Tuesday 21 March 2023

RACIST, HOMOPHOBIC AND MISOGYNIST THE DAMNING VERDICT ON THE MET P10

DON’T PANIC!

PROPERTY LONDON’S BIGGEST WINNERS AND LOSERS ON THE HOUSING MARKET P9

CHARLIE

CONCHIE AND CHRISTOPHER DORRELL

MARKETS proved less volatile than expected yesterday as investors welcomed the late-night rescue of Credit Suisse by its rival UBS at the weekend.

The FTSE 100 cratered on the open but recovered to finish up by the close of trading.

Stanchart lost three per cent and Barclays lost slightly more than two per cent, but otherwise banks were either flat or finished in the green as contagion fears appeared to abate slightly.

Much of the reassurance came from the Bank of England, which assuaged the concerns of holders of bank-offered AT1 bonds. Those who held those bonds in Credit Suisse, also known as

CoCos, were wiped out by the Swiss regulator despite being higher in the creditor hierarchy than shareholders, who received around $3bn in the deal. The Swiss banks, as well as the regulator, are expected to face legal action after the controversial move.

Threadneedle Street issued a statement yesterday, followed by the European Central Bank, which confirmed that in the event a bank ran into trouble in the UK it would be shareholders before bondholders who were zeroed.

That reduced concern among holders of AT1 bonds in other banks across Europe.

The day of relative calm also saw the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson echo the Bank of England’s claim that the UK’s banks are “safe and sound”.

THE CITY VIEW P2 SUISSE JOB LOSS FEARS P3 ANALYSIS AND OPINION P11, P14

Put deal to other strikers, Lynch told, as Network Rail staff vote to end walkouts

CITY A.M. REPORTER

COMMUTERS may soon be able to plan their trips to the office and post-work drinks without fear of strike action disrupting their plans.

Members of the RMT working for Network Rail voted overwhelmingly yesterday to accept an offer to end

the long-running dispute over pay, jobs and conditions.

The union said the deal includes an uplift on salaries of between 14.4 per cent for the lowest paid grades to 9.2 per cent for the highest paid, increased backpay, a no compulsory redundancy

agreement until January 2025 and rail travel benefits.

RMT members working for train operating companies, however, are still set to strike on 30 March and 1 April.

Yesterday, the transport secretary Mark Harper challenged RMT boss

Mick Lynch (left) to give those members a vote on a separate pay deal, too.

“While this is good news, unfortunately, RMT members who work for train operating companies are not being given the same chance to bring their dispute to an end. That’s because the RMT has refused

to put the Rail Delivery Group’s very similar offer to a vote, denying these members the pay rise they deserve,” he said.

Hospitality businesses, which have been hit hard by train disruption, will breathe a sigh of relief. It is estimated action has cost the sector several billion pounds.

BANK OF ENGLAND EASES BONDHOLDER CONCERNS MARKETS SOOTHED BY CREDIT SUISSE RESCUE DOWNING STREET: UK BANKS ARE ‘ROBUST’ AND ‘SAFE’

No time for complacency, but the City’s guardrails appear robust

THERE have been so many references to 2008 in recent days you’d be forgiven for turning up at work today with a Motorola Razr in your pocket. But this isn’t 2008, and though it is tempting to run the headline ‘banking on the brink’, that would be adding more drama to a situation that could do with less of it.

STANDING UP FOR THE CITY THE CITY VIEW

The fact is that the post-financialcrisis barriers put in place have so far proven to be robust. There is

little that one can do about Credit Suisse –for all the quality of people who work across a raft of divisions, the sprawling bank’s management in recent years has been abominable. Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse too can be explained in part with regards to

its own particular flaws. Neither exist in a vacuum, and the end of cheap money (lo that that had happened when the sun was still shining) has something to do with both, but so far we are yet to see the kind of systemic, sectorwide issues we saw back in the run-up to the financial crisis. UK banks, in particular, look as robust and ‘safe’ as the Bank of England believes.

It is also to the credit of central banks that they yesterday moved

WHAT’S A LITTLE WAR BETWEEN FRIENDS?

VLADIMIR Putin

hosted Chinese premier Xi Jinping for talks over Ukraine and energy yesterday, with the two men referring to each other as ‘dear friends’. Putin has been largely cast out in the cold by the rest of the world but Jinping has refused to condemn his actions in Ukraine.

Putin yesterday wrote in the People’s Daily, a state mouthpiece controlled by the Communist Party, that the two nations could stand together against “aggressive” US policy. There are growing fears that China’s tacit support for Putin could at some point include military aid. “If China does move to openly supply weapons to Russia, it will in effect be taking part in the conflict on the side of the aggressor,” warned a Ukrainian official yesterday. US and British governments are watching the summit closely.

to nip concerns over the future appeal of AT1 bonds in the bud, after what increasingly looks like a bold decision by the Swiss regulator over the weekend to wipe out holders of CoCos. The frustration, of course, is that –as the commentator Neil Wilson pointed out yesterday –crises such as these inevitably result in calls for more regulation, more ‘governance’ and more involvement of the government in the affairs of

financial markets. That will inevitably be the case here, too, even though it appears so far that the current regime is more than adequate. There is no reason to be complacent –indeed, it is dangerous to be so with so many moving parts still at play. But with the vital Edinburgh Reforms on the horizon, the City’s cheerleaders will need to make the case loudly and often that the Square Mile has done its job responsibly.

THE GUARDIAN

NORTH SEA WORKERS VOTE TO STRIKE AMID BUMPER OIL AND GAS PROFITS

Oil and gas workers have voted in favour of a series of large-scale North Sea strikes amid bumper profits for fossil fuel firms. About 1,400 workers plan to strike between late March and early June.

THE FINANCIAL TIMES DELIVEROO ACCUSED OF HITTING RIDERS’ EARNINGS

Deliveroo has been accused of damaging the earning power of riders by preventing access to online systems that allow gig economy workers to more easily see if rival companies are offering better fares.

THE TELEGRAPH RUSSIA SEIZES VOLKSWAGEN FACTORY IN BATTLE WITH DERIPASKA’S CAR MAKER

Volkswagen has lost control of a vast car plant in Russia as part of a legal battle with a car maker controlled by sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska. A Russian court has frozen Volkswagen’s assets in the country, including its large plant in Kaluga, western Russia.

UK Finance chief: Now is the time for cooler heads

THE BANKING system relies on confidence and while it’s understandable that some people may try and draw parallels with the 2008 financial crisis, it’s important to remember we are in a fundamentally different place now.

Since that time, there has been a complete change in the way banks are regulated, coupled with more capital and liquidity in the system and increases in deposit guarantee limits, all of which should underpin confidence.

It also gives us a system which is

much more robust and able to withstand shocks – for example, we saw the government and the Bank of England use new regulatory powers to step in very quickly and enable Silicon Valley Bank UK to be sold to

HSBC the other weekend.

There is good international coordination going on too, with the Bank of England working alongside other major central banks to enhance the provision of market liquidity.

No one should be complacent, but the vitally important message the Bank of England has included in its announcements is that the UK banking system is well capitalised and funded, and remains safe and sound.

£ David Posting is chief executive of UK Finance and a former senior exec at Barclays and Lloyds Bank

WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING

Xi Jinping visits global pariah Vladimir Putin in Moscow and says he is “confident the people will give you their firm support”

David Postings

Job loss fears in Cabot Square after Suisse fall

CHRISTOPHER DORRELL AND CHARLIE CONCHIE

THOUSANDS of jobs in the City are at risk after UBS’s dramatic acquisition of Credit Suisse, with the latter’s investment banking division threatened.

The Swiss banking stalwarts employ some 11,000 people in London, with Credit Suisse employing 5,000 in their Cabot Square office. That includes a high concentration of their investment banking units which were already facing potentially hefty job cuts in the coming months.

Former chief of UBS UK, Mark Yallop, told the BBC yesterday it was “inevitable that a merger of this sort will result in some further job losses” and jobs in their investment banking units may be the first to go.

“We [will] work diligently and at pace throughout the coming period to identify which roles might be impacted,”

Credit Suisse bosses told staff in an email seen by the Financial Times.

A large proportion of the bank’s London-based employees are in its investment banking division which was already set to be spun off as CS First Boston as part of turnaround efforts under the newly appointed CEO Ulrich Körner. Those plans have been thrown into doubt by the UBS deal.

Announcing the deal yesterday, UBS chair Colm Kelleher said: “UBS intends to downsize Credit Suisse’s investment banking business and align it with our conservative risk culture.”

UBS wants to focus on wealth and asset management, particularly in the US. Taking on Credit Suisse’s investment banking arm will increase its exposure to risk.

Bloomberg Intelligence analysts, however, said it was unlikely that UBS would wind down the entirety of the investment banking operation.

tomorrow

JAY POWELL and fellow bosses at the Federal Reserve will decide whether to continue their rate hike path tomorrow, despite the end of cheap money causing havoc among smaller US banks.

