This could be a long campaign and, despite all the difficulties, there is a logic to the proposalEven a Marmite reaction – some loving it, some hating it – would have been better from brand owner Unilever’s point of view. Unfortunately, almost everybod…
Protecting vulnerable from £700 hike in energy bills means hard choices now | Nils Pratley
The options are unattractive but a massively expanded warm homes scheme gets the vote hereIt’s choose your poison time for a government that must know allowing low-income households to suffer the full blast of the scheduled rise in energy bills in Apri…
UK energy prices are giving the surest signal of an expensive winter
If there is a political plan to manage a possible crisis – beyond blaming international markets – it is hard to spotHere’s a forecast to alarm the Bank of England, which has only just started preparing us for inflation at 4% by Christmas. Try 6% as soo…
THG investors start to question Matthew Moulding’s enthusiasm
Latest attempt to seize online opportunities falling flat as founder pursues corporate gymnasticsWhen your share price falls by a third in the three weeks after a big announcement that was supposed to reveal hidden value within your company, you’ve got…
Morrisons’ new owner has plenty of wiggle room in takeover terms | Nils Pratley
CD&R has made fine-sounding pledges but they don’t stop this being yet another debt-fuelled buyoutThe auction for Morrisons wasn’t worth the wait, but the mission to cast Clayton Dubilier & Rice as a kindly, far-sighted owner of the UK’s fourth…
As Morrisons auction looms, pension deals ought to have been nailed down | Nils Pratley
CD&R stepped up to the mark two weeks ago, but Fortress’s foot-dragging looks poor ahead of SaturdayThe structure for Saturday’s auction for Morrisons is technically flawless, as argued in this column on Wednesday, but there is still a problem: onl…
The Southeastern train arriving on platform 3 is £25m late
Latest rail franchise to hit the buffers at least arrived at the destination via an unconventional routeGovernment to take over Southeastern State takeover will amplify calls for rail reformThe conventional way for a company to get stripped of a rail f…
A windfall tax? Kwarteng better be sure it doesn’t get messy | Nils Pratley
The gas crisis is global and HM Treasury can hardly send an invoice to Gazprom or QatarHere’s a development in the energy crisis we didn’t expect from a free-market business secretary: talk of a windfall tax on companies that are making big profits fro…
Ladbrokes owner bet big that it was undervalued. It won … big
Liberalisation of US gambling law is fuelling a wave of buyouts of more tech-savvy UK betting firmsThe stock market bargain during the wild pandemic trading of March 2020, it turns out, was the owner of antique betting chains Ladbrokes and Coral. In th…
Darktrace’s astonishing rise makes City forecasters look sillier than usual | Nils Pratley
The cyber security firm has more than lived up to its promises, but that is not enough to account for its stellar riseThe prize for most undervalued flotation of the year goes to Darktrace. The Cambridge-based cyber security firm floated in April at 25…