Business

A jewellery boss who allegedly scammed investors out of £170m reportedly had his staff pose as customers to make his shops look busy to keep up the ruse.
In what could be the UK’s biggest diamond scam, Vashi Dominguez is also alleged to have had shop workers sit at work benches and pretend to be goldsmithing when business was faltering.
Investors claim that when the facade was exposed, they still hoped they could be bailed out by the £157m worth of diamonds they were told were held in stock.
However, the remaining gemstones were valued at just £100,000, a BBC Panorama investigation claims.
So far Mr Dominguez – described as the “Pied Piper” of the industry – is not being investigated by police.

A nightmare of ever expanding box-ticking that you can never escape alive!

Companies could be prosecuted and face unlimited fines if they fail to prevent fraud that their firm profits from under a corporate offence coming into force on Monday.

Under the new “failure to prevent fraud” law, large companies can be held criminally liable where an “employee, agent, subsidiary or other ‘associated person’” commits a fraud intending to benefit the organisation.

Examples could include dishonest sales practices, hiding important information from consumers or investors, or dishonest practices in financial markets. If a company is prosecuted it will have to prove to the court that it had reasonable anti-fraud measures in place.

The law will apply to large organisations that meet at least two of three criteria: having more than 250 employees, £36m turnover or £18m in total assets.

Every large business will now be eaten alive, from the inside, by the anti-fraud bureaucracy.

Well done everyone, well done.

It comes amid a wider strain on its balance sheet. In the accounts, Boohoo revealed its net assets collapsed to just £3.9m from £280m a year earlier.

Clive Black, an analyst at Shore Capital, said it showed Boohoo had become “very constrained”. Last week, the company announced a £175m borrowing facility carrying an interest rate of 7.3pc above the Bank of England base rate.

That interest rate hurts…..over 11%, no?

Intel shares rise after US government takes 10% stake
The deal with the chipmaker comes after a meeting between President Trump and Lip-Bu Tan

Shit idea.

This is a cracking house in Portugal. 30 mins from the airport and all. Well within pharma industry budgets etc.

One problem. The main road runs right past the front door. Steep hill, buses, lorries, gear changes etc.

So, perhaps not then, eh?

Culture? Measuring a company’s culture?

A FTSE 250 property giant has hired lawyers to investigate claims about its company culture made by a whistleblower, The Telegraph can reveal.

Bosses at Great Portland Estates told staff late last week that a law firm had been called in to conduct an investigation into its culture after concerns were raised by a former employee of the West End-based property giant.

On Friday, executives held an all-company call to inform employees of the investigation amid concerns that the whistleblower was about to go public.

Concerns?

Sure, sure, if people are doing illegal things then stop them doing so. But “concerns” about “company culture” sounds like one of those things that can never be refuted. As with that leftie claim of something being “problematic”. So, you got a problem with it do you? Ho well, no thing will please everyone, right? Which isn’t what they expect the answer to be at all.

Her main salary – £18,000 – comes from being a full-time manager at an RSPCA charity shop in her home town of Rugby.

It’s a job that she loves – so much so she spends another day each week working at a different charity shop, Air Ambulance. This earns her £350 a month.

But what makes Ms Coombs stand out is the thousands she has earned from her side hustles.

She has made nearly £10,000 pre-tax in the past 18 months selling clothes on Vinted, Depop and eBay.

Clever.

Her side hustle started as an attempt to clear out unwanted clothes, but she soon realised that she had an eye for selling. Now, she buys from wholesales in bulk to sell on at a profit.

Mebbe. Mebbe not.

She sees the incoming at two charity ships, is able to select that which is posho and could be sold as such rather than going on the charity shop racks.

Now, of course, she could be doing what she says she’s doing. But I’d be doing what I’ve said. The difficulty with selling second hand posh clothes is gaining access to the stream of second hand posho to sell. Being in the sorting process for a charity shop or two is……

She wants to start saving more of her money for setting up a shop,

No, the correct business plan is to become a consultant to all the charity shops in town. Sort all the donations, take out what can be sold posho, split the uplift with the shops themselves.