Sign here: Stricken Signature is bought by rival American bank

JAMES SILVER

SIGNATURE Bank, the US outfit which collapsed just 48 hours after Silicon Valley Bank, was bought by rival New York Community Bank yesterday. Investors were spooked by Signature’s uninsured deposits,

SO... WHAT’S AN AT1 BOND AGAIN?

triggering a bank run.

Last night, JP Morgan were reportedly helping to put together options for First Republic Bank, a Californian operation on the brink of collapse despite a rescue package put together by Wall Street titans last week.

Good question. In short, banks offer these bonds –with generous yields –to help meet their post-financial-crisis capital requirements. The banks offer them at a generous interest rate because of the risks attached –which is that if that bank falls below a certain pre-agreed level of capital or in the event of a failure, they can either be converted into equity (this is why they’re also known as CoCos –contingent convertibles) or in some cases be wiped out. Such a ‘trigger event’ occurred with Credit Suisse’s sudden and swift demise at the weekend. The question now is whether the Swiss treatment of AT1s –in which the holders were effectively wiped out instead of shareholders, despite the usual hierarchy of creditors –forces other banks to up their already high yields to attract interest, putting up the cost of capital. Either way, the Swiss move has caused consternation in a small corner of the financial markets with a big say over some of our largest banking players.

ALL EYES ON YOU, JAY Federal Reserve to make interest rates call

Ofwat clamps down on dividends for substandard water suppliers

NICHOLAS EARL

OFWAT will be able to stop the payment of dividends to water suppliers if they risk the financial resilience of companies, under new powers announced yesterday. They will also now be able to take enforcement action against suppliers that fail to link dividend payments to performance.

The water regulator is modifying company licences, which will require suppliers to take account of service delivery for customers and the environment when deciding whether to pay dividends.

It will also demand companies hold a strong credit rating, to stop them paying dividends if their financial health is at risk.

Ofwat chief executive David Black

said: “When deciding on dividend payments to investors, water companies need to take stock of their performance for customers, the environment and the company’s overall financial health. Too often, this has not been the case. That is why we’re implementing changes that will allow us to better hold companies to account and take enforcement action when they get it wrong.”

Amazon latest tech giant to cut jobs worldwide

LAURA MCGUIRE

AMAZON is slashing another 9,000 employee job roles worldwide as the tech giant steams ahead with further costcutting measures.

The firm made staff aware of the job cuts in a note by chief Andy Jassy, who said workers in the Amazon Web Services, human resources, advertising and Twitch units would be most impacted by the move.

The cuts are taking place over a period of weeks, it is not clear how many UK job roles will be impacted by the decision.

It comes as, in January, the group revealed that it would look to let go of more than 18,000 roles as part of a workforce reduction. Last month, Amazon’s workers in Coventry went on strike for the first time in the UK in a ‘David vs Goliath’ battle.

Amazon has more than 1.5m workers including warehouse staff, making it America’s second-largest private employer after Walmart.

It is the latest global employer to an-

nounce job cuts, with Meta also revealing last week that it would sack 10,000 of its staff and close 5,000 vacancies as the tech sector continues to slim down in a bid to cut losses. The Meta news came just four months after it already laid off a significant 13 per cent of its workforce.

Twitter has also sacked thousands of workers following the takeover of the social media giant by Tesla boss Elon Musk which concluded in October 2022. Most recently, it laid off 10 per cent of its remaining workforce.

Dell also said it was cutting 7,000 jobs last month as did Disney, while Microsoft said that it would slash 10,000 and Phillips announced 6,000 job cuts to try and recoup some of its losses. Zoom cut 15 per cent of its workforce this year. City A.M has approached Amazon for a comment.

PRICE WAR Morrisons slashes prices to lure customers back from rivals Aldi and Lidl

MORRISONS is slashing prices for the third time in three months as it attempts to drag shoppers back from value retailers. Rachel Eyre, chief marketing officer at Morrisons, said: “We’re now going again with a second wave of activity to keep priceslockedlow.”

OBR blames optimistic economic forecasts on ‘volatile’ environment

JESSICA FRANK-KEYES

OVERLY optimistic economic forecasts are down to the “volatile” nature of the UK in recent years, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) chairman has said.

The official Treasury watchdog was warned by Deutsche Bank analysts that it may have repeated its mistake of over-estimating growth figures and wiping out spending power.

Speaking at a Centre for Policy Studies event yesterday, Richard

Hughes said that key drivers had “jumped around in ways none of us have ever witnessed in our lifetimes”.

He told CPS director Robert Colville: “We’ve been forecasting in a volatile environment… Energy prices rising sevenfold and then coming back halfway from that just in the space of the last year are huge changes.”

He added: “Big changes in those things which determine our cost of living have big impacts on economic decision-making.”

Amazon attempts to streamline with another round of job losses

New nuclear player looks to enter the UK

NICHOLAS EARL

A POTENTIAL nuclear power player with ambitions for the UK market is working to raise up to €1bn (£870m) in an upcoming equity raise.

Newcleo is looking to raise the funds to support the developments of its leadcooled fast nuclear reactors (LFRs) and its plants to manufacture fuel from nuclear waste.

The company is exploring nuclear sites in France and the UK to develop a plant to manufacture fuel exclusively from existing nuclear waste.

It is aiming to deploy 30 megawatt LFRs in France by the end of the decade, rapidly followed by a 200MWe commercial unit in the UK only two years later.

Launched in September 2021, the company has already completed two capital raises, raising a total of €400m buoyed by international investors.

The LFRs will be constructed similarly

THAT’S THE SPIRIT New £16m whisky distillery opens in Wooler

to small modular reactors, with manufacturing and construction standardised in factories, rather than built on site such as with conventional nuclear power plants.

The funds will aid Newcleo’s strategic expansion into manufacturing nuclear fuel for its next-generation reactors made from existing waste produced by traditional reactors. This will include the establishment of a first mixed plutonium-uranium oxides (MOX) production plant in France, with another plant to follow later in the UK.

Newcleo argues MOX will decrease the environmental and financial cost of disposing of long-living radioactive waste and completely avoid the need to mine for new nuclear fuel.

Newcleo boss Stefano Buono said its tech “can address decarbonisation of the energy systems and security of energy supply –two of the biggest challenges facing countries [globally].”

A NEW £16m whisky distillery and Anglo-Saxon museum will open in Northumberland this week, after five years of planning and building. The attraction, which will be the latest of England’s 40 distilleries, represents one of the largest investments in the area and will create over 50 local jobs.

Gas prices slide as volatility sparks recession fears

NICHOLAS EARL

GAS PRICES dropped yesterday as warmer weather and economic turmoil eased expectations of demand.

At one point, prices were down 7.5 per cent but the UK benchmark slightly recovered to report a 5.9 per downturn on the spot market after lunch yesterday.

The cold winter snap has tailed off with temperatures expected to rise to

15C degrees, lowering domestic gas demand. Futures contracts for April through June were also down 5.5 to 6.5 per cent, reflecting expectations of use declining in the spring

Like all commodities, gas has also been hit by instability in the US financial sector which has seen three banks collapse, and the hastily arranged UBS takeover of Credit Suisse. This has triggered economic

uncertainty, spooking investors amid the raised prospect of a recession and falling consumption of gas and oil.

Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, told City A.M.: “Most commodities are currently driven by fears of what may happen next given the upheaval in the banking sector. Gas is, in addition to that fear, also trading lower as we are running out of winter to support demand.”

Charlie

PENSION funds have taken on an interesting new role in the City psyche over the past year.

Once just guardians of the country’s retirement cash, they have morphed into punchbags on which to unleash frustration at the decline of the UK’s capital markets.

That flurry of punches has ramped up significantly in the past month.

London’s markets have been struck a series of blows as Arm snubbed London for New York, CRH packed its bags to head for the Big Apple, and WANdisco (then yet to reveal that $15m of its revenue may have been fictitious and fraudulent) said it was scoping out a dual listing.

Blame has again been shifted partly on to the pension funds for not getting behind the country’s homegrown firms. But is this fair?

Pension funds’ holding of UK equities has dropped sharply over the past two decades. Just four per cent of the UK stock market is now held by pension funds –down from 39 per cent in 2000, according to a new report from think tank New Financial.

But declining domestic equity investment by pension funds is a global trend. Since 2000, pension funds have looked to diversify their holdings and

ARE PENSION FUNDS TO BLAME FOR LONDON’S WOES?

much of that has been global diversification.

Domestic equity exposure, as a percentage of equity holdings, has dipped on average from 67.1 per cent to 37.7 per cent between 2002 and 2022 in every major market, according to figures from Willis Towers Watson.

Global head of pensions at PwC Raj Mody told City A.M. that the managers running defined benefit pension

money in the UK do not really care where the money’s invested geographically as long as it’s not vulnerable to wild swings relative to their liabilities.

