Monday 26 June 2023

LISBON LIVING INSIDE EUROPE’S HOTTEST CITY

WEEKEND P16-17

PARTIES SET FOR BATTLE OVER RATES

TORIES AND LABOUR CLASH OVER MORTGAGE PRESSURE

PRIME Minister Rishi Sunak has urged the country to “hold our nerve” with sky high interest rates in order to beat down scorching inflation.

Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Sunak gave his full backing to the Bank of England’s latest interest rate rise as Tory backbenchers slammed governor Andrew Bailey for being “asleep at the wheel”.

“The Bank of England is doing the right thing. The Bank of England has my total support,” the PM said, adding that “inflation is the enemy”.

Fears have mounted in recent weeks over elevated borrowing costs tipping the UK into a recession.

Members of the ninestrong Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) last week jacked up offi-

cial rates 50 basis points to five per cent, their highest level since 2008.

But financial markets think the Bank will have to go further to strain inflation out of the UK economy, betting that rates will peak at more than six per cent.

“I get that this is challenging, but we’ve got to stick to the course,” Sunak said.

“I want people to be reassured that we’ve got to hold our nerve, stick to the plan and we will get through this,” the PM added.

Inflation remained stuck at 8.7 per cent in May despite Bailey and co already lifting rates 12 times in a row in the most aggressive tightening cycle since the 1980s. Last Thursday’s rate rise was the 13th straight jump.

Tory backbencher Sir Jake Berry laid into the Bank yesterday, saying it had pursued ‘blobonomics’ and accused Bailey of being

“asleep at the wheel”.

Senior Labour figures said the government’s deal with mortgage lenders to slow the speed of repossessions would need to be mandatory to have any impact.

And Lisa Nandy also increased pressure on Britain’s banks, saying that if Labour were in power the party would mandate banks pass on higher interest rates to savers. Currently the gap between savings rates and lending rates, banks’ net interest margin, sits at around three percentage points.

“What we are proposing is that the government ensures that those [interest rate] rises are passed on so that it’s more attractive for people to put money into savings in order to help cool the economy,” Nandy said.

The shadow communities secretary argued that this would help bring inflation down because people would be more likely to save money rather than spend it.

CITY ON SHOW Tourism vital to Square Mile’s economic future

JAMES SILVER

THE CITY of London cannot “overlook” the value of tourism and leisure in the post-pandemic rebuild of the Square Mile’s economic engine, the historic area’s most senior policymaker has said.

Writing for City A.M., Chris Hayward, the policy chair of the Corporation of

the City of London, says the next chapter of the Square Mile’s history will “be one that finally acknowledges that tourism is important for the City, and the City is important for tourism”. Visitor numbers are increasing, helping to make up for lost office workers on some days of the week.

Wagner’s aborted Russian revolution set to unsettle already touchy markets

JAMES SILVER

THE UPRISING launched by Russian mercenary group Wagner against members of Vladimir Putin’s government at the weekend –which was called off almost as suddenly as it began –is likely to give traders pause as they return to their

terminals this morning, analysts reckon.

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin organised an unprecedented challenge to the Kremlin’s authority late on Friday evening, taking effective control of at least one major Russian city, before calling for his mercenary troops to

withdraw after a peace deal brokered by Belarussian leader and Putin puppet Aleksandr Lukashenko.

Analysts suggested the uprising’s swift end would alleviate some concerns, but the uncertainty about Putin’s regime and the war in

Ukraine was unlikely to help global "Markets typically do not respond well to events that are unfolding and are uncertain," particularly relating to Putin and Russia, Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist at

LPL Financial, told Reuters. And Michael Hewson, chief markets analyst at CMC Markets, told City A.M. that the peace deal would take the heat out of a “dicey” open but “it won’t have done anything to alleviate uncertainty facing the global economy, after last week’s losses on stock markets”.

YOU BOUGHT IT, YOU OWN IT VIAGOGO CHIEF ON WHY TICKET PLATFORM IS GOOD FOR FANS P11

£ CHRIS HAYWARD: PAGE 14

JACK BARNETT AND STAFF

STANDING UP FOR THE CITY

Bailey’s fair game, but Bank independence should be off the table

CRITICISM of the Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey is not, currently, hard to find. The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’s forecasting has been a disaster; it has fundamentally failed to get ahead of the inflationary cycle; and Bailey has too often come across as either tin-eared, clueless, or keen to distribute the blame somewhere else. All of this is fair game for critics –but it should not tip over into

THE CITY VIEW

government interference.

Rishi Sunak’s pledge at the start of the year to ‘halve inflation’ by the start of 2024 felt at the time the political equivalent of writing atop your to-do list something you’ve already set in train. It was cheeky on two counts: both

in the sense that most analysts expected it to happen, and in that other than slashing taxes it wasn’t really in the government’s gift. A few months down the line and it looks a very unwise hostage to fortune, and one wonders when this promise may fall off the email signatures of government employees if price hikes continue to prove stickier than expected. It is already apparent that some ministers are keen to separate

Rishi Sunak and the government from these inflation numbers. Last week, the transport secretary claimed that the PM had seen inflation coming far earlier than the Bank, and whilst that may be true, that doesn’t necessarily put Sunak in rare company. Backbenchers are also picking fights with the governor as they hope to frame inflation as a Bank of England cock-up rather than something they can be blamed for at the ballot box.

I’M STILL STANDING Legendary singer-songwriter Elton John took to the stage for his final show in the UK last night as he headlined Glastonbury Festival’s Sunday evening slot

Labour now 25 points clear of Tories as mortgage rates batter Rishi Sunak’s party

BEN LUCAS

LABOUR has posted its biggest lead over the Conservatives since March, new polling data has revealed, as the public grows increasingly tired of the government’s perceived mismanagement of the economy.

Labour’s vote share jumped four points to 47 per cent, giving the opposition party a 25 point lead over the Tories, according to fresh polling data by YouGov.

The Conservative Party’s vote share dipped two points to 22 per cent, according to the data, which surveyed

nearly 2,300 UK adults voting intentions between June 20 and 21. This is the party’s worst result since February.

The latest polling also found that three quarters of Brits think the government is handling the economy badly, up four points from the proportion of people who said so last week. It comes after inflation failed to come down in May, staying at 8.7 per cent, which, along with other factors, forced the Bank of England to haul interest rates up by 50 bps to five per cent on Thursday.

The move is expected to heap even greater pain onto mortgage holders in

the UK, with an average two-year mortgage now over six per cent.

The move forced Chancellor Jeremy Hunt on Friday to announce new measures to help mortgage holders after emergency talks with the chiefs of the UK’s biggest high-street banks, with lenders agreeing to wait at least 12 months before repossessing homes of borrowers that fall behind on payments.

The policy goes further than Labour’s proposed plan to address the problem, which only sought to make lenders wait six months before initiating repossession proceedings.

It is not that long ago that a Tory candidate for prime minister, Liz Truss, sent acolytes to the press to dangle the possibility of tweaking the Bank’s independence regime. It is not impossible to see such calls re-emerge. They would be unwise. The Bank’s independence is, and has been, a vital part of the City’s economic engineering. To undo it would be misjudged. As misjudged, perhaps, as some believe the current governor’s appointment to have been.

WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING

QUEEN WAS ASKED TO BLOCK

LORD LEBEDEV’S PEERAGE, CLAIMS DOCUMENTARY Government officials asked whether the late Queen would block Evgeny Lebedev’s peerage because of concerns that he could be a national security risk, a Channel 4 documentary has claimed.

THE FINANCIAL TIMES

KYRIAKOS MITSOTAKIS WINS BY A LANDSLIDE IN GREEK ELECTIONS

Greece’s Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his centre-right party New Democracy won by a landslide in elections on Sunday and pledged to “transform Greece” in his second term in office.

THE TELEGRAPH

DAVID CAMERON IS MY INSPIRATION, SAYS TORY LONDON MAYOR CANDIDATE

A contender to be the Tory candidate for London mayor, Daniel Korski, has said he will take inspiration for the contest from David Cameron and the West Midlands mayor Andy Street.

British businesses struggling to source cash amid rate hikes

JACK BARNETT

BRITISH businesses are struggling to source cash to fuel growth as lenders retrench from the credit market after the Bank of England’s 13 straight interest rate rises, new research out last night showed.

Just over nine in 10 mid-sized firms are running into roadblocks when trying to secure financing, prompting them to shelve expansion plans, according to consultancy BDO.

Greater difficulty in bagging capital among mid-sized firms is likely to have been driven by the Bank lifting

borrowing costs sharply to tame inflation, causing banks to be more cautious about who they lend to for fear of borrowers being unable to meet their debt obligations.

Nearly a quarter of the 500 chiefs of mid-sized companies surveyed by BDO intend to make redundancies or scale back activity due to being unable to find funding.

“Despite staying resilient through an incredibly difficult time, tough challenges remain for mid-sized businesses, with access to capital becoming a critical issue,” Richard Austin, partner at BDO, said.

THE GUARDIAN

BIS: Still a way to go on rates to tame inflation

JACK BARNETT

THE BANK of England and the rest of the world’s top monetary authorities’ fight against roaring inflation “is not yet done,” one of the globe’s leading economic institutions has warned.

In its annual analysis on the state of the world economy released today, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), often referred to as the “central bank of central banks”, has claimed inflation risks staying higher for longer if monetary authorities ease off the brake too soon.

The warning comes as stubbornly high inflation forced the Bank of England last week to lift interest rates 50 basis points to five per cent, its 13th straight rise.

Financial markets reckon governor Andrew Bailey and the rest of the monetary policy committee are set to boost rates to more than six per cent.

“While the central bank response to the inflation surge has been forceful and has clearly started to bear fruit, the job is not yet done,” the BIS said in its annual economic report.

“Policy rates may need to remain higher for longer to ensure that inflation continues to decline and stays low,” the report said.

