Business

Aston Martin shares hit skids after profits warning

Hasn’t that been an idea that’s eaten the capital.

Ho hum.

Is it 6 or 7 times the brand (note, not this company) has gone bankrupt?

The idea that this country benefits by allowing the best of UK plc to be creamed off by overseas buyers, or become their mere subsidiaries, is absurd.

Actually, it’s very nationalistic. Not really sure why, either.

Meanwhile, the sale of chip designer Arm – arguably the most successful technology company Britain has ever produced – in 2016 to Japan’s SoftBank must rank as one of the greatest acts of self-harm ever committed.

But the shareholders of ARM – who are the owners of it – made out like bandits. Why isn’t this a good idea?

Poor laddie has this idea that companies belong to the nation in some way. Rather than, you know, the shareholders?

The owner of a £3 million Georgian mansion has claimed low-flying planes landing at Heathrow Airport are damaging his manor house.

Daljit Bhail, 54, says the planes are “extremely dangerous” for his 28-room Grade II-listed home in Hounslow, west London, which he rents out on AirBnb.

The 18th-century property sits next to Heathrow’s south runway, and Mr Bhail claims it has been damaged by large gusts of wind. He also believes it has been damaged by ice and frozen sewage from onboard toilets that has fallen from the planes, a claim the airport denies.

“It’s just madness how they treat a listed building, and the planes wake me and guests up at 3am,” the property investor said.

When did you buy that house?

Mr Bhail alleges that low-flying aircraft have caused “vortex damage” to the roof of the mansion, which he bought for £600,000 in 2000.

Ah, so 60 years after the airport started then. Bugger off.

That it’s right by the runway is why it was only £600k…..

Companies forcing staff back into the office full-time are “dinosaurs” who wrongly believe their staff are “snowflakes”, according to the professor who coined the term “presenteeism”.

Sir Cary Cooper, a professor at the University of Manchester, said companies giving white-collar workers no choice but to go back to their desks full-time were “dinosaurs” who don’t trust their staff.

“Why I call them dinosaurs is they don’t ask, they mandate – this is not what the next generation want. You can call them snowflakes if you want, but they are more IT savvy and know they can work flexibly,” he said.

“Millennials have young kids, it’s costly to go into town, it wastes their time. We’re screwing our productivity up. Are we out of our mind? This is a no-brainer.

“Twenty years ago we didn’t have the technology we have now. This generation of workers are hard-working, they’re not snowflakes.”

Hmm, OK. Amazon has just insisted that everyone go back to the office 5 dasys a week.

So, who do we believe? One of the most valuable – and therefore possibly at least best managed – companies on the planet or a knighted professor who’s never run anything larger than a seminar?

Toughie, innit?

The former boss of Molton Brown is set to take charge of The Body Shop in a rescue deal that will keep 133 branches open.

Administrators at FRP said they had sold The Body Shop to a consortium led by cosmetics tycoon Mike Jatania after weeks of exclusive talks with the entrepreneur.

Charles Denton, the former Molton Brown chief, will become chief executive.

The move is expected to save more than 1,000 jobs, with Mr Jatania’s investment company Aurea understood to have no immediate plans to close any more stores. The Body Shop currently employs 1,300 people.

The new owners may look at finding better locations for current shops in various towns and cities, sources suggested.

UK commercial leases are 21, maybe 25 or 30 year things. With 3 or 5 year rent reviews. Rent reviews are upwards only.

Now, if commercial retail gets into trouble – Hello Online Shopping! – the system is hugely inflexible. Extant shops can’t negotiate their rents down. New market entrants can gain very much lower rents. Incumbents are therefore prey to new comers.

The way out is bankruptcy, administration or there’s a third similar thing. At which point you get to tell the landlords to go pound sand. And negotiate your rents down. Also, be free of thsoe 20 odd year commitments to specific leases.

Which is, I insist, what the Body Shop admin/bkruptcy/whatever it was was all about. Being able to screw the landlords. Perfectly viable business in there, storied brand name and all that. But got to get the cost base – the rents, rightsized. Commercial leases whose rent reviews could be up or down would have made it unnecessary.

Note, this may not be 100% oand only this be true. But I guarantee you it’s a lorra ‘f it.

Well, OK, maybe not actually lend him any money but:

The Indian-British businessman Sanjeev Gupta has described how companies within his steel conglomerate used stamps and digital images of his signature to certify documents because it was “simply not physically possible” for him to attend to the business personally and that the practice meant his signature was on documents he “had not personally reviewed or ever seen”.

Gupta’s legal representatives have made the statement in a defence document submitted as part of a $400 million dispute between Greensill, the collapsed financial firm, and Zurich, its insurer.

Big complicated business, of course he didn;t sign every doc, some of them were just stamped, he’d never even seen them.

