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More than 300,000 workers are set to receive a pay rise after higher rates were announced for the Real Living Wage, the voluntary rate paid by thousands of employers.

The Living Wage Foundation, which sets the rates, said the new hourly rate would be £11.05 in London and £9.90 outside the capital.

They amount to increases of 20p and 40p, respectively, as consumers grapple a surge of rising costs – especially for fuel and household energy – which are tipped to be reflected in inflation figures for October due to be released this week.

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‘Interest rate rise wouldn’t tackle supply issues’

The cost of petrol and diesel have hit record highs in recent weeks following a 60% hike in wholesale oil prices this year as economies reopen following widespread COVID-19 disruption.

While the energy price cap was raised by 12% at the start of October following unprecedented rises in gas costs – there are warnings of worse to come when the cap is next reviewed in early 2022.

Rising prices threaten consumer spending power but the Bank of England opted against an anticipated rise in interest rates to dampen inflation expectations earlier this month.

The Real Living Wage is higher than the statutory National Living Wage of £8.91 an hour for adults, which will rise to £9.50 in April.

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The Foundation said 9,000 employers have now opted to pay the voluntary sum and new signatories included construction firms Taylor Wimpey and Persimmon Homes.

Fujitsu and Capita were also among those to be accredited since the last increase, taking the total since the pandemic started to more than 3,000.

Living Wage Foundation director Katherine Chapman said: “With living costs rising so rapidly, today’s new Living Wage rates will provide hundreds of thousands of workers and their families with greater security and stability.

“For the past 20 years, the Living Wage movement has shaped the debate on low pay, showing what is possible when responsible employers step up and provide a wage that delivers dignity.

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Minimum wage increase criticised

“Despite this, there are still millions trapped in working poverty, struggling to keep their heads above water and these are people working in jobs that kept society going during the pandemic like social care workers and cleaners.”

A government spokesperson said: “The government is determined to make work pay, having recently announced a significant rise in the National Living Wage from April 2022, to £9.50 an hour – the biggest increase since its introduction.

“We have also committed to further increases to the National Living Wage, to reach two thirds of average earnings by 2024.

“The minimum wages are a legal minimum, and we commend employers who are able to pay more, when they can afford to do so.

“We are committed to going even further to support workers, pushing ahead with plans to include a new right for all workers to request a more predictable contract from their employers, giving individuals the security they need.”

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HSBC ‘being attacked all the time’ by online criminals – as boss ‘kept awake at night’ by cyber threat

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HSBC 'being attacked all the time' by online criminals - as boss 'kept awake at night' by cyber threat

The boss of one of the UK’s biggest banks says it is being attacked “all the time” by online criminals and he is kept up at night by cyber threats.

“It does keep me awake,” HSBC UK chief executive Ian Stuart told the Treasury Committee of MPs.

“Because we can be attacked and we are being attacked all the time.”

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Mr Stuart said banks were spending “enormous” sums of hundreds of millions of pounds on IT systems – the biggest expense in their businesses.

“Cybersecurity is now very much at the top of our agenda,” he added.

Ian Stuart, chief executive of HSBC UK, appearing before the Treasury Committee. Pic: PA
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Ian Stuart, chief executive of HSBC UK, appearing before the Treasury Committee. Pic: PA

Concerns were also highlighted by Lloyds Bank chief executive Charlie Nunn, who said financial fraud will get worse if banks cannot intervene to prevent it and social media and telecoms companies are not incentivised to halt it.

Mr Nunn said the UK “has become the home of fraud”, adding that the number of victims is “pretty disturbing” and “individual cases are harrowing”.

Major high street businesses, including M&S and the Co-op, have been hit by cyber attacks in recent weeks and had their operations impacted.

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Who is behind M&S cyberattack?

Cybersecurity threats, however, were not behind the several-day outage at Barclays at the end of January, its UK chief executive Vim Maru said.

He added: “We’ve learned the lessons. We’re acting on the lessons, both work done internally, but also with help from third parties as well.

Account holders across the UK have suffered a spate of IT glitches from different banks around paydays this year.

Tens of millions of pounds on IT have been spent and customer glitches have fallen, Mr Maru said.

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Could ageing tech be behind banking outages?

He added that the problem at Barclays was a software issue, saying: “We put a fix in place that means that we won’t have a recurrence.”

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Steel tycoon Gupta in last-ditch bid to rescue UK empire

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Steel tycoon Gupta in last-ditch bid to rescue UK empire

The steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta is mounting a last-ditch bid to salvage his British operations after seeing an emergency plea for government support rejected.

Sky News has learnt that Mr Gupta’s Liberty Speciality Steels UK (SSUK) arm is seeking to adjourn a winding-up petition scheduled to be heard in court on Wednesday.

The petition is reported to have been brought by Harsco Metals Group, a supplier of materials and labour to SSUK, and is said to be supported by other trade creditors.

Unless the adjournment is granted, Mr Gupta faces the prospect of seeing SSUK forced into compulsory liquidation.

That would raise questions over the future of roughly 1,450 more steel industry jobs, weeks after the government stepped in to rescue the larger British Steel amid a row with its Chinese owner over the future of its Scunthorpe steelworks.

If Mr Gupta’s operations do enter compulsory liquidation, the Official Receiver would appoint a special manager to run the operations while a buyer is sought.

A Whitehall insider said talks had taken place in recent days involving Mr Gupta’s executives and the Insolvency Service.