Agustín Carstens, BIS general manager, said: “The key policy challenge today remains fully taming inflation, and the last mile is typically the hardest. The burden is falling on many shoulders, but the risks from not acting promptly will be greater in the long term.”

Other central banks have been tightening monetary policy at the fastest pace in four decades. Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell and the rest of the federal open market committee have jacked up rates to a range of five per cent and 5.25 per cent from near zero in just over a year.

Braemar shares at risk over delayed results

LAURA MCGUIRE

SHARES in London-listed shipbroker Braemar could be suspended if it further delays the publication of its full-year results.

Braemar said in a statement last month it would publish its accounts for the year ending 28 February “in the second half of June 2023”.

Official statistics show that last year more than 154,000 Ukrainians arrived in Britain

in five UK employers has hired

Onea Ukrainian, report reveals

LUCY KENNINGHAM

NINETEEN per cent of businesses surveyed by the Social Market Foundation (SMF) hired at least one Ukrainian national in 2022, a new report has shown.

In their survey of 2,000 HR managers – conducted by YouGov on behalf of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development – the SMF

also found 12 per cent of respondents said they had employed a Hong Kong British national. SMF senior fellow Jonathan Thomas said the survey showed Britain’s openness to economically integrating new arrivals through whatever immigration route they have come. “These people didn’t come here looking for work, but they are now... filling labour gaps that hold back the economy,” he said.

But, according to a report by Sky News, the business is set to tell investors in the coming days that it will not meet this June deadline.

The firm’s auditor BDO is concerned with some aspects of the accounts, the report said, and has drafted in professional services firm FRP Advisory to investigate the issues.

One source familiar with the matter told Sky News that Braemar’s shares faced being suspended as soon as this week.

Braemar, which has a market capitalisation of roughly £92m, declined to comment on the report, while BDO and FRP Advisory didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Its share price is down nearly 10 per cent since the start of the year.

More ‘firepower’ needed after SVB and CS collapse, says EU regulator

CHRIS DORRELL

AN INFLUENTIAL European banking regulator has called for more powers to help it address risks in the system revealed after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Credit Suisse (CS) earlier this year.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Dominique Laboureix, chair of the European Union’s Single Resolution

Board (SRB), said European authorities needed to return to the “drawing board” to ensure banks had sufficient funding in the event of a resolution.

Laboureix suggested the SRB needs more powers to perform its role adequately. Currently it receives funding through the Single Resolution Fund and the European Stability Mechanism.

Laboureix suggested the European

Central Bank should help fund banks in resolution, potentially backed by an EU government guarantee.

The idea is to increase “firepower” so in certain circumstances they “had a bit more of a solution” on liquidity, he said.

Laboureix joins international regulators considering how the banking system should adapt after the collapse of SVB and CS in spring.

Impact of Britcoin should ‘not be underestimated’

CHRIS DORRELL

CITY bankers have raised concerns about the possible consequences that introducing the digital pound, known as ‘Britcoin’, could have on the country’s banking sector.

“At stake is not just the type of token we use to pay for things but the structure of finance itself,” Huw van Steenis, vice chair at Oliver Wyman, told City A.M.

“Do not underestimate the potential financial stability and monetary policy impacts,” he warned.

Foremost among the concerns in the banking sector were worries that a digital pound could reduce the level of deposits at commercial banks, having knock-on effects for lending in the wider economy.

Modelling by the Bank of England (BoE) suggests that up to 20 per cent of commercial bank deposits could move out of bank accounts into digital pound wallets if a new central bank digital currency (CBDC) was adopted.

This would have a material impact on the funding of retail banks, as deposits are the cheapest form of funding. In order to mitigate concerns that banks will lose access to lots of cash, the Bank

has proposed a temporary limit on holdings of between £10,000 and £20,000.

But several sources said this was too high.

One senior banker told City A.M. that the European Central Bank’s proposed limit of €3,000 “is much more sensible as far as we’re concerned”.

Bank official Jon Cunliffe said previously that this limit struck the right balance between ensuring wide usage and managing potential risks.

They added that the Bank’s limit “could have a dramatic, detrimental impact to the world of commercial banking”.

Another bank executive told City A.M. that the limit was far too high, saying “there is a very significant risk to the banking sector”.

In order to replace the funds, which would previously have been in commercial bank accounts, banks would have to secure more wholesale funding.

“Wholesale funding is hugely volatile and much more expensive… this will increase the cost of funds to the bank and ultimately consumers will pay the price,” the executive said.

The BoE, whose consultation on Britcoin closes Friday, declined to comment.

M&G in push to expand reach of flagship fund onto continent

CHRIS DORRELL

M&G IS IN talks with big European financial firms to bring its flagship £58bn Pru Fund range onto the continent, City A.M. understands.

The FTSE 100-listed money manager is seeking partnerships in France and Germany. Under the partnerships, the Pru Fund model would be used to sell products under new names.

The expansion would build on M&G’s movement into Italy and Ireland last

year under the Future brand, which offered investors outside the UK access to a Pru Fund-style product.

The news was first reported by The Sunday Times.

The Pru Fund range, which was launched in 2004, is one of the largest multi-asset funds in Europe. It offers consumers a ‘smoothed’ fund where investors are shielded from the full effects of market volatility.

M&G did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Launched in 2004, the ‘smooth’ Pru Fund is one of Europe’s largest multi-asset funds

PwC Australia to sell government arm for a dollar

JAMES SILVER

PWC’s AUSTRALIAN business is set to offload a government services division that has dragged the firm into weeks of lurid front-page headlines.

The down-under branch of the consulting firm is selling its public sector advisory business to private equity firm Allegro for AU$1, and bringing in a new CEO of the overall business in a bid to put a tax avoidance scandal behind it.

The government services wing accounts for roughly 10 per cent of the firm’s employees in Australia.

The divestment would hit revenues to the tune of around 20 per cent and affect the firm’s “future size and operations,” PwC said.

The consulting giant also announced that Kevin Burrowes would become CEO of the Australian wing.

Since news of the scandal broke, a

host of pension funds have said they wouldn’t do business with PwC, with one last week saying “out of an abundance of caution” it was pulling its business.

Some Australian politicians are pushing for an international investigation into the firm.

Senator Richard Colbeck, the chair of the Australian senate investigation into PwC’s handling of the scandal, last week said “this was something being worked on, negotiated, globally”.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that other jurisdictions should be looking at this matter... it would be in their interests to do so,” he said.

“We have taken this step because it is the right thing to do for our public sector clients and to protect the jobs of the circa 1,750 talented people in our government business,” said PwC Australia board chair Justin Carroll after the news broke yesterday.

SO WHAT DID PWC DO?

Around a decade ago, PwC Oz’s tax expert Peter-John Collins was invited in by the government to help design multi-national tax laws, in theory preventing global firms shifting their tax around. Despite signing a host of confidentiality agreements, Collins shared the intel with colleagues at PwC –who used it to help design ways their clients could avoid paying that very same tax.

OOPS.

What could have been an isolated incident changed into something else

Q&A

when a host of internal emails came to light in which PwC employees talked up the information given to them by Collins. In short –everyone knew, and nobody said anything.

WHO ELSE WAS INVOLVED?

PwC has named at least 67 current and former staff involved in the leak in an unpublished letter to the Australian government. It remains secret.

New Britishvolt owner raided by Oz tax team

BEN LUCAS

THE OFFICES of Britishvolt’s new owner were raided late last week by Australian police over suspicions of tax fraud, according to reports. The British battery firm was bought by Recharge Industries earlier this year after it collapsed into administration.

Recharge is a subsidiary of Scale Facilitation, which is owned by entrepreneur David Collard. According to multiple reports, the offices of Scale Facilitation and Santie X, another Collard company, in Victoria were raided by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) on Friday over alleged tax fraud.

IT and communications equipment were seized by the police as part of the tax fraud probe, according to a report in the Financial Times.

A spokesperson for Scale Facilitation said: “We have and will continue to fully co-operate with the Australian Taxation Office and now the AFP. We deny any wrongdoing and will continue working... to defend any matters arising from these discussions.”

Kevin Burrowes will be the new CEO of PwC’s Australian business

UK car insurers report worst results in decade

CITY A.M. REPORTER

UK MOTOR insurers delivered their worst performance in a decade last year, new data has revealed, as inflation radically jacked up the cost of claims.

Car insurers’ net combined ratio (NCR), which shows claims and costs as a proportion of premiums, hit 109.5 per cent in 2022, according to new data from EY.

Motor insurers have been hit hard by rising claims costs, as the cost of second-hand cars, parts and labour have all risen, eroding insurers’ margins.

With inflation expected to remain high for the foreseeable future, EY said it expects losses to continue in 2023, and forecasts an NCR of 108.5 per cent in 2023.

As a result, it expects premiums to rise sharply by 16 per cent in 2023, up to £74 extra per policy on average,

with a further 11 per cent rise in 2024, to £59 extra per policy on average.

“The profitability achieved during the pandemic, when car usage and claims were low, was quickly reversed by the impact of pricing reforms, high inflation, supply chain issues and changing driving habits,” Rodney Bonnard, UK insurance leader at EY, said.

“It will be vital that motor insurers continue to manage their costs carefully while also looking for new avenues of growth,” Bonnard added.

Direct Line’s CEO, Penny James, was forced to step down in January after the firm issued multiple profit warnings.

The FTSE 250 firm said last month that the motor segment of the business would continue to “put pressure” on earnings, with acting chief executive Jon Greenwood warning the earnings outlook “continues to be challenging”.

SPIRIT of Britain living history group yesterday celebrated the annual Duxford Summer Air Show at IWM Duxford in Cambridgeshire, with a Supermarine Spitfire in tow. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first air show at Duxford.