The credit tho’ – I’m amazed he’s still going.

Boohoo is in a stand-off with suppliers after the struggling fast-fashion seller withheld payments over claims the quality of clothing was too poor.

Seconds always exist etc.

So do companies trying to manage cashflow exist.

The Manchester-based company also faces crucial debt negotiations in coming months as it attempts to convince lenders to refinance more than £300m of existing loans. Both Boohoo and its creditors have hired specialist debt advisers to oversee the discussions, a move that analysts at Shore Capital described as “concerning”.

Advisers at Interpath, who are attempting to rescue the company, said in a recent filing that they had struggled to locate millions of pounds.

In a report to creditors, they have said they were previously told that the company held more than more than $19m (£15m) in its bank account.

However, they have now uncovered that the business accounts were almost empty.

Interpath’s Jonathan Thielmann and David Standish said: “Statements show the balance as at the date of our appointment was $1,500 and the account balance was never greater than $4,000.”

Erm?

Despite reporting revenues of $677m last year with just 50 staff, Bank of Telecom collapsed two months ago.

The business now owes around £36m to lender Investec, as well as millions of pounds more to other debtors.

The administrators said Bank of Telecom’s accounts revealed that £95m remains owed by its mobile customers.

However, given they are largely overseas networks, the advisers said they had encountered significant difficulties contacting them.

The advisers added: “None of these large debtors have paid or communicated a readiness to pay.”

In the company’s filings, one director of the company said he had “lost confidence in the reliability of information emanating from the finance department”.

Sounds like Investec never did actually check the bank accounts before lending…..

There is an alternative explanation:

Bank of Telecom, which claimed to allow the trading of SMS and voice traffic between mobile companies,

Vast trading at tiny or even negative margins but the cashflow impressed?

China’s plot to seize control of the global jet market

OK, that’s one way.

After years of market dominance, the Boeing-Airbus duopoly is facing its biggest threat yet

That’s another. Wily orientals are to invade our markets? Or save us from a duopoly?

British Airways comes to rescue of England fans with more flights and bigger planes for final
Supporters had been facing travel misery for Euro 2024 showdown with Spain in Berlin due to lack of direct flights

Business spots profitable short term niche, no?

The chancellor insisted there would be a clear distinction between the NWF and GB Energy, another publicly owned company proposed by Labour. While GB Energy will focus on the “production of clean, low carbon energy”, investment made via the NWF will seek to deploy £1.8bn to ports, £1.5bn for gigafactories including for electric vehicles, £2.5bn to clean steel, £1bn for carbon capture and £500m to green hydrogen.

Reeves said the new government was in a prime position to attract investment, amid ongoing political uncertainty in other major western economies. That includes the US, where Donald Trump is due to challenge an under-fire Joe Biden in the November presidential elections, and France, where elections resulted in a hung parliament.

“I think for the first time in a long time investors will look at Britain and say it’s a country with a stable government. It’s got a clear plan, but clear mandate in the election. And that’s different from some other countries around the world today,” Reeves told journalists.

So, it’s gonna make a profit, right? Green steel, ports, gigfactories, they’re all gonna make a profit, right?

The value of used cars fell. The used car fleet they’d financed with bonds. The bonds had a clause in there meaning the capital value must be maintained – by cash movements from the company into the bond fund if necessary. Hertz didn;t have the cash, Hertz went bust.

Of course, when in Chapter 11 used car prices then rose so the equity became worth something again. But, you know……

A motor leasing giant chaired by the retail veteran Lord Stuart Rose is facing a debt crunch amid a slump in prices for second-hand electric cars.

Zenith Automotive, which is owned by private equity giant Bridgepoint, has been put on debt downgrade watch by the ratings agency Moody’s owing to concerns over its finances.

The Leeds-based group is one of Britain’s largest independent fleet managers, owning and managing more than 170,000 cars including electric vehicles (EVs) for companies such as Travis Perkins.

The recent plunge in EV prices has spooked Zenith’s bondholders over fears the group’s portfolio of vehicles will be worth less in future.

Hmmmm

Although Zenith has no need to refinance its debts and has around £100m of cash it can draw on, the group has borrowed around £1bn of loans and a further £475m of debt repayable to bond investors.

The issue has spooked bond markets, which have sent the price of Zenith’s debts down sharply in recent months.

The group’s £475m bond, a key indicator for the group’s health, has fallen to around 65p in the pound versus around 80p six months ago.

Depends on the terms of the bonds, no?

Two US astronauts will be left on the International Space Station (ISS) for almost two weeks longer than planned because of faults with the Boeing spacecraft designed to return them to Earth.

Nasa said Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams would not return to Earth on board the Boeing Starliner until June 26.

The vehicle has been plagued by helium leaks and thruster issues, in the latest setback to Boeing’s space programme which has been beset by delays and high costs.

