The bosses of Britain’s biggest broadband providers have warned that a £100bn Labour plan to nationalise the BT Group (BT.A) network and provide free broadband threatens to “completely crater the whole market” and choke off investment. Lutz Schueler, the chief executive of the Virgin Media, which owns its own cable network and faces City claims it would go bankrupt if Labour’s plans are implemented, told The Sunday Telegraph the “competition is good for the customer and this is good for the country”. Mr Schueler said: “Nationalisation is the opposite. That’s a threat to investment. If competition is dead then clearly the role of Virgin Media has to be reconsidered, that’s for sure.”
Scandal-hit Eddie Stobart Logistics (ESL) has been forced to accept an emergency high-interest loan to avoid a collapse before Christmas that would put more than 6,500 jobs at risk. The firm is taking a £55m loan from investment firm Dbay Advisors – with interest charged at an initial rate of 25pc. The deal will give Dbay a majority stake in the company, saddling existing shareholders with massive losses. The cash injection came after Eddie Stobart’s banks refused to lend it more money, as it grapples with a multimillion-pound accounting black hole. One insider said: “If the deal doesn’t happen extremely soon, it could be curtains.”
Edward Bramson, the corporate raider targeting Barclays (BARC) has angered his own shareholders after extending a controversial loan arrangement used to bet on the bank. The New York-based activist who runs Sherborne Investors, has made clear that he has no plans to drop his siege after US filings revealed he has lengthened by a year a loan used to build a stake in the lender, to July 2022. The extension of the deal with Barclays’ rival Bank of America, a move said to have broken a “gentleman’s agreement” that banks do not take action against each other, has angered Sherborne’s backers even though it limits how much the fund can lose on its stake.
Good Energy Group (GOOD) one of the country’s leading energy challengers, is turning away from the household market to escape a “price war” that has left the sector littered with casualties. Good Energy, which supplies renewable energy to about 250,000 homes and firms, says it will instead focus on business clients and helping customers with renewable energy subsidies. The shift, outlined in annual accounts, reflects increasing wariness in the industry towards domestic energy, amid tighter regulation such as the cap on bills, which has contributed to loss-making tariffs and a rising toll of failed challengers. More than a dozen have gone bust this year.
Tony Pidgley, one of Britain’s top housebuilders has backed radical reform of property laws to reverse the decline of home ownership by ending the hoarding of land and triggering a new wave of development. The founder of Berkeley Group Holdings (The) (BKG), said landowners and developers should be forced to share “planning uplift” with local authorities. The move would upend the residential construction industry but Mr Pidgley said the system is “in dire need of reform” to meet demand for hundreds of thousands of new homes. “We need a central body that buys land, awards planning permission, then passes on the returns to the local community,” he said.
Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) has seen off a landmark £600m lawsuit from shareholders over the disastrous acquisition of HBOS in 2008. Almost 6,000 retail shareholders and 300 institutions claimed they were misled about the financial health of HBOS before voting to approve the deal 11 years ago. The deal to buy the toxic lender almost sank Lloyds by landing it with billions of pounds worth of bad loans, forcing it to eventually beg for a £20bn bailout from taxpayers. The decision to back the bank means the investors will get no compensation. Many were pension savers whose retirement nest eggs were wiped out by a collapse in the lender’s share price.
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