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Jacob Rees-Mogg, the business secretary, has opened formal talks with Britain’s second-biggest steel producer about a taxpayer bailout amid fears for thousands of industrial jobs.

Sky News has learnt that Mr Rees-Mogg wrote to Jingye Group, the owner of British Steel, last week, to express a willingness to negotiate over the Chinese company’s request.

A source close to the discussions said British Steel had agreed to maintain its current operations and workforce while talks with ministers were ongoing.

Earlier this month, Sky News revealed that Jingye, which bought British Steel out of insolvency in 2020, had told the government that its two blast furnaces at its Scunthorpe steelworks were unlikely to be viable without government aid.

Subsequent reports indicated that the level of support required by Jingye was likely to be in the order of £500m.

Tata Steel, meanwhile, which is the biggest player in the UK steel sector, has also requested financial help from the government.

A Whitehall insider said on Monday that talks were “underway with the steel sector, including British Steel and Tata, to secure the sector’s long-term future”.

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British Steel employs about 4,000 people, with thousands more jobs in its supply chain dependent upon the company.

‘We recognise businesses feeling energy price impact’

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) declined to comment on the content of Mr Rees-Mogg’s letter, although a spokesman said: “We are working across the steel sector on achieving their sustainable and competitive long-term future.

“We recognise that businesses are feeling the impact of high global energy prices, particularly steel producers, which is why we announced the Energy Bill Relief Scheme to bring down costs.

“This is in addition to extensive support we have provided to the steel sector as a whole to help with energy costs, worth more than £780m since 2013.”

Jingye is said to be prepared to make thousands of people redundant if ministers reject its request for financial support.

It would then plan to import steel from China to roll at British Steel’s UK sites, according to the insider.

Industrial consumers of energy have complained for months that soaring prices are imperilling their ability to continue operating.

SCUNTHORPE, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 19:  A view of the Tata Steel processing plant at Scunthorpe which may make 1200 workers redundant on October 19, 2015 in Scunthorpe, England. Up to one in three workers at the Lincolnshire steel mill could lose their jobs alongside workers at other plants in Scotland. Tata Steel UK  is due to announce the Scunthorpe job losses this week.  (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
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The Scunthorpe plant was previously owned by Tata

Politically unpalatable menu of options for Rees-Mogg

For Mr Rees-Mogg, who took over as business secretary just weeks ago, the question of government support for a Chinese-owned company presents a politically unpalatable menu of options.

If no state funding is made available and significant numbers of jobs are axed, it would undermine a key tenet of the ‘levelling-up’ strategy that became a doctrine of Boris Johnson’s administration.

An agreement to provide substantial taxpayer funding to a Chinese-owned business, however, would almost certainly provoke outrage among Tory critics of Beijing.

China’s role in global steel production, after years of international trade rows about dumping, would make any subsidies even more contentious.

A British Steel spokesman said two weeks ago: “We are investing hundreds of millions of pounds in our long-term future but like most other companies we are facing a significant challenge because of the economic slowdown, surging inflation and exceptionally high energy and carbon prices.

“We welcome the recent announcement by the UK government to reduce energy costs for businesses and remain in dialogue with officials to ensure we compete on a level playing field with our global competitors.”

How British Steel ended up needing support

In May 2019, the Official Receiver was appointed to take control of the company after negotiations over an emergency £30m government loan fell apart.

British Steel had been formed in 2016 when India’s Tata Steel sold the business for £1 to Greybull Capital, an investment firm.

As part of the deal that secured ownership of British Steel for Jingye, the Chinese group said it would invest £1.2bn in modernising the business during the following decade.

Jingye’s purchase of the company, which completed in the spring of 2020, was hailed by Mr Johnson as assuring the long-term future of steel production in Britain’s industrial heartlands.

“The sounds of these steelworks have long echoed throughout Yorkshire and Humber and the North East,” he said.

“Today, as British Steel takes its next steps under Jingye’s leadership, we can be sure these will ring out for decades to come.”

Liberty Steel, the third-biggest player in the industry, saw a bid for £170m in state aid rejected last year by Kwasi Kwarteng, the then business secretary and the now former chancellor.

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Chair candidates battle to check in at Premier Inn-owner Whitbread

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Chair candidates battle to check in at Premier Inn-owner Whitbread

Two chairs of FTSE-100 companies are vying to succeed Adam Crozier at the top of Whitbread, the London-listed group behind the Premier Inn hotel chain.