Fast-growing logistics outfit Shift to pick up pieces of collapsed Tuffnells

LAURA MCGUIRE

AN UP AND COMING logistics firm is understood to have snapped up pieces of delivery giant Tuffnells Parcel Express, following its collapse earlier this month placing 2,000 jobs at risk. Shift, which was launched five years ago by 29-year-old Jacob Corlett, has acquired the brand and intellectual property of the British

Treasuryspring bags $29m in funding round

BEN LUCAS

LONDON fintech Treasuryspring has bagged $29m (£23m) in a funding round as the cash investment platform looks to increase its headcount and expand overseas.   The company said today it secured the investment in a Series B funding round led by British venture capital firm Balderton Capital, bringing the total amount it has raised to $42m. Abu Dhabi sovereign fund Mubadala Capital also participated in the funding round, alongside ETFS Capital, MMC Ventures and Anthemis Group, the company said.  Founded in 2017, Treasuryspring said the new funding will be used to invest in the firm’s “product, sales, marketing and tech teams”, with plans to grow its headcount by half in the next 12 months, develop its products and services, and accelerate international expansion.

Kevin Cook, co-founder and CEO, said he was “delighted” Balderton –who are also backers of Gocardless and Revolut –led the latest round. Rana Yared, general partner at Balderton and Treasuryspring board member, said: “There is a huge opportunity to radically transform cash investment for all businesses.”

delivery service, according to Sky News’s Mark Kleinman.

Shift is said to be in talks with Interpath Advisory, who Tuffnells appointed to handle its bankruptcy.

The privately-owned logistics firm, which already has partnerships with retailers such as Ikea, is also eyeing the leases of some of Tuffnells’s 33 delivery depots across the UK.

It is not understood if any job roles

will be saved in the deal.

“The acquisition supports our vision for Shift’s tech-driven logistics platform to disrupt both consumer and business logistics, through cutting-edge AI-driven routing decisions and driver management efficiency,” Corlett told the outlet. Corlett told City A.M. in a previous interview that the firm was keen to expand.

UK delivery giant Tuffnells collapsed earlier this month

THIS OLD THING A living history group celebrate 50 years of the Duxford Air Show

Profiteering? Supermarkets to face parliamentary grilling tomorrow

LAURA MCGUIRE

SUPERMARKET bosses will be probed this week on whether or not they are profiteering from high prices.

Lead figures from UK ‘Big four’ grocers, including Morrison’s boss David Potts, will face questions from MPs tomorrow on red hot food and fuel prices, and when customers might see price falls.

Sainsbury’s’ food commercial director, Tesco’s commercial director and Asda’s chief commercial officer

Primark owner to update on inflation impact

HENRY SAKER-CLARK

THE PARENT firm of Primark will be hoping to reveal strong demand from shoppers seeking bargains when it updates shareholders today.

Associated British Foods (ABF) – which owns the high street chain alongside grocery brands like Ryvita – has seen its shares make a steady upwards march since last autumn.

The group has been buoyed by stronger-than-predicted consumer spending despite the ongoing cost crisis, alongside efforts to boost profitability through cost cutting.

In April, the consumer giant reported that Primark sales jumped by 15 per cent over the half-year to March as office workers and tourists boosted its city centre locations.

ABF will update investors on how its trading has progressed over the third quarter of its financial year later today.

The company is predicted to reveal continued sales growth in its fashion division but could see a slight slowdown due to weather conditions and tougher

annual comparisons, due to the return of shoppers to high streets last spring and summer.

Analysts at RBC said: “Primark is very sensitive to weather patterns, particularly at this time of year, hence we think it will have seen a weaker pattern in the UK in the third quarter, but a strong pick-up in recent weeks.”

Experts at the broker, however, stressed that Primark is “well-positioned as consumers manage their budgets” and will be boosted by its continued store opening and refurbishment plan.

Despite sales growth for the halfyear, earnings were still broadly flat as the company continued to swallow the impact of higher costs in supply chains and wage increases.

But ABF’s grocery business, which also includes brands such as Patak’s and Twinings, is expected to show the benefits from recent price hikes and cost efficiencies feeding into its bottom line by the end of the year.

will also be in attendance.

Inflation on groceries eased in May, but it still sits at 18.4 per cent, down only slightly from 19.1 per cent the prior month, figures from the Office for National Statistics show.

Supermarkets have remained in the firing line over price hikes, having previously been accused by the government of “greedflation”, meaning they keep grocery costs higher than necessarily required.

The MPs’ questioning comes amid an ongoing investigation from the

competition watchdog, which is also evaluating whether stores have gained financially from the cost of living crisis.

However this notion has been strongly rebuffed by the sector, with the former chief executive of Sainsbury’s Justin King telling City A.M last week the idea “doesn’t even pass a basic smell test”.

“There is no profiteering,” King said. “It is not grounded in the reality of publicly available and reported numbers.”

Inflation takes bite out of Whole Foods

THE AMAZON-OWNED UK division of Whole Foods has seen a rapid decline in earnings for the year as soaring inflation drives up costs and squeezes Brits’ budgets.

Whole Foods UK reported record annual operating losses of £26.3m for the last year, up from £17.2m the prior year, while sales fell from £94.3m to £91.6m as shoppers reined in their spending.

The upmarket supermarket runs only seven stores in the UK, all of

Stripe: It’s a mistake for tech firms to get too hung up on valuations

BEN LUCAS

TECH FIRMS shouldn’t worry so much about valuations, the co-founder of Stripe has said, after the payments firm’s valuation was cut this year.

Stripe cut its valuation to $50bn (£39bn) in March this year, which is well below its peak of $95bn back in 2021.

The valuation was slashed as it announced a $6.5bn funding round from both existing and new investors.

But co-founder of the IrishAmerican firm John Collison said he was unphased by the near 50 per cent drop in its valuation.

“Stocks prices go up, stock prices go down,” Collison told The Sunday Times in an interview. “A lot of high-

growth companies have traded down 70, 80, 85 per cent in some cases.”

Collison said no one in Stripe had expected the firm’s 2023 valuation to match that of its figure from 2021.

“You don’t feed your family with equity valuations,” he added.

Collison also dismissed speculation of a possible IPO for the firm. “We have no plans to go public,” he said.

which are in London.

Amazon took up its first major forage into the grocery market when it bought Whole Foods for $13.7bn (£10.8bn) in 2017. However, the online giant has struggled to get the UK division off the ground ever since, with the branch having made a loss in all of the last five years. Its failing profits mark a blow to Amazon, which is still trying to carve out a top spot in the grocery market.

Last year, it halted the rollout of its cash-free Amazon Go sites. It had originally planned to launch

hundreds of the sites across the UK but it abandoned these after opening 20 stores due to poor sales.  Amazon, which revolutionised online shopping, has struggled to mirror the success of its online website with its physical stores.  Amazon also closed all 68 of its brick-and-mortar bookstores in the UK and US in March last year.  However, bosses at Amazon still appear to be keen to hold space in the grocery sector, with the retailer rumoured to be eyeing a takeover of Ocado’s technology business.

“You don’t feed your family with equity valuations,” Stripe co-founder John Collison said

Food inflation in May was 18.4 per cent, down slightly from 19.1 per cent in April

Upmarket supermarket Whole Foods has seven UK stores, all in London, with the price of six eggs currently set at £3.99

LAURA MCGUIRE

THE NOTE BOOK

Tourist tax holding back the capital’s post-pandemic boom

MY HOTELS in Italy, Germany and Belgium are booming. But occupancy in London is not what it was last year and what we saw pre-pandemic.

Official statistics bear this out, showing that inbound visits to the UK were down seven per cent in October to December last year, compared with the same period in 2019, and that trend has continued in the current year.

To my mind, there is one clear factor driving this. It is the hated ‘tourist tax’ introduced by Rishi Sunak when he was Chancellor.

Shopping has traditionally been one of the most popular reasons cited for visiting the UK. Certainly, many of my guests, particularly those from the US, China and the Middle East, have always liked to visit our brilliant shopping districts. Indeed, British business used to make £3.5bn in tax-free sales to tourists every year. This wasn’t just a boon to London, but other major cities and out-of-town shopping villages – or indeed

HIP, HIP, HOORAY

anywhere tourists went and spent their money.

Now tax-free shopping has been scrapped in the UK but is still available in every country in the EU. Effectively, we have suddenly started charging 20 per cent more than other countries do for exactly the same goods. Paris, Milan and Berlin can’t believe their luck!

How frustrating to see that a great British brand like Mulberry has just closed the doors of one of its flagship stores as a direct result.

I have organised an open letter to the Chancellor signed by hundreds of business chiefs from across the retail, hospitality and tourism sectors calling for a rethink. Dozens of senior MPs – including two former chancellors – have also backed the campaign.

The government should be doing everything it can to stimulate growth at a difficult time for the economy. It should start by restoring tax-free shopping. Keeping the tourist tax in place is an appalling own goal for the UK.

Where interesting people say interesting things. Today, it’s hotel industry giant Sir Rocco Forte, chairman of Rocco Forte Hotels

GOT OUR BACK? I’M NOT SO SURE

“I DON’T feel I am trying to cling on. I just want to play. I love it.” The words of Andy Murray, who has clawed his way back into the world’s top 40 at the age of 36 with a metal hip. Murray recently won two singles titles on grass, his first since his 2016 Wimbledon win. His delightful family were there to see his triumph, the first time his four children have watched him lift a trophy. Murray has become a byword for resilience and determination and I wish him all the best for Wimbledon.

£ THERE is a visceral hatred of Boris Johnson amongst the Remainer contingent and in parts of the media. The latter stems, I suspect, from the fact that many journalists are jealous of his success. Boris, of course, started his career as a scribbler but went on to achieve more than most. As Prime Minister, he delivered Brexit with a Parliament that was trying to stop him and won a huge election victory. He has not helped himself, but he has been treated disgracefully by the establishment and his party. He will be back.