The ISS mission was Boeing’s first crewed space launch after more than a decade of planning and two launches had been aborted at late notice.

Myself I think what he’s done at SpaceX is more impressive than Tesla. But the base and underlying trick is the same. To have been able to drive for mass manufacturing much earlier in the development process than anyone thought possible and so get to economies of scale.

We need something that uses electricity, where the cost of the electricity is the or a major cost, which produces something saleable and can be run on an intermittent basis.

This should also be possible at domestic scale.

So, mining bitcoin is an obvious one, tho’ that no longer works at domestic scale at all. Might be possible to imagine a net which does it tho’.

The electricity grid operator wants to pay people to use more electricity when supplies from wind and solar farms are abundant under an update of its “demand flexibility” service.

The system was launched in 2022 to help the National Grid lessen the risk of blackouts by paying families and businesses to use less electricity when supply was tight. Last winter 2.6 million signed up to use the service.

They will pay us to use electricity. So, we’ve a negative input cost. We can use that to make what? Note that it will be intermittent…..can’t, therefore run a furnace etc

The embattled shipyard that built the Titanic is facing the threat of strikes over plans to force workers to come in on Fridays.

Members of the GMB union at Harland & Wolff’s Belfast shipyard overwhelmingly voted for industrial action on Monday, amid a backlash against proposals to extend their working hours.

It is understood that managers are seeking to move away from a four-day week to a mandatory five-day one as the amount of work at the shipyard increases.

The yard is trying to refinance. It’s not obvious that it will be able to do so – and therefore will go bust.

But the plan for longer hours has sparked outrage among workers, who currently receive overtime pay for working Fridays under arrangements secured by unions decades ago.

But they’re willing to strike over overtime on Fridays.

Ryanair reports record €1.9bn profit as Amber Rudd joins board

Amber will soon cure that.

It isn’t just the way our cars are powered that is altering in profound ways – the way they are sold is changing dramatically too.

It is a shift so radical that some believe it could herald the death of the car dealer, immortalised by Arthur Daley in the classic 1980s TV series Minder.

Since the days of Henry Ford, carmakers have relied on franchised dealers to sell and service their cars.

Manufacturers would deliver the models to the dealers and then it was up to their salesmen and women to shift them. They had discretion to offer deals and throw in perks and were rewarded with commissions based on the value of what they sold.

It’s also worth noting that the vast majority of the car market – by transaction volume – is of used cars. So the dealer modek still has some legs to it…..

Fossil fuel companies are forcing governments to compensate them for lost earnings in the transition to a low-carbon global economy, and destroying the world’s ability to counter their harmful activities, former top UN officials have warned.

Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland who was twice a UN climate envoy, said she was “outraged” by the activities of fossil fuel companies, including forcing governments into “investment treaties” that reward them with billions in compensation when countries reduce their reliance on oil, gas and coal.

“It is well worth looking at these investment treaties, there are lots of them – 2,000 of various sorts,” Robinson said. “[Under their terms], if countries do the right thing on climate, they have to compensate fossil fuel companies. And they compensate to the tune of $62bn (£49bn) over a five-year period. It’s another of these hidden subsidies. I was outraged.”

ISDS – for that’s hat this is – is a venue where the company can sue the government over whether the government has broken its own contract. The ability to sue in a court not controlled by the government.

The majority of cases are won by governments. For no one can demand money because govt has changed policy. Only if the change in policy then causes a loss on a contract under ISDS provisions. Why? Because it’s easier to attract investment if the rules are settled in advance. Also, it’s very tempting for governments to change them after the investment has been made.

PwC is facing a backlash from its own staff amid allegations that Middle Eastern partners prevented the appointment of a woman as the firm’s new boss.

Senior partners in London are understood to believe that voters at the firm’s offices in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other parts of the Middle East played a decisive role in the victory of Marco Amitrano over his two female rivals.

It follows a lengthy process to elect a new senior partner for PwC UK and Middle East, one of the most important – and best-paid – positions in the global accounting firm.

D’ye mean that foreigners, working in foreign, are diverse in their views?

Shocker, eh?

Shares in Aston Martin plunged by as much as 14pc on Wednesday after the struggling luxury carmaker revealed losses almost doubled in the first three months of the year.

The company said it had sunk £139m into the red during the opening quarter, as losses rose almost 90pc compared to £74m a year ago.

This stemmed from a 10pc fall in overall sales to £268m, fuelled by a 63pc drop in the number of SUVs sold to dealerships.

So the dash for volume with the DBX isn’t working then. Or, as we might put it, brands are less expandable than some are willing to bet they are.

Being known for really top notch two seater sporties doesn’t quite carry over to the sensible car for the second wife or, perhaps, her potential replacement in training.