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The executive who presided over a bitter “cruises and cufflinks” row at one of Britain’s biggest wealth managers is preparing to step down.

Sky News has learnt that St James’s Place, the FTSE-100 group which oversees more than £150bn of client assets, has kicked off a search to replace Andrew Croft.

City sources said on Saturday that the company was working with Russell Reynolds Associates, the headhunter, on the search.

Mr Croft has worked for St James’s Place since 1993, and served as its finance chief between 2004 and 2017.

He took over as chief executive in 2018.

A source close to the company said there was “no rush” to find a new CEO, and hinted that a transition to a successor could take more than a year.

St James’s Place caters to affluent clients, with thousands of financial advisers known as partners at the firm managing £153bn in assets.

The company has faced questions about its recent performance, with Mr Croft describing recent quarterly net inflows as a “good” outcome but many analysts taking a different view.

It warned this year that it would miss a key expenses growth target.

In 2019, St James’s Place became embroiled in a row about partners’ pay and perks, with benefits including cruise holidays and jewellery awarded to high-performing partners.

The regime was scrapped following a review aimed at encouraging “the right behaviours” amid concerns that partners were effectively being incentivised to mis-sell to customers.

News of the prospective change in leadership at St James’s Place comes ahead of the introduction of a new consumer duty supervised by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Paul Manduca, the City grandee who chairs St James’s Place and previously led Prudential, will oversee the hunt for Mr Croft’s successor.

The company suffered a revolt this month at its annual meeting when more than 20% of shareholders voted against its remuneration report.

Mr Croft was paid a total package for last year of just over £3m, with some investors irritated that he received long-term awards linked to its depressed share price during the pandemic.

Partners at St James’s Place, which is based in Cirencester, are self-employed.

A St James’s Place spokesman said this weekend: “As part of long-term succession planning, the Board has regular dialogue with search firms to assess and monitor the market.

“This is in line with best practice corporate governance.”

Shares in St James’s Place closed on Friday up 7.5p at 1112.5p, giving the company a market value of £6.1bn.

The stock has slipped 11% during the last 12 months.

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National Grid: Nearly £60bn energy grid upgrade needed to hit green target

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National Grid: Nearly £60bn energy grid upgrade needed to hit green target

Nearly £60bn is needed to build the British energy grid of the future in order to meet climate change mitigation milestones in just over 10 years, according to the National Grid.

The British electricity network needs £58bn in investment to meet 2035 decarbonising targets, National Grid said.

New cables need to be built to bring electricity from renewable generating sources, such as offshore wind farms, to the places where that electricity is needed, such as cities.

Funds are required to allow new sources of power, such as solar farms, to be connected to the grid and transported across the country, the electricity systems operator (ESO) said.

The system had been designed around the old sources of electricity, such as coal fields.

Under the proposed green energy plan, far more offshore wind power would be pumped into the energy mix that powers homes and businesses.

Roughly five times more electricity will come from Scottish offshore by 2035 than will be used in Scotland during peak times, the Beyond 2030 report from the ESO said.

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Renewing the UK’s energy grid

In the process of expanding grid capacity, 20,000 jobs could be created and 90% of them would be outside London and the southeast, the report added.

The plans, however, are said to be in the early stages – with planning permission yet to be sought and community consultation yet to take place.

National Grid is the London Stock Exchange-listed company that owns and runs the electricity network. The company also owns and operates infrastructure in the United States.

However, the government will take the electricity systems operator portion into state ownership later this year.

As well as changing types and locations of electricity generation, a beefed-up grid is needed to deal with more power use.

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UK’s electricity grid problem

As economies decarbonise more systems that run on electricity, such as transport and heating, a bigger electricity network is required to ramp up supply.

British electricity demand is expected to rise 64% by 2035 and could double by 2050, according to the report.

To meet the 2035 deadline to decarbonise the power system, action must be “swift and coordinated”, it added.

Grid upgrades are funded by the government, energy project developers and bill payers.

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Car industry insists 2,000% increase in sales to Azerbaijan has nothing to do with Russia

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Car industry insists 2,000% increase in sales to Azerbaijan has nothing to do with Russia

Britain’s car industry has insisted that an unprecedented 2,000% increase in vehicle exports to Azerbaijan has nothing to with Russia and is explained by the fact that the former Soviet state is a “flourishing market in its own right”.

Sky analysis has found that the British car sector sent another £40m worth of cars to Azerbaijan in the first month of this year, raising fresh questions about whether those cars were being sent there to circumvent sanctions on Russia.

