Rishi Sunak will confirm one of the biggest increases in the minimum wage this week after independent advisers recommended that the main rate should rise to £9.50 an hour. The Low Pay Commission, a panel of experts, has said that the national living wage, which is paid to the lowest earners aged 23 and […]
More “draconian” measures could be reintroduced in Wales if cases of Covid-19 continue to soar, the country’s chief medical officer has warned. Dr Frank Atherton said he has been “disappointed” to see many people have stopped carrying out the most basic measures recommended to keep safe, such as wearing masks and social distancing. Wales’ […]
Here’s something that you’ll hear rarely — running a business is like raising a child. While this analogy may be strange, I believe it holds true. There’s no business person I know out there that doesn’t hold their business close to their heart. That’s what happens when you spend ten, twenty, thirty […]
In 2019, the Telegraph revealed that 20% of new ventures will fail within just 12 months of opening their doors, with that figure climbing to 60% within the first three years. In fact, failure at the start-up phase is so widespread that many entrepreneurs have taken to writing a “failure post-mortem” to assess where […]
Tesco has been hit by hackers, leaving thousands of frustrated shoppers unable to buy groceries online at Britain’s biggest supermarket. The outage leaves its grocery website and app down for a second day, with people unable to book deliveries or amend existing orders. Tesco receives 1.3m online orders every week. A Tesco spokesperson said: […]
Phone providers are to automatically block online calls from abroad that are made to look as if they come from UK numbers, as part of efforts to crack down on a rise in foreign scams. The communications regulator, Ofcom, said it had been working with telecoms companies to tackle the “complex problem” and would […]
HSBC’s profits rose 74% in the third quarter as improving economic conditions allowed the bank to release hundreds of millions of pounds originally set aside for a potential jump in loan defaults during the pandemic. The London-headquartered bank said pretax profits rose to $5.4bn (£3.9bn) in the three months to 30 September, up from […]
The majority of UK employers are planning to hire staff over the next 12 months, the highest recruitment intentions in eight years, as Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic have caused acute shortages of workers in sectors ranging from haulage to hospitality and social care. 80% of businesses and other organisations are planning to take […]
A group of 30 UK millionaires have called on the chancellor to tax them and other rich people more because they can afford to pay it and “the cost of recovery cannot fall on the young or on those with lower incomes”. In an open letter in the run-up to the budget on Wednesday, […]
More than a third of companies believe that the chancellor should increase taxes to tackle greenhouse gases as part of “a carrot and stick” approach to driving the transition to net zero. A survey of more than 1,000 businesses by EY released days before Rishi Sunak delivers his third budget found that 39 per […]