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Steel industry sources said the government could conceivably be interested in reuniting the Rotherham plant of SSUK with British Steel’s Scunthorpe site because of the industrial synergies between them, although it was unclear whether any such discussions had been held.

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Mr Gupta is said to have explored whether he could persuade the government to step in and support SSUK using the legislation enacted last month to take control of British Steel’s operations.

Whitehall insiders said, however, that Mr Gupta’s overtures had been rebuffed.

He had previously sought government aid during the pandemic but that plea was also rejected by ministers.

The SSUK division operates across sites including at Rotherham in south Yorkshire and Bolton in Lancashire.

It makes highly engineered steel products for use in sectors such as aerospace, automotive and oil and gas.

A restructuring plan due to be launched last week was abandoned at the eleventh hour after failing to secure support from creditors of Greensill, the collapsed supply chain finance provider to which Mr Gupta was closely tied.

Under that plan, creditors, including HM Revenue and Customs, would have been forced to write off a significant chunk of the money they are owed.

The company said last week that it had invested nearly £200m in the last five years into the UK steel industry, but had faced “significant challenges due to soaring energy costs and an over-reliance on cheap imports, negatively impacting the performance of all UK steel companies”.

It adds: The court’s ability to sanction the plan depended on finalisation of an agreement with creditors.

“This has not proved possible in an acceptable timeframe, and so Liberty has decided to withdraw the plan ahead of the sanction hearing on May 15 and will now quickly consider alternative options.”

One source close to Liberty Steel acknowledged that it was running out of time to salvage the business.

They said, however, that an adjournment of Wednesday’s hearing to consider the winding-up petition could yet buy the company sufficient breathing space to stitch together an alternative rescue deal.

A Liberty Steel spokesperson said on Tuesday: “Discussions continue with creditors.

“Liberty understands the concern this will create for Speciality Steel UK colleagues and remains committed to doing all it can to maintain the Speciality Steel UK business.”

The Insolvency Service and the Department for Business and Trade have also been contacted for comment.

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Daily Mail-owner Rothermere eyes minority Telegraph stake in RedBird deal

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Daily Mail-owner Rothermere eyes minority Telegraph stake in RedBird deal

The publisher of the Daily Mail has held talks in recent days about taking a minority stake in the Telegraph newspapers as part of a deal to end the two-year impasse over their ownership.

Sky News has learnt that Lord Rothermere, who controls Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT), was in detailed negotiations late last week which would have seen him taking a 9.9% stake in the Telegraph titles.

It was unclear on Monday whether the talks were still live or whether they would result in a deal, with one adviser suggesting that the discussions may have faltered.

One insider said that if DMGT did acquire a stake in the Telegraph, the transaction would be used as a platform to explore the sharing of costs across the two companies.

They would, however, remain editorially independent.

Sources said that RedBird and IMI, whose joint venture owns a call option to convert debt secured against the Telegraph into equity, were hoping to announce a deal for the future ownership of the media group this week, potentially on Thursday.

However, the insider suggested that a transaction could yet be struck without any involvement from DMGT.

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The progress in the talks to seal new ownership for the right-leaning titles comes days after the government said it would allow foreign state investors to hold stakes of up to 15% in British national newspapers.

That would pave the way for Abu Dhabi royal family-controlled IMI to own 15% of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph – a prospect which has sparked outrage from critics including the former Spectator editor Fraser Nelson.

The decision to set the ownership threshold at 15% follows an intensive lobbying campaign by newspaper industry executives concerned that a permanent outright ban could cut off a vital source of funding to an already-embattled industry.

RedBird Capital, the US-based fund, has already said it is exploring the possibility of taking full control of the Telegraph, while IMI would have – if the status quo had been maintained – been forced to relinquish any involvement in the right-leaning broadsheets.

Other than RedBird, a number of suitors for the Telegraph have expressed interest but struggled to raise the funding for a deal.

The most notable of these has been Dovid Efune, owner of The New York Sun, who has been trying for months to raise the £550m sought by RedBird IMI to recoup its outlay.

On Sunday, the Financial Times reported that Mr Efune has secured backing from Jeremy Hosking, the prominent City investor.

Another potential offer from Todd Boehly, the Chelsea Football Club co-owner, and media tycoon David Montgomery, has failed to materialise.

RedBird IMI paid £600m in 2023 to acquire a call option that was intended to convert into ownership of the Telegraph newspapers and The Spectator magazine.

That objective was thwarted by a change in media ownership laws – which banned any form of foreign state ownership – amid an outcry from parliamentarians.

The Spectator was then sold last year for £100m to Sir Paul Marshall, the hedge fund billionaire, who has installed Lord Gove, the former cabinet minister, as its editor.

The UAE-based IMI, which is controlled by the UAE’s deputy prime minister and ultimate owner of Manchester City Football Club, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, extended a further £600m to the Barclays to pay off a loan owed to Lloyds Banking Group, with the balance secured against other family-controlled assets.

Other bidders for the Telegraph had included Lord Saatchi, the former advertising mogul, who offered £350m, while Lord Rothermere, the Daily Mail proprietor, pulled out of the bidding for control of his rival’s titles last summer amid concerns that he would be blocked on competition grounds.

The Telegraph’s ownership had been left in limbo by a decision taken by Lloyds Banking Group, the principal lender to the Barclay family, to force some of the newspapers’ related corporate entities into a form of insolvency proceedings.

DMGT, RedBird and IMI all declined to comment.

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