£ I AM enjoying the book Not Zero, by Ross Clark. It’s not anti-climate change at all, but it seeks to debunk the mad rush to reach net zero targets. Clark argues that the hysterical language we hear about climate change is self-defeating. He notes that while there is good evidence that average global temperatures have risen by just over 1C over the past 150 years, the claims that we are headed soon for an ‘unliveable Earth’ are irresponsible. There is certainly no point in bankrupting ourselves, particularly when a third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from China and just one per cent from the UK. The book is a must-read for anybody interested in the climate debate – and everyone in government too.

RISHI Sunak recently declared in a meeting with business leaders:

‘I’ve got your back.’

Is this true? He has overseen an increase in National Insurance which is a tax on jobs. While George Osborne cut corporation tax at every budget, Mr Sunak has just hiked it from 19p in the pound to 25p – something that will cost businesses £20bn a year. He instituted a windfall tax on energy companies which discouraged investment. He has retained the surcharge on banks’ profits. He is destroying the rental market with regulations on landlords. Nothing has been done to seize the opportunities of Brexit by deregulating to boost the City. Companies would now rather be listed in New York than London. We are now facing an imminent recession which his Chancellor says is okay. We need a properly pro-enterprise government.

ENERGY

U-S-A! GERMANY GOES STATESIDE FOR LNG

American LNG producers are still raking it in amid the energy crisis, with Germany signing another long-term deal to import more US supplies. The country is looking to replace Russian energy in its supply mix following the invasion of Ukraine. State-owned SEFE will purchase 2.25m tonnes a year of the superchilled gas from Venture Global LNG for the next 20 years, reflecting expectations of continued gas consumption for decades to come.

The London Metal Exchange has an uncomfortable wait ahead of the outcome of a lawsuit brought by two US financial firms over its handling of the nickel crisis. Its decision to void billions of dollars worth of contracts after prices chaotically soared to over $100,000 per tonne is now being weighed up by a judge after a threeday court case came to an end. A verdict is not expected until next month –with the outcome essential for the capital’s reputation as a credible investment hub.

PInitially, there isn’t much in common between the Italian culinary staple, international pop star and heart-warming Pixar movie. Yet polls from YouGov show these beloved cultural assets all have lower approval ratings than onshore wind turbines.

What has a much lower approval rating than any of them is the Conservative Party, with the government over 20 points behind Labour and on course for electoral oblivion in 18 months’ time.

Renewables are the most popular energy source in the country, yet the Tories have persistently caved in to aggressive localist campaigns against backbenchers, frustrating dozens of new projects.

It is no wonder investment appetite has vanished for onshore wind power, with just two turbines built in England last year, which was not only considerably less than numbers in the US, China and the country’s European rivals, but also wartorn Ukraine.

Onshore wind has been a victim of government policy and former prime minister David Cameron’s crusade against ‘green crap’ –which was meant to win over the right of his party and shore up votes that had been drifting to UKIP.

de-facto moratorium, where restrictive planning laws and intransigent localists effectively veto new developments.

NEW PLANS NOT ENOUGH TO SAVE ONSHORE WIND

Onshore wind generation has remained at around 14GW for the past eight years with no targets in the energy security strategy to ramp up generation, contrasting with the 50GW ambition for offshore wind this decade and 70GW of solar power by 2035.

Downing Street has hoped to change this, but its proposed reforms are unlikely to revive the sector – despite some intelligent ideas such as lowering energy bills for households living near wind turbines.

It is still dithering over a consultation of proposed development reforms, six months after Tory backbencher Simon Clarke put pressure on the government to liberalise construction rules with amendments to key planning legislation. Trade association Renewable UK has been pushing for all onshore wind applications to be assessed on the same basis as any other infrastructure project. However, the government is still in favour

land for developments, and for communities to be able to veto projects through the Byzantine planning system. This might seem superficially reasonable, but research from Dr Rebecca Windemer, senior lecturer in environmental planning at the University of the West of England, shows that only 11 per cent of local authorities across England have designated areas for renewable developments in their plans. Meanwhile, the maximum installed capacity of wind farms granted planning permission between 2016 and 2021 is just 2.6 per cent of those approved between 2009 and 2014.

ONSHORE WIND COULD EASE ELECTION FEARS

Despite Nimby intransigence, onshore wind is now a widely popular energy source that, if ramped up, could help drive down bills with cheaper, cleaner power. Easing the cost of living crisis before the electorate go back to the ballot box should be an essential goal of the government, with energy bills still expected to be double pre-crisis levels this coming winter at around £2,000 per year for the average household.

confidence restored to the sector, new onshore wind turbines could even be installed ahead of the next election –unlocking billions in private funding that is instead pouring into Europe and the US with their vast subsidy packages.

It even covers two of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s five pledges, as lowering energy bills would soften inflation, currently at historically elevated levels of 8.7 per cent, and help the economy grow as households could have more income at their disposal.

Considering the government is prepared to make the politically difficult argument for sustaining oil and gas production, it is damning that Sunak cannot make the politically easy decision to revive what should be a burgeoning industry. This is especially aggravating because, if onshore wind can be revived through breaking up planning obstacles, this could even pave the way for progress to boost housing construction and transport.

LABOUR TAKES ADVANTAGE OF TORY HESITATION

Such an opportunity has not gone unnoticed by Labour, which managed to fire the first shots against Nimby-ism last week when opposition leader Keir

Starmer unveiled fresh details on Labour’s energy strategy.

Starmer wants to slash development times with planning reforms that would allow regulators to prioritise onshore wind farms as low carbon projects – which would also be used to remove red tape obstructing electricity lines and transport links. He has also pledged to create a statebacked energy firm GB Energy to push through community energy projects. With the economy waning and a general public increasingly unimpressed with a party mired in scandals, the Conservatives are staring down a landslide defeat. If they have any hope of avoiding this fate, then embracing policies that are popular and will improve people’s lives would be a good start.

SEND US YOUR THOUGHTS

How can the UK revive the onshore wind sector? Email energy editor Nicholas Earl at nicholas.earl@cityam.com

Home insulation falling well behind target, according to new analysis

DANNY HALPIN

THE GOVERNMENT is on track to insulate just one sixth of the homes needed to meet its target of reducing energy consumption by 15 per cent, according to a new analysis.

WWF UK and Scottish Power said there is a “substantial gap” emerging

between what is on course to be delivered and what is needed to reach the government’s target.

As well as 5m more homes insulated by 2030, the analysis –carried out by Frontier Economics and commissioned by WWF and Scottish Power – estimates that 1.5m homes will need heat pumps instead of gas boilers, with a further

600,000 homes connected to lowcarbon heat networks.

A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said over the weekend: “The government’s record on energy efficiency speaks for itself, with the proportion of homes in England with an EPC rating of C or above up from 14 per cent in 2010 to 47 per cent in 2022.”

Home insulation is one way being looked at to improve the UK’s energy efficiency

City A.M.’s energy editor Nicholas Earl delves into the sector’s challenges in his weekly column

Tories take note: Onshore wind is not just about going green, it’s a vote-winner

PERHAPSfittingly for a man whose professional career has revolved around getting fans into live events, occasionally at contentious prices, Cris Miller is in London for a ballgame. Specifically, the rare sight of a Major League baseball game in the capital –with the Cubs and Cardinals duking it out over the weekend a few thousand miles from home in Stratford. For Miller, the managing director of Viagogo and former senior exec at Stubhub, it’s a chance to press the flesh with execs from the league and various teams –toasting Viagogo’s renewed partnership with Major League Baseball as the sport’s ‘authorised ticket marketplace’. It’s all very cosy and mutually beneficial, and a far cry from the secondary ticket market of old.

Sports and music fans will remember the cries of ‘tickets, buy or sell’ as they exited Tube stations before events; usually blokes, usually carrying a surprising number of fifty pound notes, usually with the vibe of someone you wouldn’t want to buy a second hand car off. Viagogo and Stubhub –now under the same umbrella in the US –have made that market more visible, more transparent and, as a result, more controversial.

“The secondary ticketing marketplace has been around since the beginning of live events,” Miller tells me in a rare interview, relaxed in a polo shirt at City A.M.’s offices. Does the criticism –one music website describes Viagogo as the “fuck-you-all ticket touting platform” and MPs have lambasted the platform for allowing the listing of Harry Potter theatre tickets for thousands of pounds above face value –bother him?

“We focus on our most important metric which is fulfilment. So for us making sure that the fans that use the service both on the buy side and the sell side, we just enable it to all go smoothly,” he says. That sounds like a no, but Miller does admit there is still “an education” to do.

That underplays it –the firm is dealing with the threat of regulatory battles all over the world, although in the UK the government has finally confirmed it won’t be pursuing any further regulation of the industry.

As far as Miller is concerned, “what we’re doing is ultimately beneficial. If it wasn’t a successful service, if it wasn’t effective, if it wasn’t helping fans get into the events, then we wouldn’t have a service.”

Some ticket promoters don’t agree: fans who’ve bought tickets on secondary platforms have been barred from attending events, much to Miller’s consternation. To him, it’s anti-competitive, antiquated behaviour.

FANS OR BROKERS?

Philosophically, many would agree with Miller’s basic free market principle: “once you own a ticket, it’s yours and you can do what you want with it.” Where the frustration arises, at least judging from media scrutiny and social media storms, is when unscrupulous sellers seem to be able to use the platform for more shady practices. So-called ‘speculative selling’ –for which two Brits were sentenced in 2020 –includes listing tickets above face value, and only then buying the actual ticket (at a lower price) once the higher priced ticket is sold. There are other criticisms of ‘bot’ technology, with software programmes punching their way to the front of the queue when tickets go on sale.

Miller is alive to the challenge. The firm has invested a huge amount in

IT’S YOURS. DO WHAT YOU WANT WITH IT.

kind of protection for fans that he says was never available when Viagogo’s forebear Stubhub began.

