Author: LoveWorld UK

British fashion retailer Superdry traded ahead of expectations in the latest quarter and has boosted its liquidity with a new 70 million pound ($92 million) lending facility to get it through the Covid-19 crisis, sending its shares higher. The stock was up 15% at 0748 GMT, paring 2020 losses to 73%. Superdry (SDRY.L) which sells sweatshirts, hoodies and jackets adorned with Japanese text, said that while trading in the 13 weeks to July 25, its fiscal first quarter, was materially impacted by the crisis, the 24.1% fall in group revenue was better than its initial expectations. The group’s stores were…

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said reopening schools in September was a social, economic and moral imperative and insisted schools would be able to operate safely despite the coronavirus pandemic. His comments follow a study earlier this month which warned that Britain risks a second wave of COVID-19 in the winter twice as large as the initial outbreak if schools open without an improved test-and-trace system. Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Johnson said restarting schools was a national priority. Schools would be the last places to close in future local lockdowns, he was quoted by another newspaper as telling…

Energy prices are set to fall for millions of British households this winter after the energy regulator said its cap on the most widely used tariffs would be lowered by about 7.5% from Oct. 1, to their lowest level since the cap began. A cap on electricity and gas bills came into effect in January 2019 and was a flagship policy of former British Prime Minister Theresa May to end what she called “rip-off” prices. The reduction was due to a fall in wholesale gas prices since February as lockdowns on business and homes led to a slump in demand,…

Britain announced a 200 million pound scheme to help smooth post-Brexit trade disruption for businesses in Northern Ireland when European Union freedom of movement rules cease to apply at the end of the year. Northern Ireland has Britain’s only land border with the EU, making it a focal point for complex questions about how a new system of cross-border trade will work when more than 45 years of market integration with mainland Europe ends. Senior minister Michael Gove will set out the new Trader Support Service during a visit to Northern Ireland on Friday, promising a free end-to-end service to…

More British shoppers returned to the high street in July, helped by the reopening of pubs and restaurants, but numbers were still much lower than normal for the time of year, an industry survey showed on Friday. The monthly report from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) trade body and market research firm ShopperTrak showed footfall was down 42% in annual terms in July, compared with a 63% decline in June. The reopening of pubs and restaurants in England on July 4 helped to spur only a small number of additional visits to the high street, the BRC said. The outlook…

U.S. President Donald Trump has issued an executive order banning U.S. transactions involving Chinese social media and video game leader Tencent Holdings Ltd (0700.HK), owner of messaging app WeChat, on national security grounds. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is set to identify transactions covered by the order, which starts in 45 days. Below is a list of some of Tencent’s biggest U.S. and international investments: UNITED STATES *Tesla Inc (TSLA.O): Tencent bought 5% of the electric vehicle maker for $1.78 billion (1.36 billion pounds) in 2017. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has called Tencent “an investor and adviser to Tesla”.…

Britain’s future access to European Union financial markets is looking increasingly patchy, as Brussels tries to limit the activities which can be carried out from London, prompting more business and jobs to cross the channel. The City of London’s unfettered access to its biggest customer – worth around 26 billion pounds ($34 billion) annually – ends on Dec. 31 when Brexit transition arrangements expire. While London is expected to remain Europe’s biggest financial centre with trillion-dollar foreign exchange trading and derivatives clearing staying put for now, recent moves by the EU to limit other trading activities to within the bloc…

Britain will set out proposals on Thursday to speed up homebuilding by cutting red tape and opening up the sector to smaller firms, in a bid to address a long-term housing shortage. Successive Conservative-led governments have sought to reform the housing market by increasing supply, conscious of a generation of younger renters who have been priced out of owning their own homes in many parts of the country. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has set its sights on reforming the planning system to try to get more homes built. “Our complex planning system has been a barrier to building the…

Chinese-owned video app TikTok, facing the threat of a U.S. ban, said on Thursday it will set up its first European data centre in Ireland, extending its presence in the country where it already has a hub dealing with regional regulatory issues. The move comes days after parent company ByteDance said it was considering moving TikTok’s headquarters overseas, following a British media report that the unit could relocate to London. TikTok’s 420 million euro ($499 million) investment in Ireland comes at a fraught time in relations between China and the West, with disagreements on a range of issues from trade…

The Bank of England said on Thursday that Britain’s economy would probably take longer to get back to its pre-pandemic size than it previously thought, even if the scale of the hit this year might not be quite as bad. The British central bank also warned of possible risks if it were to take interest rates below zero. As it announced unanimous votes by its policymakers to make no changes to its key interest rate, which stands at just 0.1%, nor its huge bond-buying programme, the BoE said the economy would not recover its pre-pandemic size until the end of…