Sky News has learnt that Christine Hodgson, who chairs water company Severn Trent, and Andrew Martin, chair of the testing and inspection group Intertek, are the leading contenders for the Whitbread job.

Mr Crozier, who has chaired the leisure group since 2018, is expected to step down later this year.

The search, which has been taking place for several months, is expected to conclude in the coming weeks, according to one City source.

Ms Hodgson has some experience of the leisure industry, having served on the board of Ladbrokes Coral Group until 2017, while Mr Martin was a senior executive at the contract caterer Compass Group and finance chief at the travel agent First Choice Holidays.

Under Mr Crozier’s stewardship, Whitbread has been radically reshaped, selling its Costa Coffee subsidiary to The Coca-Cola Company in 2019 for nearly £4bn.

The company has also seen off an activist campaign spearheaded by Elliott Advisers, while Mr Crozier orchestrated the appointment of Dominic Paul, its chief executive, following Alison Brittain’s retirement.

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It said last year that it sees potential to grow the network from 86,000 UK bedrooms to 125,000 over the next decade or so.

Mr Crozier is one of Britain’s most seasoned boardroom figures, and now chairs BT Group and Kantar, the market research and data business backed by Bain Capital and WPP Group.

He previously ran the Football Association, ITV and – in between – Royal Mail Group.

On Friday, shares in Whitbread closed at £25.41, giving the company a market capitalisation of about £4.5bn.

Whitbread declined to comment this weekend.

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Bank chiefs to Reeves: Ditch ring-fencing to boost UK economy

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Bank chiefs to Reeves: Ditch ring-fencing to boost UK economy

The bosses of four of Britain’s biggest banks are secretly urging the chancellor to ditch the most significant regulatory change imposed after the 2008 financial crisis, warning her its continued imposition is inhibiting UK economic growth.

Sky News has obtained an explosive letter sent this week by the chief executives of HSBC Holdings, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest Group and Santander UK in which they argue that bank ring-fencing “is not only a drag on banks’ ability to support business and the economy, but is now redundant”.

The CEOs’ letter represents an unprecedented intervention by most of the UK’s major lenders to abolish a reform which cost them billions of pounds to implement and which was designed to make the banking system safer by separating groups’ high street retail operations from their riskier wholesale and investment banking activities.

Their request to Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, to abandon ring-fencing 15 years after it was conceived will be seen as a direct challenge to the government to take drastic action to support the economy during a period when it is forcing economic regulators to scrap red tape.

It will, however, ignite controversy among those who believe that ditching the UK’s most radical post-crisis reform risks exacerbating the consequences of any future banking industry meltdown.

In their letter to the chancellor, the quartet of bank chiefs told Ms Reeves that: “With global economic headwinds, it is crucial that, in support of its Industrial Strategy, the government’s Financial Services Growth and Competitiveness Strategy removes unnecessary constraints on the ability of UK banks to support businesses across the economy and sends the clearest possible signal to investors in the UK of your commitment to reform.

“While we welcomed the recent technical adjustments to the ring-fencing regime, we believe it is now imperative to go further.

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“Removing the ring-fencing regime is, we believe, among the most significant steps the government could take to ensure the prudential framework maximises the banking sector’s ability to support UK businesses and promote economic growth.”

Work on the letter is said to have been led by HSBC, whose new chief executive, Georges Elhedery, is among the signatories.

His counterparts at Lloyds, Charlie Nunn; NatWest’s Paul Thwaite; and Mike Regnier, who runs Santander UK, also signed it.

While Mr Thwaite in particular has been public in questioning the continued need for ring-fencing, the letter – sent on Tuesday – is the first time that such a collective argument has been put so forcefully.

The only notable absentee from the signatories is CS Venkatakrishnan, the Barclays chief executive, although he has publicly said in the past that ring-fencing is not a major financial headache for his bank.

Other industry executives have expressed scepticism about that stance given that ring-fencing’s origination was largely viewed as being an attempt to solve the conundrum posed by Barclays’ vast investment banking operations.

The introduction of ring-fencing forced UK-based lenders with a deposit base of at least £25bn to segregate their retail and investment banking arms, supposedly making them easier to manage in the event that one part of the business faced insolvency.