“To the extent that they do invest in equities, pension funds do so to grow their assets. Whether that’s UK or global, they’re not necessarily that concerned about where the listing is as long as they’ve got diversification,” he said.

Dan Mikulskis, an investment partner and pensions specialist at City actuary firm LCP, argues the problem lies with what’s on offer from UK corporates, not pension funds.

“If British companies are so great, everyone would want to invest in them, and it’s no problem. Why would we [need] this kind of nationalistic, jingoistic hype speech?,” Mikulskis said.

Years of uncompetitive policy and

corporate underperformance are to blame rather than conservatism on the part of pension fund managers, he argues.

Earnings per share statistics bear that out. US firms have far outpaced their UK counterparts and therefore simply make a more shrewd investment, he explained.

“When you look at all those things before pointing the finger at pensions, then it doesn’t make any sense to try and wind back to some anachronistic 90s situation where all UK pension funds were investing in UK companies,” he says.

Mikulskis says pension schemes trustees and fund managers “should be more annoyed” at the public kicking they get, but scheme trustees and money managers “tend to let it wash over them”.

The market, however, may now be shifting more naturally towards equity backing in the UK, as defined contribution schemes grow with a younger, auto-enrolled member base. Buyouts by insurance companies and master trusts are also helping pool cash and potentially help move toward investing in stocks and companies again.

And the government and Lord Mayor have announced measures to encourage pension funds to back UK science and tech firms and start-ups. But it will take a while for those policies to take effect.

Perhaps it might be better to look at pension funds’ lack of enthusiasm for UK equities as a symptom of corporate decline, rather than a cause.

Conchie asks: Is it fair to point the finger at pension funds?

South London to get a new ‘vertical farm’ after investment

JAMES SILVER

A LISTED investment manager has injected funds into vertical farming firm Harvest London to build a cutting-edge site near Croydon. Harvest has built two farms so far and partnered with brands including Pizza Pilgrims to deliver locallygrown produce with minimal environmental impact.

Harvest has secured investment from Foresight to build a 140,000 sq ft unit in Beddington which it says will allow it to “expand its current operations, enabling it to supply a range of salads and herbs to customers in London and beyond”.

The firm has been operating a working east London farm for three years.

“Vertical farming is a technology

that can complement British agriculture, helping us reduce our reliance on food imports, and give consumers fresher, more local ingredients. We want to make the UK a world leader in this exciting new industry,” Harvest’s founder Chris Davies said yesterday. Foresight manages around £1.4bnworth of assets and invests in sustainable infrastructure.

OPINION

What the new Harvest London facility will look like, in a step change for the industry

It was panic, just a little bit of panic, and people talking themselves into further fear. At Credit Suisse, this fear had enough recent history to feel warranted, even if, in the eyes of Al Khudairy –the chairman of the Saudi National Bank –it wasn’t rational.

House prices still on up as Camden breaks £1m mark

LOUIS

VAN BOXEL-WOOLF

THE PRICE of the average London home stood at £680,806 in February, according to online estate agent Rightmove, as property prices continue to defy gravity.

House prices in the capital rose 2.5 per cent compared to three per cent in Britain as a whole in the last 12 months, according to Rightmove, though the story changes borough to borough.

Camden residents saw property prices rise 13.4 per cent to reach an average of £1,121,609.

Meanwhile, house prices in Kensington and Chelsea fell by 1.8 per cent, although the West London enclave is still London’s most expensive place to buy with the average property valued at £1,672,224.

The capital’s cheapest properties were in Barking and Dagenham, where prices rose 1.8 per cent to £370,289 during the year; even so, they are still more expensive than the average price of property in the UK at £365,357.

Houses in Haringey, Hackney, Lambeth and Kingston upon Thames are in the

middle of the pack, selling for around the average London house price.

February’s monthly house price increase is just below the 20-year norm, signalling a gradual recovery after the chaos induced by Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini budget last September.

Demand had been choked off in the aftermath of Kwarteng’s statement as mortgage rates spiked. The average rate for a 15 per cent deposit five-year fixed mortgage has now fallen to 4.65 per cent, down from 5.89 per cent in October but up on 2.48 per cent this time last year.

Marc von Grundherr, director of London estate agents Benham and Reeves, said: “While the London market hasn’t performed as strongly as the rest of the UK during the pandemic market boom, momentum is building.”

“While the current economic picture is far better than many predicted, the high cost of homeownership along with the increased cost of borrowing, is still having an influence on where buyers’ interest is currently being focused”, he added.

STEPPING BACK Dune London founder to sell family’s stake in high-street shoe brand

Gatwick boss says summer of discontent will not be repeated

CITY A.M. REPORTER

THE BOSS of Gatwick airport said he expects travel to near pre-pandemic levels this summer, though a full recovery in passenger numbers is not anticipated until 2025.

Passenger volumes are expected to reach 94 per cent of 2019 levels in the third quarter of 2023, Gatwick airport chief exec Stewart Wingate told the Financial Times.

It comes after a turbulent summer

last year, when staff numbers proved insufficient to cope with the surge in demand post-pandemic, leading to hundreds of cancellations. Wingate said the hub had worked hard to ensure this was not repeated this year, with airlines “assuring us they have enough staff”.

“We are working really hard to make sure that the airport is ready and that the airlines and their ground handlers are ready. We don’t anticipate any issues over the coming Easter weekend or for the peak summer seasons,” he said.

DUNE London founder Daniel Rubin is looking for a buyer for the family’s 83 per cent stake in the high street footwear retailer, which has over 350 stores globally. Rubin, who set up the brand more than 30 years ago, said it was the “right time emotionally” to sell up.

LONDON HOUSE PRICES RISERS AND FALLERS OVER THE LAST 12 MONTHS CAMDEN +13.4% BARNET +6.8% ISLINGTON +5.4%

HAMMERSMITH AND FULHAM +0.5%

RICHMOND UPON THAMES -0.7%

KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA -1.8%

Lawyers comb through Johnson’s partygate defence ahead of grilling

SIMON BLEWETT

BORIS Johnson faces a wait for the publication of his defence to claims he lied to parliament with his partygate denials after handing over a dossier in the run-up to a televised grilling.

The former Prime Minister’s allies urged the cross-party Privileges Committee to publish his testimony

“as soon as possible” after turning it over yesterday afternoon.

Johnson was first asked to provide a written submission in July last year, but provided it 48 hours before his televised questioning by the committee tomorrow afternoon.

The committee confirmed it received the evidence, key to Johnson’s political future, at 2.32pm on Monday.

A spokesman for the panel of MPs

said: “The committee will need to review what has been submitted in the interests of making appropriate redactions to protect the identity of some witnesses.

“The committee intends to publish this as soon as is possible.” If Johnson fails to convince the committee he did not deliberately mislead parliament, he could receive a suspension.

Met Police has failed the public, review concludes

JESSICA FRANK-KEYES

THE MET Police is “institutionally” racist, misogynistic and homophobic, while officers like killer Wayne Couzens and rapist David Carrick could still be in uniform, a damning review has found.

London’s police force has failed to protect the public from officers who abuse women while racist officers and staff and a “deep-seated homophobia” exist in its ranks, the landmark report found.

Commissioned in the wake of Sarah Everard’s rape and murder, the Baroness Louise Casey review is “rigorous, stark and unsparing”, its author said.

Asked if there could be more officers like Couzens and Carrick in the force, she said: “I cannot sufficiently assure you that that is not the case.”

Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said the review’s contents were “disturbing, upsetting [and] heartbreaking” and apologised to everyone let down by the force.

But while he accepted Casey’s “diagnosis” he said he would not use the term “institutional”.

Her finding of “institutional racism,

sexism and homophobia” echoes the Macpherson Inquiry after Stephen Lawrence’s murder and the Met’s abject failures in their investigation.

In the scathing document, Casey called for a “complete overhaul” of the force and the “effective disbanding” of the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection command – where the predatory criminals Couzens and Carrick both served.

If the force does not reform, it could face being broken up in future, she warned.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman said there had been “serious failures of culture and leadership” and warned “further unacceptable cases will come to light”. She said Sir Mark was “taking action to restore confidence in policing in London”.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the report revealed an “utterly toxic culture” and “abuses of power” that had “shattered the trust that Britain’s policing relies on”.

Mayor Sadiq Khan said the review was “damning” and that he accepted Casey’s findings of institutional discrimination.

Wages since crash means workers £11,000 worse off, the BBC reveals

ALANA CALVERT

WORKERS are £11,000 worse off per year due to 15 years of wage stagnation, according to the Resolution Foundation.

In new figures shared with BBC Panorama, the think tank calculated that, had wages continued to grow at the pace seen before the 2008 financial crash, the average worker would make £11,000 more per year than they do now, taking rising prices into account.

Torsten Bell, chief executive of the

Resolution Foundation, told the BBC the wage stagnation of the past 15 years is “almost completely unprecedented”.

He said: “Nobody who’s alive and working in the British economy today has ever seen anything like this.