“When [Stubhub] started, the market was really inefficient and it was pretty fraught with fraud. There were a number of websites that popped up –that had no intent on delivering a ticket –taking money up front. There were a lot of scams that we saw. So our entire pur-

pose was to bring order to a market that exists with or without us. The alternative is much worse for fans.”

Miller may be right that the criticism is over-egged, but it’s unlikely to stop. Tickets to see

Viagogo will be a godsend for fans hoping to get into Taylor Swift’s shows –but it’ll cost what the market dictates whelming cornering of the market done by ticket resellers. Let’s use Eurovision recently: 75 per cent of our sellers were first-time sellers. And so there are a lot of misperceptions, and we have a responsibility to communicate that more effectively.”

Taylor Swift at Wembley next year go on sale in July –and it’s a fair assumption that within a few hours, many will end up on Viagogo at sky-high prices. Whether there is similar criticism of Ticketmaster, who will also be charging punchy fees for every transaction, is an open question. Miller seems to know what’s coming.

“People get really fixated on the top two per cent of these events that take place. It’s the Taylor Swifts –it’s not the normal. There are these anomalies where there’s a wild imbalance between the demand and supply. Taylor could do 10 shows at Wembley and probably still have a huge resale market,” he says.

“And it’s not as if there’s an over-

PLUSSES AND MINUSES

Miller’s point is perhaps best made by scrolling through the tickets on offer. Two tickets for day one of this week’s Ashes test at Lord’s are going for £431 a pop, some way above the £160-odd face value. Two tickets for the second of Major League Baseball’s games in London, however, are running below the price you’d have paid if you’d gone through the primary market. In short, Viagogo’s created a ticket marketplace, in which you can –in 99 per cent of cases –trust what you’re buying. ‘It’s us or the touts in the sheepskin coats’ might not be what politicians and regulators always want to hear, but it’s hard to argue with.

VIAGOGO, STUBHUB, AND IN BETWEEN

Viagogo and Stubhub –together and apart: confused? Don’t be. Stubhub was founded by Eric Baker and Jeff Fluhr back in 2000, and sold to Ebay for $310m (£244m) in 2017. Baker had already left Stubhub to found Viagogo in 2006, with Viagogo then buying Stubhub in 2020 for $4bn. That transaction ran into competition watchdogs –Viagogo was forced to offload its Stubhub international businesses by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority –but all is now well, with the merger completed last year.

Viagogo has become a byword for controversy. But

Cris Miller giant’s global managing director, tells Andy Silvester that fans love getting into events they might otherwise not be able to

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Week ahead: Housing data to lead agenda as demand set to soften

ROARINGmortgage rates in response to markets betting the Bank of England (BoE) will have to send official borrowing costs to over six per cent are poised to have kept a lid on housing demand.

Fresh BoE figures out this Thursday are expected to show the volume of mortgages approved in May improved slightly to 49,000 from April’s 48,700 figure.

The fact “that quoted mortgage rates continued to rise in May will have further weighed on demand for home loans, although this might have been mitigated by evidence of improving sentiment among households,” analysts at consultancy Oxford Economics said.

“Don’t expect any big rebound here, especially given rates repricing,” Sanjay Raja, a senior economist at Deutsche Bank, said.

That reduction in demand is likely to have pushed house prices lower. The City thinks Nationwide’s house price index on Wednesday will show prices fell 0.3 per cent over the last month, while Deutsche Bank thinks they tumbled four per cent over the year to June. A string of BoE rate setters will deliver speeches and sit on panels this week, with governor Andrew Bailey and chief economist Huw Pill speaking in Portugal on Wednesday. Their remarks will be keenly listened to for clues on why they backed a bigger rate rise of 50 basis points last week and where they think rates are headed.

Final GDP numbers for the first quarter released by the ONS on Friday are tipped to show no change from the initial 0.1 per cent growth estimate. Meanwhile, it’s very quiet on the corporate front as the City nears its annual summer shutdown.

Declining jet fuel costs are poised to help budget airline Jet2’s finances take off. That’s according to analysts at broker Peel Hunt, who think clients should buy the firm’s shares, which have already climbed 25 per cent so far this year. Aided by a strengthening pound raising demand and reducing the cost of imports, Jet2 should soar in 2024 and 2025.

“The inflation protection in many of Serco’s contracts means management would not expect a material impact from inflation on profit,” according to analysis of the government contractor by Peel Hunt experts. Recommending clients snap up the firm’s shares, Peel Hunt said Serco should be primed to withstand the UK’s economic slump.

RATES TO KEEP A LID ON HOUSING DEMAND “Housing market data will command the City’s gaze this week. New figures from Nationwide on Wednesday are likely to show prices are still falling. And we’ll get signs of whether that decline will carry on from the BoE’s mortgage approval numbers on Thursday. Expect home loan demand to be soft amid elevated borrowing rates.”

JACK BARNETT, ECONOMICS EDITOR

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OPINION

EDITED BY SASCHA O’SULLIVAN

The Scottish nationals may never be able to recover Sturgeon’s lost ground

LAST week saw the death, at the age of 93, of Winifred Ewing.

One of the few bona fide giants of Scottish nationalism, she shook the political world in 1967 by snatching the previously safe Labour constituency of Hamilton in a by-election, telling crowds after her victory, “Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on”. Although she lost the seat at the subsequent general election, she was back in the Commons from 1974 to 1979, representing Moray and Nairn, then sat in the European Parliament from 1979 to 1999, where she was known as “Madame Écosse”.

Her apogee as well as her political swansong came in 1999, when she was elected to the new Scottish Parliament, and as the oldest member, she presided over its opening session, declaring “Now I can say the words I have always wanted to say: the Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th day of March in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened.” She stood down at the end of that first term, by which time her son and daughter-in-law were both MSPs, and her daughter Annabelle was an MP at Westminster.

Ewing was a big figure with a big dream: a separate Scotland. Much of her electoral success was due to her own fierce and formidable personality

as well as her party politics, at the core of which was the goal of independence. She resisted attempts to pull the SNP to the left and adopt an almost off-the-peg democratic socialist agenda.

Last November marked the 55th anniversary of the Hamilton by-election. And last weekend, SNP activists gathered in Dundee for a “Convention on Independence”, under their new leader and first minister, Humza Yousaf. For all the breathless prose of their copywriter, the meeting had a modest motivation: “a summer programme of independence campaigning activity”, including leafleting and

canvassing, culminating in their annual party conference at which they would… decide their independence strategy. Fifty-five years since Winnie won in Hamilton, remember.

Much has changed, of course, including the SNP entering government in 2007 and the vanquishing, for the moment, of Scottish Labour. Yet on the central point of their agenda, their very raison d’être, independence, the nationalists are still “thinking about it", with only a referendum defeat to show for it. How has the party come, on one objective measure, so little distance in more than half a century?

To one extent, the SNP is finally showing the fatigue which sets into almost any long-serving government. This has been made all the more obvious by the recent legal wranglings, with the former first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and her husband being arrested and questioned by police about the SNP’s finances. It has not helped that Sturgeon was succeeded by the flimsy figure of Humza Yousaf, whose only “real world” experience is five months in a call centre. A glance round the Scottish cabinet table does nothing to lift the spirits or stir the soul of Braveheart.

We used to overlook tourism in the City, now it must become the key to its recovery

EVERYWHERE you look, the City is busy. Whether it’s bars or beer gardens, shops or our streets, the Square Mile is a hive of activity with people enjoying the good weather.

The buzz of City crowds is supported by data showing that activity has exceeded pre-pandemic levels on weekday evenings and on the weekends. Just as importantly, the stats also show that retail spending has recovered to pre-covid levels. For local businesses that rely on this footfall and spend, this is excellent news.

Even though the Square Mile remains quieter on Mondays and Fridays, the growing success through the rest of the week shows the resilience of the City. This ability to change is one of the underlying strengths that has made us a global powerhouse: adaptability is woven into the City’s very fabric. Today, as we have for thousands of years, the Square Mile must change to remain relevant. That is what we are doing through our flagship Destina-

Chris Hayward

tion City programme. We are harnessing the cultural change of hybrid working to support businesses, workers and visitors, because we recognise that life in 2023 is profoundly different from 2019.

To power the Square Mile’s recovery and boost business, I want the City to become a world-leading leisure destination for UK and global visitors. The ingredients for success are already there: the City is unique in having over 600 listed buildings and 48 ancient monuments in the small space of one square mile.

In the place where ancient and modern stand side-by-side, we know that

building things to last depends on having good foundations in place. So last week we launched a major rebranding of the City of London as a destination through a new website, marking a generational opportunity to write a new chapter in the City’s history.

The new distinctive platform will showcase the best of the City’s consumer offer to London, UK, and international visitors - promoting its world-leading businesses across the culture and hospitality sectors, driving tourist footfall and spend, and cementing our future economic vitality.

It will celebrate our world-class attractions, such as the iconic Sky Garden which reached 10 million visitors this year. It will appeal to the City’s workforce, which is one of the youngest, most highly skilled, and most internationally diverse in the country. It will make the most of the new London Museum and Migration Museum to tell untold stories. And crucially, it will create an even more welcoming environment for investment and business.

We are already the best-connected place within one of the bestconnected capital cities in the world. The Square Mile is served by 12 underground stations, eight tube lines, and seven mainline stations, each now playing a key role in the City’s recovery.

And at a time of fierce global competition, we now have a real opportunity to boost our attractiveness and create a self-perpetuating cycle where we strengthen our leisure offer which draws visitors, which attracts business, which attracts more investment, which then draws more visitors.

The Square Mile’s relationship with leisure is critical. Perhaps leisure has been overlooked in the past, but not anymore. Now it is time to open the next chapter in our story: one that finally acknowledges that tourism is important for the City and the City is important for tourism

£ Chris Hayward is the policy chairman of the City of London Corporation

The SNP has fallen into a slump in recent months. Since the end of 2022, when it was achieving 50 per cent in the polls, it is now hovering in the midto high-thirties, only a handful of points ahead of Labour. In the same period, there has been a narrow but largely consistent lead in opposing Scottish independence. The referendum for which some Scottish nationalists are so hungry would likely return a safe “No”at current polling.