Demand for concrete has fallen to its lowest level since 1963 in a serious blow to Labour’s hopes of building more houses.

Sales of ready-mixed concrete fell by 11.5pc in the three months to June against the previous three months, according to data from the Mineral Products Association (MPA), which represents producers.

Always be wary of these numbers plucked and pushed. On the other hand the economy is what people actually do, not what anyone thinks they should or are. So quite how much weight to put on this one number is, well, but interesting all hte same….

A finance worker sued for discrimination after he was “disappointed” to receive a £10,000 bonus in a year where he worked only 18 days.

Matthew Colliander-Smith had long Covid and was only able to work for 8 per cent of his usual hours in 2022, an employment tribunal heard.

After he received around £185,000 as an annual bonus the previous year, Mr Colliander-Smith, who was a partner at Veritas Asset Management, was “shocked” to receive a much smaller award following his time off sick.

He suggested he deserved an award closer to £100,000 because his illness made it much harder to do any work, and therefore his effort rather than output should be rewarded.

Veritas eventually agreed to increase that to £40,000 despite Mr Colliander-Smith having been unable to perform the vast majority of his duties.

After a dispute about returning to work which resulted in him having his partnership terminated, he then sued the finance firm for disability discrimination.

Good salesman tho’ getting that bonus upgraded. Gotta give ‘im that.

Knucklehead or numbskull? Donald Trump uses both terms to describe Jerome Powell, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve. It depends on which day of the week it is.

His attacks on Powell are now so frequent they have lost the power to shock, but imagine the horror if Sir Keir Starmer started regularly describing Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, as a nitwit or a simpleton.

Or if France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, were to refer to Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, as a “nigaud” or “crétin”.

“Convicted crook” is actually correct.

Ryanair pays bonus for catching oversized hand luggage
Budget airline confirms commission for staff after employee says they were paid up to €80 extra per month

Company pays bonus when staff enforce the rules. How bastardly that is, eh?

Southern Water nearly doubles CEO pay to £1.4m despite bonus ban

Shareholders of Meta sued Zuckerberg, Andreessen and other former company officials including Sheryl Sandberg, the former chief operating officer, in hopes of holding them liable for billions of dollars in fines and legal costs the company paid in recent years.

Lawyers claiming to be acting on behalf of shareholders – and due for 30 to 40% of any award – decided to sue etc etc.

Other “rising block” tariffs see customers charged more for their water the more they consume.

For example, Severn Trent customers taking part in the trial pay less for their first 5,000 litres consumed in a month, the same bills as present for the next 5,000 and a higher rate for all usage over 10,000 litres.

Thames Water’s rising block trial will see some customers charged double for their water if they consume 685 litres a day – the equivalent of using a hose for 40 minutes.

Ofwat said last year that surge pricing measures could help reduce water consumption when demand is high.

“Customers who use a lot of water, for example those with swimming pools, hot tubs or large-scale sprinkler systems, could be charged a premium for very high use, particularly at times when water is scarce,” it said in a report.

The basic idea is sound. It’s how my water bill here has always worked. V low cost essentials rate – enough to run a household – then ever rising rates for greater usage.

A sprinkler on the lawn (before I got the well cleaned out and yes, the price of water was an incentive to make that investment of two guys spending a day digging it out), keeping a swimming pool topped up, these should cost more in a system fed by dams and reservoirs.

But those rates look excessive. The base and standard deal here is €8 a month. The more per unit as usage rises should – to my mind at least – start from such a very low base.

Africa’s four richest people hold more wealth than half the continent’s population combined, the charity Oxfam reported, warning that skewed policies are fuelling deepening poverty and the soaring fortunes of a few.

Africa had no billionaires in 2000, but now it has 23 with an estimated shared wealth that has rocketed by 56 per cent in the last five years, with the richest recording even bigger gains, Oxfam said.

“Africa’s wealth is not missing. It’s being siphoned off by a rigged system that allows a small elite to amass vast fortunes while denying hundreds of millions even the most basic services,” said Fati N’Zi-Hassane, the director of Oxfam in Africa, adding that policy failures were “unjust, avoidable and entirely reversible.’’