“This is not what normal looks like. This is what failure looks like.”

The think tank also found typical UK household incomes have fallen further behind those in Germany: in 2008, the gap was more than £500 a year, now it is £4,000. PA

Baroness Casey has found severe failings in the Met Police which must now be addressed

PA

Credit Suisse and Silicon Valley Bank chaos are symptoms of a fragile banking system

CITY folk around in 2007 must have been getting very twitchy over the last week.

Some of the market moves were reminiscent of the early stages of the financial crisis once people clocked on to just how bad banks had messed up.

Credit Suisse tumbled more than 30 per cent at one point. Its peers BNP Paribas, Societe Generale and Unicredit all had their shares suspended. Deutsche Bank slid, as did Barclays, Natwest and Lloyds.

And then, over the weekend, Credit Suisse, identified as one of the world’s integral banks and an institution that has survived two world wars and multiple financial crises, ceased to exist as a standalone entity after it was hauled off to rival UBS by Swiss regulators.

The whole fiasco is very troubling and happened because, at its core, the modern day banking system has an inherent level of risk that’s hard to contain.

Banks play an important function in allowing cash to flow around an economy.

At their very basic level, they take in cash from people who are not using it for immediate spending and lend it to people to use it more productively.

Businesses get off the ground because banks dish out depositors’ capital. That generates a return which they use to fund interest on savings accounts.

Without that broker in an economy,

resources would get tied up, growth would be lower and jobs would be lost.

It’s worth mentioning that the rapid expansion of financial markets over the last century –turbocharged since regulation was rolled back in the 1980s –has meant the

global banking system has been split in two. Retail banks perform the function described above. Investment banks are very, very different. They lubricate stock markets, not the real economy.

They insure companies against losses on

new listings and when raising cash by selling off a segment of their firm.

They also participate in capital markets, especially debt markets, where they are what economists call “market movers”, meaning their actions exert a heavy influence over the direction of assets’ share prices.

It’s that participation in debt markets that has come under scrutiny recently.

While not strictly an investment bank, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) had an enormous exposure to the US treasury market.

It hoovered up American government debt when interest rates were low and bond prices were high (the pair move inversely) to both make sure its balance sheet added up and to comply with US banking rules.

That bet has been gradually souring over the past year due to the US Federal Reserve hiking interest rates (nearly 500 basis points) to tamp down inflation. Bond prices have dropped sharply as traders priced in the higher rate path.

As a result, SVB’s financials crumbled. Those keeping close tabs on it realised what was happening and pulled their cash. They warned others to do so.

A bank run followed, culminating in SVB becoming the second largest banking failure by assets (around $250bn) in American history.

It is at this point the divide between investment and retail banking blurs.

Bank runs share characteristics with

investors ditching stock in a company they don’t like. People realise something’s fishy, want to protect their stake as much as possible and get out before things get worse.

That very action makes the situation worse.

No one involved in the situation has an incentive to work collectively. If everyone held their respective stakes, then the price could withstand pressure. However, if one person sells before the other, they’ll probably rescue a greater amount of their cash.

It’s your classic prisoner’s dilemma.

A dynamic in which a wave of people rush to rescue their savings and store it elsewhere is ruinous for a bank.

Because banks take in deposits that can be called upon at any time and loan those deposits to people who repay it over years if not decades, it means they never at any one time have enough cash on hand to repay all their customers at once.

Panic ensues. The bank ditches its assets in a fire sale to find money to meet deposit demands. Stakeholders pick up on this and rush to save their money. A vicious cycle continues until the bank fails.

That’s exactly what happened to SVB earlier this month.

Not all wobbles in the banking sector are sparked by the same trigger. This time round it was a sharp rise in international interest rates. In 2008 it was prompted by borrowers being unable to repay cash they never should have been lent once the US economy slowed down.

Banks borrow short and lend long, which always gives them a level of underlying risk to changes in sentiment. Beefed-up regulation since the financial crisis has watered down some of those risks though.

But once one bank fails, the tide of opinion changes, causing stakeholders to look to other potential bad players in the sector. Last week they zeroed in on Credit Suisse, which has looked shaky for many years.

Some £45bn had to be injected by the Swiss central bank into the once poster boy of European banking to keep it chugging along, helping to restore market calm. Then something happened over the weekend that forced Swiss regulators to push the nuclear button and force through a tie up with UBS.

If there’s anything this episode should have taught us it is that when economic conditions suddenly change, banks can get caught out.

Governments, regulators and central banks will always stand behind the banking sector to tame any contagion.

But the world’s largest financial institutions are not immune to everything.

City A.M.’s economics editor Jack Barnett takes a deep dive into the state of the economy in his weekly column

WAS THE SECOND LARGEST US BANKING COLLAPSE ON RECORD

STILL STANDING Selfridges celebrates Elton John with new display of memorabilia

ELTON John fans can now see his costumes up close at Selfridges as the iconic Oxford Street store puts coveted pieces from his archive on display alongside a new collection of Elton-inspired sunglasses to buy.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

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CITY of LONDON

The PLANNING ACTS and the Orders and Regulations made thereunder

This notice gives details of applications registered by the Department of The Built Environment Code: FULL/FULMAJ/FULEIA/FULLR3 – Planning Permission; LBC – Listed Building

Consent; TPO – Tree Preservation Order; OUTL – Outline Planning Permission

6 St Andrew Street, London, EC4A 3AE

23/00060/FULL

Application under Section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (as amended) for the variation of Condition 14 (Approved Drawings) of planning permission reference 20/00230/FULL to enable minor material amendments to the approved scheme including: amendments to the roof terrace layout for additional usable terrace and amenity

The Arcade, Liverpool Street, London, EC2M 7PN

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Demolition and re-building of a glazed brick wall on the south east elevation of Liverpool Street

Warnford Court, 29 Throgmorton Street, London, EC2N 2AT

23/00145/FULMAJ

Avanti on right track as contract gets extended

NEIL LANCEFIELD

TRAIN operator Avanti West Coast has been handed a short-term contract extension by the Department for Transport (DfT), the Firstgroup-owned company said.

The operator has struggled with reliability and punctuality during parts of the past year.

Its contract was due to expire at the end of March but has been extended until 15 October.

A win for the Dons - of the Cambridge type

PA REPORTER

THE UNIVERSITY of Cambridge makes a financial contribution to the UK almost four times that of the Premier League, a new report has suggested.

“[This week’s] agreement allows our team to continue their focus on delivering their robust plans to continue enhancing services for our customers, including further progress on our train upgrade and refurbishment programme.”

Transport secretary Mark Harper said a plan produced by Avanti West Coast after the DfT handed the operator a six-month contract renewal in October 2022 “is working”.

He said: “The routes

Analysis of economic impact found the university adds nearly £30bn to the UK economy every year through a combination of research, entrepreneurial activities, tourism and enhanced value that graduates bring to employment.

The report was commissioned by Cambridge University and carried out by London Economics.

68 Retail Unit, King William Street, London, EC4N 7HR

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Installation of three metal gilded decorative

and metal bronze cladding to the plinths of 37 Fleet Street, London, EC4Y 1BT 23/00209/LBC

The redecoration of colleague meeting rooms

37 Fleet Street, London, EC4Y 1BT 23/00211/LBC & 23/00214/FULL

Firstgroup chief executive Graham Sutherland said: “We are working closely with government and our partners across the industry to deliver a successful railway for our customers and communities.

“Performance at Avanti is steadily improving and, since the introduction of the new timetable in mid-December, the number of services has increased by more than 40 per cent compared to last summer, with more seats and better frequencies.

SPORT

Train operator Avanti seems to have turned the corner with its timetable

Avanti West Coast run are absolutely vital, and I fully understand the frustrations passengers felt at the completely unacceptable services seen last autumn.

“Following our intervention, rail minister Huw Merriman and I have worked closely with local leaders to put a robust plan in place, which I’m glad to see is working.”

Championship

CITY A.M. SPORT

PAGES 19-20

parking and end of journey facilities and creation

42 Breton House, Barbican, London, EC2Y 8DQ

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509 Willoughby House, Barbican, London, EC2Y 8BN

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Proposed shower room and storage platform

30 Old Jewry, London, EC2R 8DQ

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Application under Section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (as amended) to vary condition 10 (opening hours) of planning

91 Cromwell Tower, Barbican, London, EC2Y 8DD

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Internal alterations comprising the removal of non-original partition wall and the refurbishment of the kitchen / living room area

New Moon Public House, 88 Gracechurch Street, London, EC3V 0DN 23/00246/LBC

Application under section 19 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 to vary the approved drawings listed under condition 4 of the listed building consent 22/00763/LBC granted on 28th December 2022 to enable alterations to the location of the food hoist

Anyone who wishes to make representations about this application should do so online:

Any observations must be received within a period of 21 days beginning with the date of this notice (unless otherwise stated) and will be taken into account in the

In the event that an appeal against a decision of the Council proceeds by way of the

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City of London (Various Powers) Act 1967

Notice is hereby given that the Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of the City of London, acting by the Planning and Transportation Committee, have made a resolution under section 6 of the City of London (Various Powers) Act 1967.