The party of independence still has so many questions to answer: what would Scotland’s currency be, a simple adoption of sterling and the monetary policy of the Bank of England, or a more bespoke solution? Would Scotland join NATO? What would its institutions look like, as a constitutional monarchy? How would it deal with legacy debt and liabilities?

There have been few answers on these subjects. It may be a reflection of the fact that the electorate was stunned by Covid-19 and anxious at the cost of living, so an idea like creating an independent state may seem a distant and theoretical prospect. The relentless blame-shifting, heaping responsibility for everything on to “the Westminster Parliament” and the hated “Toaries”, is certainly wearing thin.

Can Yousaf shake off this torpor and rediscover the party’s drive and energy? I wouldn’t be placing bets. To quote the Ploughman Poet, Robert Burns, the nationalists may have “a chield amang them”, but there’s no evidence he’s been takin’ notes.

FREAKY FURBY

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

Eliot Wilson

Nicola Sturgeon returned to Scottish Parliament for the first time since she was arrested and then released earlier this month

FRIDAY If you were a 90s child or a parent of a 90s child, you were probably victim to the slightly hellish stuffed owl-like toy known as a Furby. They seemed immune to destruction and had a battery life to outlive the apocalypse. Just in time, US toy giant Hasbro has brought them back.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Reshaping the migration story

[Re: The Windrush scandal carries lessons that are all too familiar in today’s Britain, June 22]

Will Cooling is right: the Windrush legacy speaks volumes today. And while Windrush Day celebrates migrants' invaluable contributions, we have a long way to go in reshaping the narrative around migration. The news agenda fixates on the ‘overflowing’ levels of migrants, which can perpetuate harmful stereotypes. Migrants are not just left out of the history books, the stories showcasing their economic and cultural impact go unnoticed daily. Remitly survey data of over 2,000 UK

adults revealed the general population recognises the positive impact of migrants in areas such as food, sport and healthcare. However, that does not extend to their contributions in business, with many still believing migrants are ‘stealing jobs and homes’ as stated by anti-migration campaigners in the lead up to Brexit.

I would like to challenge this misrepresentation and have the positive impact migrants have on economic growth recognised. Remember that when you're watching your favourite football team, going to your local Indian restaurant, or being treated by migrant nurses or doctors.

Migrants have and will always contribute more to Britain than they take.

Pankaj Sharma, Remitly

SMOKING IT British music festivals told to ban disposable vapes

Follow Glastonbury’s lead and stop people smoking disposable vapes all over the country’s music scene this summer, the British Metals Recycling Association has said. At the very least, offer suitable bins for the debris.

EXPLAINER-IN-BRIEF: SAVING A HONG KONG PROTEST SONG FROM BEIJING

This Friday would be Hong Kong Independence day, marking the handover of the city from the United Kingdom. It is a part of the calendar normally marked by a march from the Civil Human Rights front, a group fighting for civil liberties. Now under the thumb of Beijing and tightly controlled by National Security Laws banning protests, marches on the ground are illegal. It’s not just on-theground restrictions Hong Kongers need to be worried about, but censorship from tech giants as well. Last week, the 2019 protest song “Glory to Hong Kong” was removed from Spotify following the threat of a court order from the High Court of Hong Kong. The music streamer was quick to clarify that the tune was removed by the distributor, rather than by the platform itself, and it has since reappeared. But it’s not the first instance of tech giants acquiescing to pressure from China,

Waitrose woman? Who needs her? We’ve got gamer dads driving an industry boom

Dominic Grounsell

DO YOU know what the average age of a gamer is? Brace yourselves. It's 35. That's right, we, the grown-ups, have taken over and are proudly flaunting our gaming prowess. Move over Waterstone’s Dad or Waitrose Woman, there's a new stereotype in town.

With a staggering 3.24bn gamers worldwide as of 2023, it's safe to say that gaming has evolved from a mere hobby to a global phenomenon. For people who grew up with arcades and classic consoles like the Sega Mega Drive and Nintendo 64, their love for video games has never waned.

Gone are the days when gaming was limited to solitary experiences. Thanks to the leaps and bounds in technology, people now have access to interactive gaming, whether it's through online multiplayer battles or strapping on a virtual reality headset and stepping into fantastical universes. The thrill of embarking on epic quests, the rush of adrenaline during intense battles, and the satisfaction of overcoming challenges—all these moments of excitement keep gamers coming back for more.

with Meta, the company which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, noting 50 instances it was forced to remove content globally after demands from the Hong Kong government. The injunction is expected to come this week, and, unsurprisingly, human rights groups are urging tech titans to hold firm against the request. A letter from more than 24 human rights and digital rights groups last week said standing up to Chinese encroachment would help protect free speech - something in short supply in Beijing-controlled Hong Kong.

As well as the original song, the injunction also seeks to ban covers of the song. Activist Catherine Li, who posted an alternative version of the song with English lyrics, wrote on her blog: “How could I possible remove a powerful artwork that informs the world about the reality in Hong Kong?”

But what drives the digital dads to embrace gaming so passionately? Well, for starters, it provides an escape from the pressures and responsibilities of adult life. After a long day focused on work and household chores, there's nothing quite like immersing yourself in a virtual world where you can be heroes, explorers, or even just escape reality for a little while. Gaming offers a much-needed respite, a chance to unwind and recharge, and a reminder that there's still a childlike sense of wonder within us.

Gaming has also become a social phenomenon. In an era where friendships are often formed and nurtured online, gaming has created a vibrant community where like-minded individuals can connect, collaborate, and conquer together. They're part of a global network of digital dads, united by a love for gaming and the shared experiences it brings.

A thrilling amalgamation of sport and entertainment has also given rise to the love of e-sport. We’ve seen the success of exhibition boxing matches and the captivating drama of shows like "Drive to Survive" in the world of Formula 1. e-sports follows a similar

formula, bringing together the competitiveness and skill of traditional sports with the spectacle and entertainment value of live events and cleverly crafted content.

In other words, what was once a slightly shameful stereotype of the lone gamer, still living in his mum’s house, is now a mainstream normal guy. Believe it or not, this is also driving a massive boom for the industry. The gaming

industry is expected to be worth $470bn in less than a decade - more than double its 2021 valuation of $197bn, according to GlobalData.

So, let's raise our controllers high and celebrate the rise of the digital dad. They may have a few extra wrinkles and a few less hairs, but they've got the skills, the experience, and the determination to conquer any virtual challenge that comes their way. Gaming brings them joy, excitement, and a sense of camaraderie, reminding us that life is about balance and finding those moments of excitement.

To all the digital dads out there, may your loot be plentiful, your headsets comfy, and your gaming adventures epic. Keep the spirit of gaming alive and remember that age is just a number when it comes to enjoying the thrill of virtual worlds.

£ Dominic Grounsell is Chief Commercial Officer of Entain

Gaming has become a social phenomenon as more friendships are online

The gaming industry is expected to more than double its valuation

TRAVEL

As lauded Portuguese restaurant Joia opens in London, Adam Bloodworth visits Lisbon to taste its inspiration

Unless you’ve spent the last decade hiding underneath a yellow tram, you will have noticed that Portugal’s capital Lisbon has become the European city du jour lately. Everyone in your office has a tip for the best pastel de nata, the smartest way to avoid the queue for the scenic tram and for the hippest neighbourhood.

In many ways, now is Lisbon’s sweet spot: investment is flooding in due to the rise in tourism, and that means Lisbonites are opening excellent restaurants, bars and cultural institutions all across town. Each district retains a strong identity in the face of tourism but, like with any city, it can be hard to know where to go that is truly excellent.

I wanted some tips, so following the opening of the Joia Portuguese restaurant in London, I had taken the opportunity to go to Lisbon to meet its famous head chef Henrique Sá Pessoa, the ‘Jamie Oliver of Portugal,’ to discover the places locals love, and the places that inspire Sá Pessoa’s London menu.

In Chiado, Lisbon’s grown-up post code, elegant boulevards lead to smart promenades along the water. Here, thousands of weekend trippers wander glaze-eyed between bakeries, diligently taking photos of their custard tarts. In the balmy early-summer it’s so popular here that I overhear English spoken as much as Portuguese.

To get out of the way of the crowds I dip down the Rue Anchieta and go along an anonymous-looking road that houses Lisbon’s only twice-Michelin-starred restaurants, Alma and Belcanto. I have arrived in Lisbon's “little stretch of San Sebastian,” as one local puts it.

At Alma, I’m greeted by a closed doubleheight door, so I press the buzzer and wait out an unnerving pause. Eventually I’m let into a cavernous old room, the mix of air conditioning and stone walls making it ten degrees cooler in here than in the unforgiving heat outside. This old storage area for the Bertrand bookstore next door, the world’s oldest bookstore, is so stately that it feels like I’m dining in a chapel. If a chapel had been cleaned out to get rid of the mustiness then somehow turned into an inexplicably chic restaurant.

A chorus line of intriguing pre-menu dishes arrived, each one offering a different story about provenance and flavour. I cancelled my afternoon plans, as you do when lunch takes four hours. But this was worth it. Each of the dishes boldly provoked conversations about flavour and gave me a true taste of why Lisbon is so ground-breaking right now for gastronomes. Foie gras was served in hearty chunks with apple, granola, beetroot and coffee, then salted codde Passoa’s speciality and a Lisbon classicwith coriander, brandade and kale. A suckling pig confit with turnip top puree, picked onions and black pepper was the sort of audacious flavour mash-up de Passoa pulls off with unshatterable confidence.

