Stagnant GDP shows scale of challenge for Rachel Reeves at autumn budget

“Our economy isn’t broken, but it does feel stuck,” is the message from Rachel Reeves.Having made rebooting the economy the No 1 priority for government, it is a brutally honest assessment from a chancellor more than a year into the job.The latest GDP figures, released on Friday, highlight the scale of the challenge for Reeves at her autumn budget. Growth flatlined in July, slowing from 0.4% in June, as the economy struggled for momentum over the summer

Britain is ‘a terrible place’ to sell medicines, says drug firm executive

A senior pharmaceuticals executive has called on the government to come up with a “proper” roadmap for raising spending on new medicines, saying Britain is “not a good place” to develop or sell drugs.Paul Naish, the UK head of market access for the French company Sanofi, said Britain was “at a critical point”.He added: “We’ve still got the best universities, we’ve got some of the best scientists in the world, but it’s not a good place to do the development work for medicines. It’s an expensive place to operate, and it’s a terrible place to sell medicines.”The drugmaker MSD, known as Merck in the US, this week ditched its under-construction £1bn research centre in London

Business rates rise would put hundreds of big shops at risk, say UK retailers

Up to 400 large shops are at risk of closure with as many as 100,000 jobs at risk if the government goes ahead with plans to hit stores with higher business rates, retailers have warned.Some of the UK’s largest retail premises, including supermarkets and department stores, would face higher property tax charges under new rules being considered by the government before November’s budget.The higher charges for larger sites, including warehouses, offices and other premises, are intended to pay for discounts for smaller business properties, such as independent retailers, cafes and pubs, after the Labour government pledged to make the business rates system fairer.The bosses of big retailers including John Lewis, Lidl and B&Q met the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, last week to ask her to exclude retail from the surcharge.The new rules are targeted at all business premises with a rateable value – a figure linked to rents – of more than £500,000

MPs raise concerns over Asda’s link to app offering high-interest loans to staff

An influential group of MPs has sought assurances that Asda is not “squeezing staff” to drive profit after it emerged they are being offered high-interest loans by Wagestream, a company in which the retailer’s owner has a stake.The business and trade select committee has written to Asda over its links to the “financial wellbeing app” that recently began offering the supermarket’s staff loans of up to £25,000. The default arrangements for Wagestream’s “workplace loans” involve debt repayments being directly deducted from workers’ pay packets.A holding company controlled by Asda’s private equity owner TDR Capital is a shareholder in Wagestream, which has been offering Asda workers a range of other services, including savings pots and wage advances, since 2023.Documents filed at Companies House show that the holding company, Bellis Financial Investments 2, is one of a number of shareholders in Wagestream, alongside former Wonga payday loan investor Balderton Capital, and social impact investors including the Joseph Rowntree Foundation via the Fair by Design Fund

Paramount Skydance reportedly preparing takeover bid for Warner Bros Discovery

Paramount Skydance is reportedly preparing a takeover offer for Warner Bros Discovery, in a bid to pull together two of the largest US legacy media conglomerates and Hollywood movie studios.Less than a month after Skydance, a production firm run by David Ellison, son of the billionaire tech mogul Larry Ellison, closed its merger with Paramount, the firm is considering other blockbuster deals.Combining Paramount with WBD would reshape the US entertainment and media industry, shifting prominent brands in TV, cinema and news – from South Park and Superman to CNN and 60 Minutes – together for the first time.Paramount is preparing a majority cash bid for WBD that would be backed by the Ellison family, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed sources familiar with the situation. Paramount and WBD did not immediately respond to requests for comment

UK must heed Sir John Bell’s big pharma investment warning

Compare and contrast. Here is the opening line in the government’s response to news that the US pharmaceutical company Merck is scrapping its £1bn research centre in King’s Cross in London because it thinks the UK is not an internationally competitive venue. Whistling cheerfully, the Department for Science, Technology and Innovation managed to claim: “The UK has become the most attractive place to invest in the world.”And here is Sir John Bell, former regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford and all-round grand guru of life sciences in the UK. He told Radio 4 he had spoken to several chief executives of large pharmaceutical companies in the past six months “and they’re all in the same space, and that is, they’re not going to do any more investing in the UK”