The resolution is to declare to be a city walkway all that way or place known as Globe View Walkway

• The length of Riverside Walkway between Stew Lane and Broken Wharf as shown hatched on the city walkway declaration plan labelled 1. Plan Number: CWDP-03-10 attached to the resolution.

The resolution will take effect from Wednesday 22 March 2023.

A copy of the declaration including plan of the new city walkway may be requested by e-mail from

Dated day Tuesday 21st March 2023.

Gwyn Richards Director of Planning and Development

Data from the 2020-2021 academic year was used to calculate the net economic impact on the UK economy as £29.8bn and concludes that the university supports more than 86,000 jobs across the country.

“For every £1m of publicly funded research income we receive, we generate £12.65m in economic impact across the UK,” the report said.

Nearly 80 per cent of the £29.8bn was made up of research and knowledge exchange activities, which included the 178 spin-out and 213 start-ups that have emerged from the Cambridge cluster.

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Notice is hereby given that the Common Council of the City made several Orders on 16 March 2023 under Section 14(1) of

Cooper’s Row Bridge Works

Fore Street Avenue Utility Works

Lombard Street Mobile Crane

Queen Victoria Street Resurfacing

Ian Hughes

21 March

The City A.M. Six Nations team of the tournament following on from the 2023

CITY DASHBOARD

LONDON REPORT

Index closes up as hopes rise Credit Suisse deal will steady market

MARKETS managed to shrug off turmoil in the banking sector to finish yesterday higher despite huge turmoil in the financial sector.

The FTSE 100 closed 0.93 per cent higher at 7,403.85 points, while the domestically-focused midcap FTSE 250 index, which is more aligned with the health of the UK economy, climbed 0.13 per cent to close at 18,495.13 points.

In France, the CAC climbed 1.28 per cent while Germany’s DAX rose 1.04 per cent.

Having opened the day significantly lower, banks in Europe recovered across the board with many even posting gains.

UBS finished the day 1.5 per cent higher, having traded over 10 per cent down earlier in the day.

Elsewhere in Europe, BNP Paribas rose 1.9 per cent, Santander climbed 2.5 per cent, Unicredit rose 2.4 per cent.

Deutsche Bank, however, bucked the trend falling 0.8 per cent. The Stoxx 600 banking index climbed 1.2 per cent.

Things were worse in the UK, where Barclays fell 3.1 per cent and Lloyds was down 0.3 per cent. HSBC and Natwest both fell 0.1 per cent.

There had been concerns earlier in the day after Credit Suisse’s alternative tier 1 (AT1) bondholders were wiped out in the merger with UBS. Traditionally, bondholders are higher than shareholders in the hierarchy to receive compensation if a bank goes bust. Reversing the hierarchy risked increasing bank funding costs by making bond investments more risky.

But after reassuring statements from both the ECB and the Bank of England, markets started recovering.

Analysts also stressed that Credit Suisse’s problems should not pose a risk to wider financial stability.

“Credit Suisse is a somewhat isolated case within the broader European banking sector. European banks perform well under stringent stress tests,” Tom Rivers, head of investment strategy at Cardano, said.

BEST OF THE BROKERS

To appear in Best of the Brokers, email your research to notes@cityam.com

Shares in Burford Capital dropped last week after the litigation financing specialist delayed the publication of its full accounts. However, Analysts at Peel Hunt said the issue is “unfortunate”, arguing that the firm has “been on the side of conservatism” and that it expects to see a “potentially large uplift” to book value per share. Peel Hunt rated it a ‘buy’ and set a target price of 1,000p.

102

100

Ten Lifestyle Group, the global travel and lifestyle concierge company, said yesterday that it expects to report half year net revenue of £30.9m, up 48 per cent from 20.8m for the same period last year. This, Peel Hunt said, secures Ten for the next half of the year. “We maintain our earnings estimates, which imply its first net profit for 8+ years,” Peel Hunt analysts said. It reiterated its ‘buy’ rating and has a target price set at 182p.

WAITING FOR THE MARKET TO STABILISE “It is too early to say for sure that things have meaningfully stabilised. It stops once investors stop wondering who’s next.”

NEIL WILSON, FINALTO

OPINION

EDITED BY SASCHA O’SULLIVAN

Panic, just a little bit of panic, was enough to drive Credit Suisse off a cliff

Jeffrey Epstein”) but they are not systemic in the way the management failures and scandal were at Credit Suisse. No matter how much they tried to turn over a new leaf, someone always came along with a blow torch.

IT IS panic, a little bit of panic. I believe [it is] completely unwarranted, whether it be for Credit Suisse or the entire market,” said the chairman of the Saudi National Bank, Ammar Al Khudairy, after he said the largest shareholder would not inject any more funds into the Swiss banking giant.

Al Khudairy was right. As many people have noted, extending further funds to Credit Suisse would have been madness. But he was wrong in underestimating the power of just “a little bit of panic”.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank was a specific failure, related to a general problem of rising interest rates. It was a bank heavily exposed to the tech sector, which has taken a pummelling over the last six months. It had effectively bet $75bn on interest rates not going up, and when they did, it hurt. When SVB fell, there was a rush to insist it was not “systemically important”.

It was not, as the banks in 2008 were, too big to fail.

In theory, the collapse of SVB should have had little to do with the run on Credit Suisse. The problems Credit Suisse has faced over the last few years are well documented, from the resignation of chief Tidjane Thiam over a corporate spying scandal, to racking up billions of dollars of losses linked to the twin implosions of Archegos and Greensill Capital.

Others familiar with the investment banking division of Credit Suisse point to a much longer history of difficulties, such as the acquisition of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, when, in the wake of the 1990s Internet Bubble, the bank bought DLJ for nearly three times the firm’s book value, as well as the illfated and short-lived reign of John Mack.

But, as of last October, a new chief executive hatched a plan to pull Credit Suisse back from the doldrums and dig itself out of the almighty hole of a decade or two of costly, high-risk decisions.

Switzerland's banking system was rooting for it to succeed.

The decision from the Swiss National Bank to loan more than $50bn to

Credit Suisse was not only a sign of its systemic importance; the intervention also sought to protect the reputation of Swiss banks more broadly.

The move should have shored up enough confidence to tide it over and

give it time to implement a long-term solution, like the plan to spin-off its investment banking arm.

But after the collapse of SVB, investors and the bank's customers were on high alert for signs of shakiness.

While the problems at Credit Suisse were very different to those at the US tech bank, skittish bank-watchers are not entirely rational creatures, and Credit Suisse was duly hit by a flood of outflows and a mass sell-off.

The risk of contagion is, hopefully, limited - markets after all seemed more relaxed than expected yesterday.

Sure, there are reputational problems at other banks (as one seasoned investment banking exec put: “Deutsche hasn’t covered itself in glory, and the ex-Barclays CEO was best mates with

Credit Suisse failed time and time again to learn the importance of risk management

LIKE so many other innovations, Credit Suisse was born of the railways. It was founded in 1856 to fund the expansion of Switzerland’s rail network, and yesterday its Zürich neighbours UBS agreed to buy it for CHF 3bn ($3.2bn). The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank earlier this month had caused the financial markets to shudder, and when the chairman of Saudi National Bank, Ammar Al Khudairy, Credit Suisse’s largest shareholder, casually told a Bloomberg interviewer that his firm would “absolutely not” be investing further, the share price slid by a third. The Swiss government intervened and brokered this weekend’s all-stock deal.

Sometimes life comes at you fast.

Credit Suisse is a big institution, with 50,000 staff worldwide and CHF 1.3 trillion of assets under management. But it would be dangerous to overemphasise the link with the problems of Silicon Valley Bank, because in truth

Credit Suisse has been struggling for some years. It is interesting to read the signals coming from UBS about their

Eliot Wilson

stain, and being fined for money laundering for a Bulgarian cocaine ring last year did not help.

Some will be keen to stomp on the grave of the Swiss bank, but its wounds should not have meant a sentence to the next available appointment with the guillotine.

It was panic, just a little panic, and people talking themselves into further fear. At Credit Suisse, this fear had enough recent history to feel warranted, even if, in the eyes Al Khudairy, it wasn’t rational.

And there was certainly a lot of gloom in investment banking circles yesterday.

One senior boss at a top US investment firm with offices in London estimated thousands of job losses from the 5,500 Credit Suisse employees in the UK.

The slump in shares in European Banks undoubtedly sounded significant alarm bells. It could be passed off as one of two things: fear or greed. Fear that there are undisclosed problems at other European banks that we don’t know about, or greed because punters are shorting those same banks in case there is a problem nobody knows about. It is most likely the former. Either way, there are a lot of people looking for the next domino. But we should not let fear drive us into a state of madness.

