Cost of taking over British Steel rises to £235m, government says

The cost of taking control of British Steel has risen to £235m, the UK government has said, as it acknowledged concern over the threat of EU tariffs that could significantly harm the business.The government passed emergency legislation in April to take control of British Steel amid fears that its Chinese owner, Jingye Steel, was planning to walk away from its Scunthorpe steelworks.The takeover preserved the jobs of 3,500 workers at British Steel but it has left the government footing the bill for the loss-making company. The industry minister, Chris McDonald, said the government had paid for “working capital, covering items such as raw materials, salaries, and addressing unpaid bills, including for SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) in the supply chain”, in a written statement to parliament published this week.The latest costs add to the £604m spent on keeping the Scunthorpe plant going in 2019 and 2020, when it collapsed into insolvency under its previous owner, the private equity fund Greybull Capital

Nestlé to axe 16,000 jobs as new chief targets sales growth

Nestlé has said it will cut 16,000 jobs over the next two years as the owner of KitKat and Nescafé attempts to reduce costs and increase sales.The Swiss-headquartered multinational said the cuts would include 12,000 white-collar professionals and 4,000 in its manufacturing and supply chain, close to 6% of Nestlé’s global workforce.“The world is changing and Nestlé needs to change faster,” said Philipp Navratil, the new chief executive. “This will include making hard but necessary decisions to reduce headcount over the next two years. We will do this with respect and transparency

75% of Americans report soaring prices as Trump claims inflation ‘over’

Nine months after Donald Trump took office, promising to reduce prices on “day one”, a clear majority of Americans say their monthly costs have risen by between $100 and $749, according to an exclusive new poll conducted for the Guardian.The president has continued to insist that there is “virtually no inflation”. “Prices are ‘WAY DOWN’ in the USA,” Trump wrote on social media in late August.Yet according to a new Harris poll, Americans are still reporting soaring inflation and are increasingly pessimistic about the economy.When asked to estimate how much their regular monthly household costs have increased from last year, 74% of those surveyed said they had seen increases of at least $100, according to the poll

An unexpected unemployment rate rise puts the RBA odds-on to cut the cash rate – but it’s a headache for Jim Chalmers

Hear that? That’s the sound of the jobs market creaking, if not cracking.Australia’s unemployment rate unexpectedly jumped to a four-year high of 4.5% in September, up from 4.3% the month before.Jim Chalmers is in Washington DC attending a G20 summit, but still found time to put out a statement reminding us that the jobless measure is “still very low by historical standards”

Adani denies claims it sold ‘below-market coal’ leading to Queensland missing out on hundreds of millions in royalties

Adani has consistently sold coal from its Queensland mine far below market rates, according to claims made in new analysis, potentially reducing the royalties owed to the state government by hundreds of millions of dollars.The research director at the Australia Institute, Rod Campbell, calculated that Adani sold thermal coal from its Carmichael mine at an average of just over $A100 a tonne during the 2023 to 2025 financial years – its first three full years of operation.Sign up: AU Breaking News emailThe period saw huge coal price spikes after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Australian benchmark prices surging above $A600/t in late 2022, before moderating.Even allowing for discounted prices for Adani’s lower-quality coal, Campbell said the difference between the “realised price and expected market price is huge”.“This discrepancy means that royalty payments were far lower than might have been expected

Don’t give in to big pharma on drug pricing | Letters

While the chief executive of Eli Lilly may lament the UK’s drug prices (UK is ‘worst country in Europe’ for drug prices, says Mounjaro maker, 24 September), the NHS should celebrate them. The system put in place for evaluating the cost-effectiveness of new drugs is respected the world over and is successful in applying the principle that funding a new product should not damage the NHS as a whole. This principle of cost-effectiveness has led to widespread price reductions for the NHS that have allowed the service as a whole to benefit.The chief executive of Eli Lilly links the recent pausing or cancelling of pharmaceutical industry investments in the UK to drug pricing here, when these are down to the drug companies’ desperation to kowtow to Donald Trump.Further to this, the talk of increasing Nice’s cost-effectiveness threshold, and even index-linking this, is a disgrace (NHS could pay 25% more for medicines under plan to end row with drugmakers and Trump, 8 October)