Henrique Sá Pessoa is riding the wave of Lisbon’s popularity with his new London restaurant. He has launched Joia, a spectacular spot at the Art’otel at the Battersea Power Station, where he offers a whistle stop tour through Lisbon. Giant carabineros prawns, more salted cod (chewy and intense) and a stunning Txuleton black angus forerib. In Lisbon, de Passoa tells me Joia has been booked out most evenings: it is buzzy, but the views of the Battersea Power Station chimneys by night are also the pull. They

INSIDER LISBON

THE TRAVEL HACK

Over 30 but still want to work in Australia?

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feel so close you could reach out and snap them off. Treat yourself with a stay at the hotel for access to the rooftop jacuzzi (yes, seriously.)

Back in Chiado, and on the search for more authenticity, and to get away from the Brits, I drunkenly ambled two minutes to Rue Garrett, where de Passoa, over lunch, told me I must visit his favourite bakeries.

Castro looks pretty much like any other swish pastel de nata shop, but I was given word that these truly are the best. Workers laid out metre-sized trays filled with tight rows of flaky pastries. They were passed through to the cafe through a hatch that is, to the millimetre, the size of the tray.

Castro is very busy, so you run the risk of a fatigued server bagging you a cold pastry, so ask particularly for one that’s warm. Mine

had a deep custard filling that was gently sweet, not cloying. The custard is almost waxy, and the flakes of pastry mix with it, creating texture in the chew. Over the road the Alcoa bakery has been family run for generations. There they specialise in all sorts of multi-coloured things that vow to decay even the strongest teeth.

A twenty minute sweaty climb uphill and there’s an east London feel in Bairro Alto, which is lauded as one of the hippest neighbourhoods in Lisbon. The district is famous for nightlife, and also its eclectic mix of pastel-shaded buildings so pretty you feel they must be having you on. By day it’s appealing cafe culture; but be warned: by night the bars have a shade of the overpopulated Thai islands about

BOOK THIS

not carry on the celebrations at Barcelona Pride on 15 July? There’s an incredible parade, and unlike in London you can go to the beach after. pridebarcelona.org/en/

them if you don’t know where to go. With the passing of British bar crawl groups and stag dos, Bairro Alto by night has largely fallen casualty to Lisbon’s popularity. But a few (literally a few) exceptional spots retain the area’s hipster identity that made the district a popular spot to visit before Lisbon’s tourism explosion.

On Rue da Barroca at the Zé dos Bois gallery I’m met by a 50-something artist who guards his rooftop from the drunken masses. Smile, don’t be absolutely trashed, and he’ll let you up for free. At Zé dos Bois, I’m surrounded by the Portuguese and beers are reasonably priced and served in little silver metal glasses. The rooftop bar buzzes into the small hours; people talk of art and social change. I sit on a wall four storeys above the street-level bars and watch the chaos below. Purex, at the far end of the

nightlife quarter, is also feverishly fun. Inside, drinkers ask me how I found out about this bar. “Everyone down there is drunk! But we don’t mind you!” they say, gesturing down the road at the tourist bars and taking me under their wing.

I stayed at Les Lumieres in Bairro Alto, a relatively new hotel and a shiny bastion of New Lisbon with a pretty rooftop spot for breakfasts and lazy dinners. My room looked out over the terminus point for the Glória S. Pedro Alcântara tram, one of the steepest routes. From my apartment I watched families queue to pose for selfies in front of the buttercup-yellow vehicles as they rested before slipping back downhill. A five minute walk away in Príncipe Real, I was in the location of de Passoa’s hipper restaurant, Tapisco, and the Red Frog bar, one of the world’s best. The Davvero restaurant is also closeby, where a French chef formerly of Cipriani cooks excellent Italian food, showing how Lisbon isn’t all about local. In London terms I’m perhaps somewhere like Dalston, if Bairro Alto is Old Street. In Principe Real, it feels even more like true Lisbon: the yelps of British tourists have by now faded well into the distance. There are fabulous buildings displaying the city’s famous mosaics and tiles, some dating to the 16th century, and at any time of day or night locals gather in the park. Lisbonites, out for Saturday afternoon and getting as far away from the overrun Time Out Market as they can, meander from one bar to the next.

NEED TO KNOW

To book Joia Battersea visit joiabattersea.co.uk; for The Lumiares visit thelumiares.com

LONDON TO TUSCANY BYWAYS TRAVEL THE LONG WEEKEND

To Tuscany by train? It's a doddle, finds Adam Bloodworth, who trains it from London with Byways Travel

LONDON TO TUSCANY TRAIN

Destination: a friend’s wedding in Tuscany. How else other than to fly? Well, what about this: lunch in Paris, then dinner in Italy, all on the same day, and all reachable by train by Byways flight-free travel? People don’t think of going to northern Italy by rail, especially if they are in a rush, but it is totally possible.

HOW IT WORKED I left London at 9am and was in Turin by 8pm. I’ll admit it: the five hours from Paris to Turn is an hour too long, but the payoff is the spectacular Alps, where even in summer there are snow-capped peaks to see from the train windows. The last two hours of the ride to Turin goes through the mountain range, skirting resorts like Courchevel. On the train, you learn that in the Alps, like anywhere else, the natural beauty is often framed by industry. Old mine shafts, abandoned machinery and scarred landscapes that were formerly quarries go past my window, offering a new perspective on an area promoted by ski resorts as pristine. In the Alps, water is ubiquitous, and seems to flow in every direction: vertically, from waterfalls, horizontally in rivers formed of meltwater in strong currents, and across the landscape in meandering streams.

In Turin I wandered through some spectacular piazzas then collapsed into bed, gleeful in the knowledge I had reached the pizza and pasta capital without hauling myself through the clouds at the expense of the climate. It felt good. In fact, it felt more than good: it felt utterly freeing.

The next day I headed for the coast. The major train routes across Europe feel in many ways like the major train routes in Britain do, but get on a local service and you’ll meet a much better cross-section of Italian society. I boarded two local trains to the Italian Riviera to the beachtown of Alassio. There are a lot of tunnels, but at the end of each darkness I was rewarded with a splash of natural colour. Why aren’t buildings in Britain painted with such interesting washes of burnt orange? Why can’t our landscape be an everchanging array of vineyards, mountains, hillsides and quaint little towns with rectangular churches? It’s not fair.

Alassio has an interesting British historical connection with train travel: it was here that wealthy Victorians spent their winters. Nowadays Alassio is a modest holidaying destination that suits every budget, although the Grand Hotel Alassio with its plumped beach loungers are a fitting tribute to the past. There’s

a lovely beach that has the type of perfect curve you’d draw if you were drawing a picture of a beach, and a lovely but quite touristy strip of restaurants and bars that go on late. My hotel, the Albergo Fiorenza & Banksia

Meublè, was the sort of three-star hotel that reminds you why three star hotels are often better than five-star ones. A warm greeting from a genuine local, old photos of Alassio through the years in the foyer, bedrooms far cosier than any famous interior designer could ever hope to achieve. Outside, bougainvillaea trees marked the route to the exit which led to the beach two minutes away. It’s also more affordable than on the French Riviera side.

The next morning, an early train whizzed past more revealing industrial ruins, through more trinkety little towns, and along wide open stretches of sea. Arriving in Pisa a few hours later I’d heard there was a world-famous attraction I should see. But I’d seen something way more exciting: the parts of France and Italy shut off from mainstream tourism. It's a terrible cliché, but travel really is about the journey.

TOP TIP Go to Italy with the train instead of flying. Byways curate flight-free trips, and to plan yours visit byway.travel

Boost for The Hundred as new sponsor deal edges closer

EXCLUSIVE FRANK DALLERES

THE Hundred is set for a major boost, with the England and Wales Cricket Board understood to be close to announcing a new headline sponsor for the competition.

A multi-year deal with a brand that has not previously been involved in cricket is being finalised and there is optimism that it will be signed this week. The ECB was forced to seek a new main commercial partner for the third season of the Hundred after Cazoo declined to continue its contract.

It added to uncertainty around the controversial competition involving eight men’s and women’s franchises, which begins on 1 August.

Some county chairmen have openly questioned the claims from the ECB that the Hundred has made money, while its architect Sanjay Patel is set to leave his post later this year. But the signing of a new title sponsor will effectively safeguard the family and youth-focused 100-ball competition for the immediate future.

It will also complete a roster of sponsors of the Hundred which also includes KP Snacks, Vitality, Sage, Robinsons and New Balance.

Leading sports agency CSM, which has long handled most of the ECB’s commercial deals, has been carrying

out the search.

The ECB was said to be targeting a title sponsor that could appeal to a Gen-Z audience, in keeping with its stated aim of taking cricket to new audiences. It is understood that the brand set to sign up is not Gen-Z focused but, as a new entrant to the sport, does fulfil the ECB’s mission.

Supporters of the Hundred insist it has succeeded in diversifying the sport’s appeal, with 43 per cent of TV viewers female.

There is also a belief that the record viewing figures reported by Sky Sports for last week’s first men’s Ashes Test were in part driven by fans

STRIKE A POSE Cardinals win as MLB series lights up London

London went all Stars and Stripes this weekend as Major League Baseball (MLB) descended on the capital. The Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals –who between them share the Route 66 rivalry –finished the MLB London Series 1-1. On Saturday the Cubs won 9-1 in a complete demolition at the London Stadium –home to Premier League side West Ham United –but yesterday it was the Cardinals who won, running out 7-5 victors. This year’s MLB London Series was the first since 2019 and saw packed stadiums across the weekend, and an exciting mascot race featuring Freddie Mercury, Henry VIII and Winston Churchill. Next year’s series will be contested between the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies.

England require 152 to claim Ashes Test

MATT HARDY

brought to the sport through the Hundred. Sky Sports has an agreement to broadcast the Hundred until 2028 as part of a wider deal with the ECB. The BBC also renewed its contract for radio coverage of the Hundred and other England cricket fixtures. However, its deal to show some live Hundred fixtures on terrestrial television and its online platforms is currently due to expire next year.