If panic, a little bit of panic, unwarranted or not, is enough to drive a giant like Credit Suisse to the ground, the same formula, applied to a different set of circumstances could create contagion if it is not stopped in its tracks.

THE BORIS SHOW

plans for the new entity: Colm Kelleher, the Oxford-educated Corkman who has chaired UBS since last year, has already spoken of the need to “derisk” Credit Suisse’s “tricky businesses”, and align its corporate culture with that of UBS. The investment arm of Credit Suisse will be wound down, as UBS already has that capability in its arsenal.

For many years, Credit Suisse had the reputational cloud of offering financial services to wealthy criminals and corrupt politicians including Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Zaïre’s Mobutu Sese Seko. Expensive endorsement by Swiss tennis legend Roger Federer did not quite erase the

Moreover, there have been longstanding questions over Credit Suisse’s risk management, as it almost seemed to flirt with doubtful situations in an attempt to shrug off its staid cuckooclock image with its brasher, showier Wall Street friends. The bank lost $5.5bn in the collapse of Archegos Capital in 2021 (with a notional exposure of some $20bn), and its chief risk and compliance officer, Lara Warner, suddenly found herself with exciting new career options away from Credit Suisse and her risk and compliance functions split between different executives

The culture at Credit Suisse had been corrosive for some time. Warner’s regime had seen risk managers subjugated to tech gurus and a reliance on a toxic combination of not asking too many questions and depending on clever people to make clever decisions to squeak through a crisis. This was potentiated when, in the two years before the Archegos crisis in 2021, Credit Su-

isse saw 40 per cent of its senior managers depart. If you rely on muscle memory and the experience of battle, losing nearly half of your best people will undermine you fatally, as it turns out.

Is this a cautionary tale? Some will point to the fact that Credit Suisse weathered the global financial crisis without needing a bailout, unlike UBS—of course, an injection of Middle Eastern cash helped—but the scandals have been too frequent, too numerous, too embarrassing and too indicative of a culture which has let ambition overshadow prudence. Older readers will have uncomfortable flashbacks to the reckless trading of a young Nick Leeson at Barings. Credit Suisse should now be safe, in the short term, though the days of the brand may be numbered, but another stomach-lurching weekend has to provide a wake-up call for the whole sector: don’t be like Icarus. Icarus was not a good banker.

£ Eliot Wilson is co-founder of Pivot Point and a columnist at City A.M.

UBS agreed an emergency takeover of Credit Suisse over the weekend

Tomorrow we’ll be treated with re-runs from the previous government, as the House of Commons Privileges Committed exorcises the partygate scandal under Boris Johnson’s premiership.

Yesterday, in anticipation, we were treated to a thoughtful debate on the legality of cake

Sascha O’Sullivan

Comment and features editor at City AM

The credit line from the Swiss National Bank should have bought Credit Suisse more time

WE WANT TO HEAR YOUR VIEWS

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR A step ahead of mortgage debt

[Re: Londoners most at risk of being among the 350,000 UK borrowers who will struggle to repay their mortgage, regulator warns, March 10]

The FCA’s call for flexibility on mortgage repayments to support struggling homeowners highlights the financial stress many people in the UK are currently experiencing. Tink’s research shows that nearly one in four (24 per cent) Brits have already missed, or expect to miss, a mortgage or rent payment due to the rising cost of living. But there are ways that banks can harness financial technology to help support people in challenging economic times.

Using the transaction data held in

people’s bank accounts gives banks upto-date visibility of a borrower's incomings and outgoings, to make more accurate affordability assessments. This can help reduce the risk of defaults or missed payments further down the line.

It also gives banks a holistic insight into someone’s overall financial situation. This allows them to recognise when customers might be facing financial distress and intervene with tailored financial support.

That’s why it’s important that financial institutions harness bank account data to help them make better, more accurate lending decisions. And why banks and regulators should continue to prioritise open banking as a vital enabler of better financial services to support customers during the current cost of living crisis.

Tasha Chouhan Tink

GREEK TRAGEDY Greece ‘might not give back’ Elgin Marbles to the UK

In the absence of fresh cash, it will be trade which drives further growth in the UK

Chris Southworth

HOW did we get to a place where potholes are talked about more than trade in a major growth budget? As important as potholes are, they won’t fix the economy.

To drive growth, we need transformative programmes that will unleash capital and innovation. Trade can and should be at the heart of the programme. But last week’s Budget passed up billions in growth opportunities in favour of fixing potholes.

The Budget red book did to its credit mention custom documents, but somehow failed to mention the Electronic Trade Documents Bill, due to come into force in July. This legislation has the potential to deliver £6bn in trade growth, £22bn in efficiency savings, £1bn in working capital to fund growth while cutting the cost of trade transactions by 80 per cent.

It sounds dull, but the bill would enable the entire trade system to go paperless, removing an enormous amount of pain and friction for all trading companies. It is a thorn in the

EXPLAINER-IN-BRIEF: WHAT TO DO WITH A PROBLEM LIKE THE MET POLICE?

If the Met doesn’t prove it is doing better, it risks being broken up. The debate about the failings at the police force is getting renewed urgency as an independent report by crossbench peer Louise Casey gets published today. The report will recommend the Met should lose areas of national responsibility - including counterterrorism - if it doesn’t undergo radical and urgent reform.

The current Met commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, is well aware of the scope of his mission. He has

been actively seeking to change things and be honest about the current problems in the force he’s at the helm of. One of these is a biased legal framework that protects officers from being sacked even when they have clearly been in breach of conduct.

Rowley has openly criticised this system, and home secretary Suella Braverman is said to be in favour of making it easier to sack officers who are corrupt, or found to make misogynistic or racist comments.

side of businesses up and down the country, the trade equivalent of potholes, if you will, except with an enormous potential for windfall. From July, every trading company in the world using English contract law will be able to remove paper from their trade system.

But why tinker with one or two trade documents when you can transform the whole system and more, just by leveraging your own legislation?

The government are well intentioned: they say they are committed to trade and Rishi Sunak as prime minister has worked hard to instil more faith in relationships with massive trading partners like the European Union. But they are still moving too slowly.

Take, for example, the fact that trade finance didn’t feature in the Budget. It funds 40 per cent of trade but is currently tied up in regulatory knots restricting the flow of shortterm working capital to fund SME trade. Much of the budget was not about unleashing huge sums of cash we don’t have, it was about clever policies to try and allow the private sector to nudge the UK back towards a position of growth. But trade finance, which is zero to low-risk, is treated the same as other forms of higher risk finance. To have more companies trading, unleashing more finance into the market is central to the solution.

We also need wholesale reform of export support. Export support needs to come from business experts not civil servants. The government should be leveraging all the resources of the private sector. No other competitor country delivers trade support through the government like the UK does. They work in tight partnership with chambers of commerce and sector associations. In the last 10 years, we have had 20

trade ministers. It’s an impossible environment in which to attract investment and build the kinds of export capabilities of our competitors. It’s time to bite the bullet, focus government resources where it adds most value and leverage the power of the private sector. The Japanese model, where responsibility is shared by the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and the Department for Trade is exceptional and a good place to start. They can mobilise whole supply chains into overseas markets in a way the UK, with its approach of relying solely on the government, can’t. This approach would also save taxpayers up to £1bn over the next 5 years.

International companies are more resilient and grow faster than companies that don’t trade. If we want growth and dynamism in our economy, pulling every lever to support more companies to trade should be front and centre of the growth strategy.

£ Chris Southworth is secretary general of the International Chamber of Commerce

Making trade paperless is the equivalent of filling in potholes to remove friction

Jeremy Hunt said the potholes fund would be increased to £700m a year

British Museum trustees are set to decide over whether to loan the Elgin Marbles to Greece. But Sir Noel Malcolm, an Oxford University academic, writing for Policy Exchange, said trusting promises from Athens was ‘too risky’

MOTORING

LOVE BUZZ

THE COMPUTERindustry uses the term ‘vapourware’ to describe a product that has been announced, but will seemingly never be delivered. Given that Volkswagen revealed a concept version of the reborn Type 2 Microbus in 2001, some questioned if the real thing would ever arrive.

But after two decades and several false starts, the all-electric ID Buzz is finally here. Was it worth the wait?

On looks alone, Volkswagen has a hit. Oozing retro charm, especially with the optional two-tone paintwork, the ID Buzz generates an incredible amount of attention and goodwill. Be prepared for questions in car parks, not to mention people wanting selfies with this classic-inwaiting.

Although it’s shaped like a van (there is a Cargo version available),

the ID Buzz MPV is actually more conventional. It shares a platform with Volkswagen’s electric car range, and has a 77kWh battery powering a 204hp motor on the rear axle. More powerful versions with all-wheel drive are promised for the future.

In the fancier ID Buzz Style, as tested here, the official figures suggest a driving range of 255 miles. However, recent freezing temperatures saw this drop instantly to 190 miles. At least the Volkswagen can charge at speeds of up to 170kW, replenishing its battery to 80 percent capacity in 30 minutes. Plans for cruising the country in a summer of love will need to factor in plenty of charging stops.