Banks spent billions of pounds designing and setting up their ring-fenced entities, with separate boards of directors appointed to each division.

More recently, the Treasury has moved to increase the deposit threshold from £25bn to £35bn, amid pressure from a number of faster-growing banks.

Sam Woods, the current chief executive of the main banking regulator, the Prudential Regulation Authority, was involved in formulating proposals published by the Sir John Vickers-led Independent Commission on Banking in 2011.

Legislation to establish ring-fencing was passed in the Financial Services Reform (Banking) Act 2013, and the regime came into effect in 2019.

In addition to ring-fencing, banks were forced to substantially increase the amount and quality of capital they held as a risk buffer, while they were also instructed to create so-called ‘living wills’ in the event that they ran into financial trouble.

The chancellor has repeatedly spoken of the need to regulate for growth rather than risk – a phrase the four banks hope will now persuade her to abandon ring-fencing.

Britain is the only major economy to have adopted such an approach to regulating its banking industry – a fact which the four bank chiefs say is now undermining UK competitiveness.

“Ring-fencing imposes significant and often overlooked costs on businesses, including SMEs, by exposing them to banking constraints not experienced by their international competitors, making it harder for them to scale and compete,” the letter said.

“Lending decisions and pricing are distorted as the considerable liquidity trapped inside the ring-fence can only be used for limited purposes.

“Corporate customers whose financial needs become more complex as they grow larger, more sophisticated, or engage in international trade, are adversely affected given the limits on services ring-fenced banks can provide.

“Removing ring-fencing would eliminate these cliff-edge effects and allow firms to obtain the full suite of products and services from a single bank, reducing administrative costs”.

In recent months, doubts have resurfaced about the commitment of Spanish banking giant Santander to its UK operations amid complaints about the costs of regulation and supervision.

The UK’s fifth-largest high street lender held tentative conversations about a sale to either Barclays or NatWest, although they did not progress to a formal stage.

HSBC, meanwhile, is particularly restless about the impact of ring-fencing on its business, given its sprawling international footprint.

“There has been a material decline in UK wholesale banking since ring-fencing was introduced, to the detriment of British businesses and the perception of the UK as an internationally orientated economy with a global financial centre,” the letter said.

“The regime causes capital inefficiencies and traps liquidity, preventing it from being deployed efficiently across Group entities.”

The four bosses called on Ms Reeves to use this summer’s Mansion House dinner – the City’s annual set-piece event – to deliver “a clear statement of intent…to abolish ring-fencing during this Parliament”.

Doing so, they argued, would “demonstrate the government’s determination to do what it takes to promote growth and send the strongest possible signal to investors of your commitment to the City and to strengthen the UK’s position as a leading international financial centre”.

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Post Office to unveil £1.75bn banking deal with big British lenders

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Post Office to unveil £1.75bn banking deal with big British lenders

The Post Office will next week unveil a £1.75bn deal with dozens of banks which will allow their customers to continue using Britain’s biggest retail network.

Sky News has learnt the next Post Office banking framework will be launched next Wednesday, with an agreement that will deliver an additional £500m to the government-owned company.

Banking industry sources said on Friday the deal would be worth roughly £350m annually to the Post Office – an uplift from the existing £250m-a-year deal, which expires at the end of the year.

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The sources added that in return for the additional payments, the Post Office would make a range of commitments to improving the service it provides to banks’ customers who use its branches.

Banks which participate in the arrangements include Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest Group and Santander UK.

Under the Banking Framework Agreement, the 30 banks and mutuals’ customers can access the Post Office’s 11,500 branches for a range of services, including depositing and withdrawing cash.

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The service is particularly valuable to those who still rely on physical cash after a decade in which well over 6,000 bank branches have been closed across Britain.

In 2023, more than £10bn worth of cash was withdrawn over the counter and £29bn in cash was deposited over the counter, the Post Office said last year.

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A new, longer-term deal with the banks comes at a critical time for the Post Office, which is trying to secure government funding to bolster the pay of thousands of sub-postmasters.

Reliant on an annual government subsidy, the reputation of the network’s previous management team was left in tatters by the Horizon IT scandal and the wrongful conviction of hundreds of sub-postmasters.

A Post Office spokesperson declined to comment ahead of next week’s announcement.

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