Fri 9 Jul 2021 01.00 EDT
UK plc is the target of a private equity buying spree. Private equity firms have announced 124 deals for UK companies (both takeovers and minority stakes) with a combined value of £41.5bn so far in 2021, according to data company Dealogic. That was the highest value of deals by this point in the year since it started tracking transactions in 2005.
The latest target is Morrisons. A supermarket that traces its roots back to an eggs and butter stall in Bradford is the subject of a three-way private equity bidding war between American buyout investors.
If the deal for Morrisons goes through it will mean that more than 1 million British workers – including 118,000 at the supermarket group – will be employed by companies with private equity shareholders, equivalent to about 3% of the UK’s total workforce. Other British household names that have been snapped up by private equity since the start of the pandemic include the supermarket Asda, the roadside ass
Former allies Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond are now at daggers drawn, with some saying the independence campaign is stagnating MUCH has been written in The Herald on the subject of the possibility of another independence referendum. It is clear that the positions of both camps have become more vociferous, entrenched and vitriolic, not helped by the apparent prevarication of Nicola Sturgeon, the animosity of Alex Salmond, and the asinine stupidity of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove et al. Independence has obvious attractions and palpable disadvantages; dozens of democratic countries with population sizes not unlike our own seemingly thrive under their own power yet the received wisdom by many, particularly in Westminster and Holyrood, is that Scotland alone would be incapable of self rule. We would be an economic basket case without the beneficent teat of the mother country, conveniently ignoring that Britain as a whole is in financial dire straits reliant on ever-increasin
By Stephen Bouvier2021-05-10T15:27:00+01:00
A trio of lawmakers in the upper house of the United Kingdom parliament have lined up to launch an unprecedented attack on accounting policy issues.
In the firing line was the new body charged with endorsing International Financial Reporting Standards for use in the UK, the International Accounting Standards Board’s planned new insurance liabilities accounting standard, IFRS 17, and the mark-to-market pensions model.
Long-standing IFRS critic Lord Prem Sikka said: “In common with the Financial Reporting Council, the newly created Accounting Standards Endorsement Board will primarily rubber-stamp the international accounting standards, better known as the international financial reporting standards, or IFRS.”
Last modified on Tue 11 May 2021 00.11 EDT
Many workers employed across the £37bn NHS test-and-trace service are being paid through networks of opaque small companies that experts fear could be defrauding the Treasury via a notorious tax scheme.
The Guardian investigated after sources working at Covid-19 call centres, testing sites, mobile testing units and laboratories raised concerns about their payslips and employment terms.
Headed by the Conservative peer Dido Harding, NHS test and trace has become one of the biggest sources of new jobs during the pandemic, with a workforce of 50,000.
Most of its staff are supplied not by the National Health Service, but by outsourcing giants including Serco and G4S, and dozens of recruitment agencies in a broad contracting network.