Until a seven-seat version arrives later this year, the ID Buzz is strictly a five-seat MPV. The back bench is disappointingly conventional, splitting and folding, but without the ability

VOLKSWAGEN ID. BUZZ

PRICE: FROM £57,115

POWER: 204HP

0-62MPH: 10.2SECS

TOP SPEED: 90MPH

BATTERY SIZE: 77KWH

RANGE: 255MILES

to remove individual seats. The sliding rear doors are a massive bonus, though, and a reminder of why MPVs can beat SUVs for practicality. USB charging points and storage cubbies are dotted around the cabin, too. The bonus of only having five seats is a boot that can be accurately described as ‘cavernous’. It holds 1,121 litres with the rear seats up, and boasts a clever split-level floor in Style trim. This comes with neat drawers beneath the load area, which are per-

fect for storing charging cables. Compared to an equivalent electric SUV, the ID Buzz comes up trumps for luggage space. In the front, it has a minimalist design, with most functions controlled through a central infotainment screen. As with many of its VW peers, this is a frustrating process, although there are buttons beneath to quickly access certain settings. A vast amount of natural light helps the interior feel even more accommodating.

Big windows also help with placing the ID Buzz on the road, as its 2.2-metre width requires your attention. The rest of the driving experience is smooth sailing, though, with instant torque from the electric motor and light, accurate steering. Optional 21-inch alloy wheels made the ride feel a little unsettled on our test car, but the overall vibe is one of calming comfort.

Somewhat less relaxing are the prices. The entry level Life version starts from £57,115, with the Style at £61,915. Including options, our Buzz came in at an eye-watering £69,265, which feels like an awful lot of money for a five-seat people carrier.

In practical terms, the biggest threat to the ID Buzz comes from within. The Volkswagen Multivan offers a more versatile interior (including seven seats) and is cheaper. It may lack an electric drivetrain, but you can choose a plug-in hybrid option.

Still, for those who love the style and image of classic air-cooled VWs, we suspect only the ID Buzz will do. Even with the limitations of this launch version, Volkswagen won’t have a problem finding customers, such is the strength of feeling towards it.

In a head versus heart battle, nostalgia is always likely to win the day, especially after such a long wait.

NEW KIA EV9 ELECTRIC SEVEN-SEAT SUV REVEALED

THE NEWKia EV9 has been revealed – and bosses confirm the range-topping electric car will reach UK showrooms later this year. Boasting a radical design that Kia calls ‘Opposites United’, the EV9 is a large and luxurious SUV with three rows of seats: one of the few electric seven-seaters on sale.

Kia design chief Karim Habib says the EV9 is intended to “redefine standards for design, connectivity, usability and environmental sustainability”. It will sit above the sleek EV6 electric crossover in the South Korean marque’s rapidly growing range. Prices have yet to be confirmed, but are likely to start from around £60,000 – making it

an alternative to the top-selling Tesla Model Y.

Helping the EV9 stand out are simple, clear-cut lines and body surfaces, which Habib says are themed around a polygonal design language. The ‘Digital Tiger Face’ is like something from sci-fi, with two clusters of animated, cube-shaped lights stacked vertically alongside an LED light bar. Because this is an EV, there’s no need for a front grille, furthering the futuristic feel.

Inside, the EV9 is open-plan and luxurious, with plentiful use of plush textiles and colourful ambient lighting: less car, more aircraft on wheels. The Kia E-GMP architecture should serve up good

amounts of interior space, thanks to a long wheelbase and flat floorplan. Kia promises loungestyle comfort in all three rows of seats.

Seven seats will be standard, with a six-seat option that features three rows of cosseting, airlinestyle chairs. Cleverly, the middle-row seats can rotate 180 degrees, so passengers can turn and face those in the rearmost row.

Following this first look, the new EV9 SUV will make its full global premiere in late March. We will then learn more about its electrical underpinnings – including the allimportant range and performance figures.

John Redfern drives the long-awaited Volkswagen ID. Buzz –an electric people carrier that revives the spirit of the 1960s

Irish dominate but Scots and Italians feature in best XV of the tournament, writes Matt Hardy

UNDERSTANDABLY, the City

A.M. Six Nations team of the tournament is made up of a large chunk of the Grand Slam winning Ireland side. Four French players, three Scots and two Italian forwards also make the grade, but chronic underperformance, despite ongoing rebuilds, means there are no Welsh or English representation in the XV.

1. CYRIL BAILLE

While the other side of his scrum saw chopping and changing throughout the Championship, Baille was a constant for Les Bleus this year. He is, quite simply, a beast and key for France getting a solid platform to launch off of.

2. DAN SHEEHAN

Since the days of Rory Best, Ireland have been looking for a talismanic hooker and in Dan Sheehan they may have found it. He is abrasive, dogged and a try-scorer – and was player of the match in their Grand Slam-clinching game against England. He has all the hallmarks of a world class hooker.

3. ZANDER FAGERSON

Scotland’s resurgence this year has been astonishing, and a large part of that is down to the improvement of their set piece. Fagerson has been a brilliant part of a solid front row for the Scots and, alongside Pierre Schoeman at loosehead, has seen Scotland turn the scrum into a real weapon.

4. THIBAUD FLAMENT

Arguably the player of the tournament, Flament is one of the select few who are redefining what locks can do – much like Maro Itoje has been known to. His offloading game was outstanding but he also made the top 10 for tries scored, points scored, successful tackles (81) and lineouts won.

GOLF

TEAM OF THE SIX NATIONS

5. FEDERICO RUZZA

James Ryan was so close to being in this spot but Federico Ruzza got the nod for his brilliant work at the lineout. He won 39 of them, 21 more than second place Ollie Chessum, and was paramount in allowing Italy to have opportunities from which to attack from.

6. MICHELE LAMARO

The back-row is a selection dilemma but Italian captain Michele Lamaro was monstrous in this year’s Championship. Nobody is looking down on former leader Sergio Parisse but Lamaro has developed the ability to galvanise his side into one that nearly beat France and looked so much more like a winning side.

The current world player of the year lived up to the hype yet again this year. The No7 made it into the top five tacklers of the tournament but it’s his aggression around the park that was unmatched. Both in attack and defence, he gave everything.

8. CAELAN DORIS

Caelan Doris looks to be the latest in a line of Irish No8s who can both carry hard off the base but also be omnipresent in a Test match. Doris won a joint-top number of turnovers and was in the top 10 carriers of the tournament.

9. ANTOINE DUPONT

The Petit General was at it again, running the French show and creating so

CITY A.M. TEAM OF THE SIX NATIONS

World Cups are won on having a player who can kick their kicks. Ramos has cemented himself into the French 15 shirt and he makes it into our XV.

12. SIONE TUIPULOTU

It was hard to look past the Scottish 1213 partnership in the team of the tournament. Tuipulotu and Jones combined so well together to cause maximum destruction for the Scots. The inside centre assisted three tries in the tournament –just one off top spot – and was a solid distributor.

13. HUW JONES

tackle against Ireland will live long in the memory but his accuracy from the base and eyes-up rugby is still world-leading.

10. JOHNNY SEXTON

The Irish fly-half was orchestrator extraordinaire across the 2023 Championship and was masterful as ever in taking the ball to the gainline before shipping it for his backs to cause damage outside. His point haul against England took him to the summit of all-time Six Nations points scorers with 566, nine clear of Ronan O’Gara.

11. THOMAS RAMOS

Sticking with points scored, Ramos tallied 84 of his own – a whole 49 clear of second place Sexton. Matches, titles and

Tuipulotu’s partner, Huw Jones, was by far the best outside centre in the tournament. He scored four tries and made over 400m with the ball – the most of any non-back-three player.

14. MACK HANSEN

In his year as an international, Hansen (pictured) has already had a brilliant career. In this tournament he crossed the whitewash three times and was in the top 10 for carries, turnovers won and offloads. He was everywhere.

15. HUGO KEENAN

Keenan completes the XV following a stellar tournament. He topped the metres made statistics with 562 and was in the top 10 for carries, too. The 26-yearold has forced Ramos out on to the wing and has made the full-back shirt one any Irish challenger will struggle to remove from him.

Lee ends eight-year title drought in Arizona

DANNY Lee vindicated his decision to join the LIV Golf League with a first win in eight years at the circuit’s second event of the season in Tucson, Arizona, on Sunday night.

The New Zealander, who was recruited to Kevin Na’s IronHeads team, ended his drought after a four-man play-off with Louis Oosthuizen, Carlos Ortiz and Brendan Steele.

Lee holed a clinching birdie at the third extra hole after his final round of 69 had left him on nine under par and helped the IronHeads finish third in the team competition.

“I haven’t won since 2015. I just felt like winning is just not my thing, but today just changed that,” said the 32year-old, who banked £3.2m ($4m).

