The Treasury risks becoming engulfed in a fresh lobbying row after one of its top civil servants quit to take an executive post at Barclays. Sky News has learned that Katharine Braddick has tendered her resignation as the Treasury’s director-general for financial services – a job she has held since 2016. A senior banking industry
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Luke Johnson, one of Britain’s best-known leisure entrepreneurs, is adding to his collection of e-commerce businesses by snapping up a leading online retailer of musical instruments. Sky News understands that Risk Capital Partners, Mr Johnson’s investment vehicle, has agreed to buy GAK, which trades from a flagship store in Brighton, West Sussex. The terms of
Almost 50 stores per day closed down across the UK during the first half of the year, research suggests. Some 8,739 outlets went out of business across high streets, retail parks and shopping centres between January and June, figures from the Local Data Company suggest. But 3,488 opened during the same period, resulting a net
Manchester United Football Club is closing in on the appointment of an internal successor to Ed Woodward, its long-standing boss. Sky News has learnt that the club’s New York-listed parent company could announce within weeks that Richard Arnold, Manchester United’s group managing director, will take over from Mr Woodward. One insider said that a statement
The US added far fewer new jobs this past month than anticipated, as a resurgent COVID-19 fuelled by the more transmissible Delta variant strikes hard across less vaccinated states. According to data published on Friday, American employers added 235,000 jobs in August, well short of the 728,000 expected by economists – and down from just
Retail giant Ikea says at least 1,000 of its product lines have been disrupted by the shortage of lorry drivers. It is the latest company to be caught up in the supply chain chaos currently affecting the UK. The firm said in a statement that a “perfect storm of issues, including the disruption of global
Price rises for consumers are “inevitable” as a consequence of the HGV driver shortage, the boss of Iceland has warned. Almost 50,000 drivers have left the road in the last two years, leaving retailers, suppliers, and hauliers competing for a diminished pool to supply clients. The scramble for supplies has led to sharp increases in
The recruitment industry has warned that the end of the furlough scheme this month is unlikely to put much of a dent in the UK’s record number of job vacancies, in the short term at least. The latest jobs recovery tracker from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) showed there were 1.66 million jobs on