Any economic system that produces growth – so, only capitalist free marketry of some variant – will, as a side effect, produce billionaires. You can say that billionaires are bad etc – sure, you’re free to be a drooling moron all you want – but you still need to grasp that they’re a trivial side effect of the desperately needed growth happening.

A Silicon Valley “tech bro” has scrapped offering staff unlimited paid holiday after complaining “B-performers” were abusing the perk.

That must have come as a surprise.

Aston Martin has sued a key supplier that halted deliveries fearing that the carmaker would not pay its bills.

Warwickshire-based Aston Martin has been forced to take legal action against IMR Industries after the Italian manufacturer stopped deliveries of vital components.

IMR, which also supplies the likes of Ferrari and Maserati, is understood to have ceased shipments because of concerns that Aston Martin’s financial troubles would leave it unable to pay for the parts delivered. A source close to Aston Martin insisted the company always paid its suppliers on time.

It’s got this bad. Again?

The business, Aston – not, I hasten to add, this specific company – has gone down 7 maybe 8 times already, depends who is counting.

Two construction executives were asked if they had been “tickling each other’s b——s” by their boss after their project made a £4 million loss.

Donal Coppinger and John McInerney were sacked on the spot by Jason Carey, the group chief executive of the civil engineering and construction contractor Careys, when they revealed their costs had skyrocketed, an employment tribunal heard.

Mr Carey had believed the project was on course to make £3.3 million but learnt it was actually expecting a £4 million loss.

The civil engineering boss then “lost his temper” and asked his senior executives: “What have you two been doing for the last 12 months? Tickling each other’s b——s?”

Mr Coppinger and Mr McInerney – who earned £120,000 and £145,000 respectively – were told: “Get out of my sight and leave today.”

Now, the pair have won an unfair dismissal case after a judge ruled their sacking was unfair as there had been no proper investigation.

However, they were told they would be awarded no compensation from Careys because of their “extremely serious failures” over company finances.

At some point in repsonsibility – I’d say very low down the totem pole too – people should be subject to US hiring and firing. At will employment plus whatever’s in the contract. This should apply to civil servants of course too.

Still, this is fun:

Mr Carey then said: “What the f—?” He asked: “How was this possible… how could this happen?”

Mr Carey called Mr Coppinger a “c—” and then said, “I always knew you were dodgy, shifty and untrustworthy” while pointing his finger at him. He then made the remark about ticking each other’s b——s.

The pair were immediately sacked and told that the next contact would be through HR.

More of this please. Especially in the public sector.

Mike Ashley has pulled out of the race to buy Revolution Beauty, raising fresh questions over the future of the struggling cosmetics brand.

Not that I know any of the details or anything but it always seemed to me to be a lockdown beneficiary that wasn’t going to go anywhere after that….

Poundland bosses are hatching a plan to enforce steep rent cuts on store landlords as part of a last-ditch bid for survival.

The discount retailer has earmarked hundreds of stores for sharp rent reductions as its Polish parent company looks to persuade new owners to take the chain off its hands.

An auction of Poundland has been whittled down to a shoot-out between the distressed investment funds Gordon Brothers and Hilco.

The winning bidder will inherit a radical new turnaround plan drawn up by senior management, which proposes taking the axe to Poundland’s sprawling estate of more than 800 stores.

Between 150 and 200 have been singled out for imminent closure with as many as 500 more selected for swingeing rent bill decreases as bosses seek to dramatically rein in costs. Poundland employs 16,000 people.

UK commercial leases have rent reviews – well, afer decades of inflation, they would. The rent reviews are every three or five years over the lifetime of a – say – 25 year lease.

Such rent reviews are upwards only. That’s why the adjustment to internet shopping is such a crunching grind in this country. Because there’s no simple way for rents to adjust downwards. It’s only new leases which can or will be at lower rents. Or, if a company enters any of the varied restructuring or bankruptcy types then the landlords can be crammed down. But “rents are down the market, why isn’t ours falling?” doesn’t work. So there’s no smooth adjustment possible.

The Body Shop saga – largely about cramming down the landlords.