“It’s just good to see I’m capable of playing some good golf again. I wasn’t even looking at the individual score all day. I was only asking ‘how is our team doing?’. That’s the reason why Kevin called. That’s why I wanted to win as a team. We were a little bit short on the team, but this individual victory means a lot.”

LIV Golf League captains now proac-

tively sign players to their teams and Na toasted his decision to choose Lee for the 2023 campaign.

“I’m extremely proud of him,” he said. “I think I made the right pick.”

Charles Howell III, winner of the first LIV Golf League event of the season in Mexico, led by two shots after making a blistering start on Sunday. He fell back to finish fifth but the American is the early pacesetter in the individual standings, ahead of Ortiz and Lee.

Former Open champion Oosthuizen looked on course to finally win a maiden title on US soil when he also led by two with five holes to

play.

But the captain of all-South African team Stinger made three bogeys in four holes and needed a birdie at 18 just to force his way into the play-off.

Ortiz’s round of 65 was the best of the day and, although not quite enough to land the individual crown, ensured the Fireballs won the team competition on 25 under par.While captain Sergio Garcia and team-mates Abraham Ancer and Eugenio

SOLO AND TEAM LEADERBOARDS

Chacarra laboured to over-par rounds, Mexican Ortiz did the heavy lifting for the all-Latin line-up.

It was Garcia’s second win as captain, following victory in Thailand during last year’s series of invitational tournaments, but his first in the new league format. “Super-proud of all of them,” said the Spaniard. “Especially Carlos, the way he played today. Shame he couldn’t get the individual win. But what a great effort.”

Dustin Johnson’s 4Aces were runners-up on the team leaderboard for the second tournament in a row after finishing four shots back from the Fireballs. Patrick Reed’s 66 and 68s from Johnson and Peter Uihlein saw them top the overall standings. It was a week to forget, however, for many of the British contingent. Ian Poulter’s Majesticks, who include Lee Westwood and Sam Horsfield, finished last in the team competition and remain bottom of the standings.

SOLO LEADERBOARD

-9* Danny Lee

-9 Carlos Ortiz

-9 Brendan Steele

-9 Louis Oosthuizen

-8 Charles Howell III

TEAM LEADERBOARD

-25 Fireballs (Garcia, Ortiz, Ancer, Chacarra)

-21 4Aces (Johnson, Reed, Uihlein, Perez)

-19 IronHeads (Na, Lee, Vincent, Kim)

-16 Stinger (Oosthuizen, Schwartzel, Grace, Burmester)

-16 Ripper (Smith, Leishman, Jones, Morgan)

*Lee won the play-off at the third extra hole

Danny Lee beat Oosthuizen, Ortiz and Steele in a play-off

New Zealander wins four-man play-off in Tucson in second start for IronHeads in LIV Golf League, writes Frank Dalleres

SPORT

MP: TikTok deal with Women’s Six Nations ‘disappointing’

MATT HARDY

A SENIOR UK Parliamentary committee chair has questioned TikTok’s sponsorship of the Women’s Six Nations, calling the deal “disappointing”.

Alicia Kearns, MP for Rutland and Melton and chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, told City A.M. of her concerns that the Chinese-owned social media platform is “being promoted through European and British Sport”.

The app, commonly used for popular dances but more recently as a content creation and news outlet, last year signed a deal to become title sponsors of the Women’s Six Nations until 2025.

It comes after the BBC joined the UK Government, EU Commission and United States Government in banning the app on official devices over fears about its data harvesting.

“The sponsorship of the Women’s Six Nations Rugby Tournament by TikTok is disappointing,” Kearns told City A.M. “We need to all challenge the continued acceptance of data exploiting technologies on our streets and in our pockets.

“I am disappointed that TikTok is being promoted through European and British Sport at a time when we should all be discussing the importance of our data in the public.

“TikTok’s ability to act as a data Tro-

FOOTBALL

BEST OF THE SIX (NATIONS)

Who made City A.M’s team of the Championship? PAGE 19

THREE’S A CROWD Rashford, Mount and Pope to

miss internationals

jan Horse remains a concern, and the Government’s recent decision to ban TikTok on Government devices and create a pre-approved app list should set a precedent for the rest of the country.”

The row threatens to cast a shadow over the start of the Women’s Six Nations this weekend. The competition is enjoying greater prominence, taking place in a separate window to the men’s championship for the second consecutive season.

The crescendo is set to be England’s clash with France at Twickenham with organisers hoping to break the world record for the

FOOTBALL

biggest crowd at the Women’s Six Nations. Ireland completed the Grand Slam in the men’s competition on Sunday.

City A.M. approached the Six Nations for comment.

TikTok remains a partner of the men’s Six Nations and was the first digital entertainment platform to sponsor a major international football tournament when it struck a deal with Euro 2020.

The app is also one of a number of kit partnerships to be confirmed in the last couple of seasons with Wrexham –the football team owned by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

Chelsea yet to make formal approach to use Twickenham

FRANK DALLERES AND MATT HARDY

CHELSEA are yet to make a formal approach about playing matches at Twickenham Stadium while Stamford Bridge is rebuilt, City A.M. understands.

The Blues are reported to have drawn up a shortlist of possible venues at which to play home fixtures should they demolish their ground and build a new 60,000seater arena. Twickenham, seven miles south-west of Stamford Bridge, is said to have been earmarked as one possible location for the club’s biggest Premier League and European games. But it

is understood that Chelsea chiefs are yet to make any formal approach to the Rugby Football Union to use the 82,000-seater.

The Premier League club face several years of disruption should they press ahead with plans to redevelop Stamford Bridge at an estimated cost of £2bn.

Chelsea could groundshare Fulham’s Craven Cottage, which is itself currently being upgraded, for the majority of home games, the Mail on Sunday reported.

Twickenham or Wembley Stadium, which holds 90,000, would be options for matches likely to attract the biggest crowds.

England trio Marcus Rashford, Mason Mount and Nick Pope have withdrawn from the international squad set to play Italy and Ukraine due to injury. The Manchester United striker Rashford picked up a knock in his side’s FA Cup win on Sunday, Chelsea midfielder Mount is recovering from an ankle injury and Newcastle goalkeeper Pope was injured last Friday. “No further replacements are planned and 23 players arrived at St. George’s Park on Monday,” said an England statement. Gareth Southgate’s side play the first of their two Euro 2024 qualifiers in this international break against Italy in Naples on Thursday before hosting Ukraine at Wembley Stadium three days later on Sunday evening.

Two United hopefuls set to issue revised bids

FRANK DALLERES

SIR JIM Ratcliffe and Qatari Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Al Thani are expected to make second offers for Manchester United this week.

The Raine Group, which is running the sale for United’s owners the Glazer family, has set a deadline of Wednesday for revised bids. Both Ratcliffe and a party acting for Sheikh Jassim visited Old Trafford last week for presentations on the club and its finances.

The two suitors are expected to follow up with new bids before Raine’s deadline.

There is a growing sense that

Sheikh Jassim is the favourite to buy United for what seems certain to be a world record sum for a sports team.

The son of the former prime minister of Qatar is keen to buy United outright, and his enthusiasm for acquiring the club is matched by other key powerbrokers in the state. There are also questions about how high Ineos chairman Ratcliffe is willing to bid, given that his offer, for the Glazers’ majority holding, is thought to be heavily reliant on debt.

The Glazers set an asking price of £6bn when they put the 20-time English champions up for sale in

CRICKET

November. The absence of more than two bidders for the club has, however, reduced the prospect of achieving that valuation.

Raine has attempted to create an auction similar to the one they ran for Chelsea last year, which saw Todd Boehly’s consortium agree to pay £2.5bn and pledge to invest a further £1.75bn.

But there is a feeling that Sheikh Jassim is almost bidding against himself and therefore does not need to reach £6bn.

If he was successful United would be the second European giant to become Qatari owned, after Paris Saint-Germain.

World Cup winner Plunkett signs US

T20 cricket deal

MATT HARDY

ENGLAND 50-over World Cup winner

Liam Plunkett will be part of the inaugural Major League Cricket competition in the United States after signing for a franchise across the pond.

The former international bowler will play for the San Francisco Unicorns when the MLC competition gets underway in July.

Due to the 37-year-old’s wife being from the States, Plunkett counts as a domestic cricketer and not one of the limited overseas players.

The Unicorns are joined in the inaugural season of the competition by the Texas Super Kings, Los Angeles Knight

Riders, MI New York, Seattle Orcas and Washington Freedom.

Australian Aaron Finch will also join the Unicorns while fellow Green and Golds Marcus Stoinis will play for the San Francisco franchise. Mitchell Marsh has agreed to become an Orca and Matthew Wade is set for a stint in Texas.

Plunkett has previously stated an interest in playing for the United States national team.

MLC will see six teams compete in 19 matches over a three-week period. Some of the franchises have investment from India while others have capital injected from Australian cricket and American funds.

The Women’s Six Nations signed a deal with TikTok until 2025