Losing free-to-air exposure would damage the competition’s future commercial appeal, one source said.

Cazoo chose not to renew its deal with the Hundred as part of a wider retreat from sports sponsorship.

AUSTRALIA are in the driving seat to win the only Women’s Ashes Test of the series after the tourists took five wickets in the final session of day four to leave England needing 152 with five wickets in hand.

Australia began day four of the first five-day Women’s Ashes Test on 82-0. But after the top order of Beth Mooney, Phoebe Litchfield and Ellyse Perry fell for 85, 46 and 25 runs respectively, the rest of the Australians could amass just 90 runs –50 of which came from Alyssa Healy –to leave England requiring 267 before their second innings.

Alcaraz wins at Queen’s and will head to Wimbledon as No1

MATT HARDY

SPANISH sensation Carlos Alcaraz won his first ever ATP tournament on grass yesterday at Queen’s as he looks to mount a challenge at Wimbledon next month.

The 20-year-old beat Australian Alex de Minaur 6-4 6-4 in his first appearance at Cinch Championships to head into Wimbledon as top seed.

Yesterday’s win in west London bags Alcaraz £410,000 and hands the Spaniard the world No1 spot ahead of the season’s third Grand Slam.

“It means a lot to have my name in the trophy,” Alcaraz said after lifting the trophy. “I’ve watched this

tournament since I started playing.

“Going to Wimbledon as top seed helps a lot. For me it is amazing but once again it wouldn’t be possible without the support of all of the people in the week.

“I have had to adapt my movement a little bit for grass.”

Alcaraz won the 2022 US Open but that victory remains his only Grand Slam triumph. His best run at Wimbledon came in 2022, where he reached the fourth round.

Novak Djokovic is set to head to the All England Club as second seed with Daniil Medvedev and Casper Ruud set to be the other top seeds.

Sophie Ecclestone’s wicket of Darcie Brown handed her a ten-for in the match.

Opener Tammy Beaumont –who scored 208 in the first innings –was caught by Mooney for 22. However, her combined total of 230 runs in this match means she now holds the record for the most runs in a single Ashes Test in the history of the competition.

Nat Sciver-Brunt left the crease without adding to England’s total before Emma Lamb was trapped leg before wicket on 28.

Heather Knight fell for nine when Ash Gardner got her third wicket of the innings before Sophia Dunkley’s dismissal handed Kim Garth her first Test wicket.

England will head out into day five with Danni Wyatt and Amy Jones at the crease in Nottingham this morning requiring 152 runs to win their first Ashes Test since the 2013-14 series and their first at home since 2005. Australia need to find five wickets to win their first Women’s Ashes Test since 2015.

Koulibaly latest Premier League star to jet to Saudi

SENEGAL international defender Kalidou Koulibaly has become the latest player to confirm a move to Saudi Arabia from the Premier League.

The centre-back will head to Al-Hilal from Chelsea and join former Wolves player Ruben Neves in the Saudi Pro League, who joined the club from the Midlands on a deal worth £47m.

Chelsea teammate N’Golo Kante has signed for the Saudi champions Al-Ittihad while Karim Benzema –formerly of Real Madrid –will also jet off to join Kante in the kingdom.

There are also reports of Chelsea keeper Edouard Mendy heading east.

Elsewhere, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has said his side will need to strengthen if they’re to challenge Manchester City for the Premier League next season.

Arsenal topped the table for much of the season but dropped points towards the business end and were pipped to the title by Pep Guardiola’s side.

“Next season is going to be the toughest league in Premier League history,” Arteta said. “Why? It already was last year. I’ve been here [England] for 22 years and I’ve never seen a competitive level like that.

“To win the Premier League you have to be the best. That’s why you have to strengthen.”

MATT HARDY

The Hundred is set for its third season this August when it gets underway

FOOTBALL

CRICKET

Frank Dalleres goes inside the PTO Tour’s bid to take triathlon mainstream

IBIZAusually moves to the beat of its clubbing crowd but for one weekend last month it was a different Lycra-clad set working up a sweat: top triathletes, including Alistair Brownlee, Lucy Charles-Barclay and Kristian Blummenfelt.

In the shadow of world-famous nightclubs like Pacha, some of the sport’s biggest names took on a 100km swimbike-run course on the White Island and its surrounding waters, culminating in a finish by the harbour overlooked by Ibiza’s historic Old Town.

The race kicked off the second season of the PTO Tour, a big-money circuit aiming to establish triathlon as a spectator sport for an audience beyond the weekend warriors who – like Ibiza’s party crowd – love to raise the bpm.

Lending clout to the PTO Tour are some heavyweight figures, including billionaire British investor Sir Michael Moritz, an early backer of Google, YouTube and PayPal.

Warner Bros Discovery is an investor and advisor as well as broadcast partner, while Chris Kermode, the former president of the men’s tennis tour who brought the ATP Finals to London’s O2, arrived as executive chairman last year.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the tour is that it is part-owned by the athletes – namely, members of the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO). A very 21st century business model, it borrows from Silicon Valley, where equity is often given to talent. For two-time Olympic champion Brownlee, it makes perfect sense for athletes to have a greater say in the sports in which they compete.

CHECKLIST

“The people out there on the field of play are the people it means the most to,” he told City A.M. “If athletes are happy and believe they are being listened to then the sport is better and fans are more engaged.”

Brownlee says he has been “quite hands-on”, helping to sell the concept to investors and advising organisers on everything from course design and rules to location choice and safety considerations.

TRI AND TRI AGAIN

I’m really interested in.”

To achieve that buy-in, and attract other sponsors to join Garmin in partnering, Kermode has a checklist for the PTO Tour. It includes adding to the roster of three races a year to allow for seasonlong narratives, more comprehensive use of data to engage viewers, and a greater focus on telling the athletes’ backstories.

races remains under discussion, but it will likely be more than four. “The Grand Slam model is not sustainable,” he says. “That only works [in tennis] because there is a structure underneath [the ATP and WTA Tours]. We are in the content business and you have to provide year-long content to be engaging.”

Brownlee says spectator appetite for more races should be weighed against athlete welfare. “I think it probably needs to be more than four but not too many more,” he added.

Current Olympic and Ironman world champion Blummenfelt says “eight to 10 races could be possible”. He adds: “You want it long and challenging enough. And you want to get it across the whole world, taking advantage of what places have to offer.”

Locations are another important pillar, with Kermode wanting the “backdrops to be visual theatre”. The PTO Tour won’t rule out any venue, regardless of politics. “I think if you make a moral stand you’re in danger of not being able to play anywhere,” he says. “We’ve got to be open-minded.”

Host fees are another element of the business model. In return for its outlay, Ibiza attracted almost five thousand extra visitors, an estimated economic impact of $10m and helped to reposition the island.

BE BOLD

“Ibiza is known for discos and beaches but we want to be a sporting destination,” the island’s president Vicent Mari told City A.M. “It’s really important for our income and image. This has been the best start to the [summer] season in history.”

The low-profile Moritz was the principal early backer of the PTO Tour and “the sole reason I got involved,” says Kermode. “I didn’t know him before. He was different to anyone I’ve come across in 30 years – in intellect and style. Very understated and unbelievably straightforward.”

Moritz urged them to “be bold”, PTO Tour chief executive Sam Renouf says. “When we started people almost laughed us out of the room. That was never an issue for Mike because he backed Airbnb when it was just two people saying you could rent out a sofa.”

Kermode’s focus is now on ensuring that 2024 showcases the PTO Tour at its full potential. “We’ve told athletes this is a transitional year. There is not a bottomless amount of money.” Renouf says they have enough cash for 2023 and beyond but “fully anticipate needing to raise more money, just like most start-ups.”

Renouf is driven by his own backstory. A budding triathlete on the Great Britain team, he quit after realising being a pro wouldn’t pay the bills. Now he is set on changing that. As triathlon grows, so does the money. PTO Tour races pay $100,000 to the winner, while its biggest stars like Blummenfelt and Charles-Barclay earn seven figures a year including endorsements. But with that comes other issues, and this year leading pro Collin Chartrier was banned for doping. Kermode is convinced triathlon can break into the mainstream. “I believe we will do it,” he says. “It’s an incredibly exciting time to be involved in the sport. If I didn’t think that I wouldn’t be doing this.”

Kermode’s mission is “trying to take a sport that has huge participation numbers and turn it into a world-class sporting product”, he told City A.M. in Ibiza. But the PTO is not throwing out the baby with the bathwater; agegroup mass participation competitions precede all of the tour’s elite races, generating valuable income while Kermode and his team work on polishing the elite proposition. He believes his outsider status is an

“When people come into sports and try to turn them around they get fixated on one ingredient,” he says. “[But] it’s a package of things that need to happen. It’s so re-

markably simple and it’s crazy that so many sports don’t do it, but all the successful ones do.”

The calendar is a key issue. The European Open

in Ibiza will be followed by races in Milwaukee and Singapore, both in August, but a planned season finale in Marrakesh won’t now be added until next year.

REGARDLESS OF POLITICS

Kermode calls it “unacceptable” that the tour’s calendar was not finalised before the start of the year and says by October the 2024 and 2025 schedule will be set in stone. The number of

Blummenfelt praises the PTO for “trying to lift the sport up to the next level. It feels like we’re on the way to create something even better. I’m very excited to see where it goes.”

Brownlee insists it is still early days but that, crucially, the stakeholders are aligned. “Fundamentally it’s creating great competition for athletes to be part of and to be broadcast in a way that inspires new fans. Those things are two sides of the same coin. We’re not there yet but hopefully we’re on the right progression.”

Lucy CharlesBarclay lost the race in the run

Triathlon transition area at the PTO European Open in Ibiza (above) and two-time Olympic gold medalist Alistair Brownlee on his competitive run (main).

Executive chairman Chris Kermode brought tennis’ ATP Finals to London