmed the back-row would not be in contention to play in his side’s Six Nations clash with France on Saturday. Lawes, of Northampton Saints, is out of the 27-man side named by Borthwick yesterday with a shoulder injury.

Among others who have been released are Sale Sharks fly-half George Ford, Exeter Chiefs No8 Sam Simmonds and Harlequins winger Cadan Murley.

England take on France on Saturday looking to keep their Six Nations hopes

alive but will face a stern test from world No2 side Les Bleus.

The selection calls made by England’s head coach suggested the side will continue with the strategy of starting either Marcus Smith or captain Owen Farrell, despite some saying the side could revert back to the duo in a 10-12 axis as was the case under Eddie Jones.

Elsewhere in this weekend’s Six Nations round four: Wales travel to Italy looking for their first win since Warren Gatland’s return while Scotland host Ireland in the battle for the Triple Crown.

The final round of fixtures sees Italy head to Scotland, Wales play France and England play Ireland in Dublin.

RUGBY UNION

FRANK DALLERES