New data from HM Revenue & Customs shows that while direct car exports to Russia remain at zero, where they have been since the imposition of sanctions in 2022, in January £43m worth of cars were sent to Azerbaijan, the former Soviet state neighbouring Russia.

new, edited UK monthly car export

That meant Azerbaijan, which hitherto had rarely made the top 75 export destinations for British cars, is now the 12th biggest foreign market, by value, for British-made cars: above Switzerland, Canada and Spain.

final edited UK car exports to Azerbaijan

UK carmakers have pledged not to send cars to Russia, with sanctions formally banning the export of “dual use” items which could be repurposed as weapons in the Ukraine war. There are separate sanctions specifically banning the trade of cars worth over £42,000.

However, Sky News analysis found last week that over precisely the same period as British car exports to Azerbaijan rose sharply, there was a near-simultaneous rise in car exports from Azerbaijan to Russia.

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British-made luxury cars still being bought by rich Russians

The average value of cars sent from the UK to Azerbaijan in January was just over £115,000.

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Trade data shows that similar increases in British exports have been seen in other former Soviet Russian neighbours, including Kazakhstan, Armenia and Georgia.

final edited Change un UK car exports since 2018/19

A spokesman from Britain’s motoring lobby group, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), said it had detected no evidence the vehicles being sent to Azerbaijan were destined for Russia – and that they were evidence that it was a “flourishing market in its own right”.

“UK vehicle exports to Azerbaijan – as to many countries globally – have increased due to a number of factors, not least a flourishing economy, new model launches and pent-up demand,” it said.

Azerbaijan’s flatlining economy

However, the notion that the exports were evidence of a flourishing economy stands in stark contrast to the economic data, which show that Azerbaijan’s GDP per capita has been flat for a decade and a half at around $15,000 in purchasing power parity terms.

Since two years preceding the pandemic, the value of car exports to Azerbaijan has risen by more than 2,000%. No other sizeable car market in the world has come close, save for Kazakhstan, the other Russian neighbour, whose imports of British-made cars are up 800%.

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Carmakers told to act after Sky report

The SMMT said: “Wherever the UK automotive industry exports, it is committed to compliance with all trade and economic sanctions, and continues to work closely with government and the new Office For Sanctions to ensure the effective implementation of the regulations.

“There is no evidence available of that commitment being compromised, and it is right to monitor for any potential vulnerabilities in a fast-moving and evolving environment.

“The automotive industry remains in dialogue with government and other international partners enforcing co-ordinated trade restrictions, to ensure adherence to both the letter and the spirit of the sanctions, across all vulnerable sectors.”

While the sheer number of cars going to Azerbaijan is small, the value of those cars is consistently high, averaging well over £100,000 and suggesting they are mostly luxury cars.

There have been similar flows detected from other European nations, including Germany and Poland, to other former Soviet states neighbouring Russia.

Following the original Sky News story last week, Foreign Office Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan said car companies should examine their orders to ensure they are complying with sanctions rules.

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Weak heat pump uptake harming efforts to cut emissions, government warned

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Weak heat pump uptake harming efforts to cut emissions, government warned

Every household must be engaged by the government in the shift to clean heating as uptake of heat pumps to replace boilers is running at less than half of expected levels, the public spending watchdog has warned.

A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) described assumptions on consumer demand for heat pumps, which use electricity to draw heat from the ground, air or water for heating buildings, as “optimistic”.

It also called into question public awareness of the availability of boiler upgrade grants to help smooth the transition from oil and gas-fired boilers amid the battle against climate change.

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The home energy sector accounts for around 18% of the country’s overall greenhouse gas emissions.

The NAO said that just 18,900 of the clean heating units were installed under the grant scheme from May 2022 to December 2023 – less than half the up to 50,000 expected by that point.

Since the grant was increased from £5,000 to £7,500 in September, the number of heat pumps being installed had risen, it added, but the study also reported doubts on whether the increase would be sustained.

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The report identified two barriers to increased installations, including poor awareness.

It said cost also remained a factor, despite aid from the grant, as heat pumps are four times more expensive than gas boilers despite far greater efficiency.

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Are heat pumps worth it?

The government has ambitions for the installation of 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028.

Sky News has reported apparent divisions among ministers in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) on efforts to meet the deadline.

A mechanism, designed to punish boiler manufacturers who fail to meet electric heat pump sales, has resulted in an ugly clash that saw the companies raise prices to offset potential fines for missed installation targets.

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December: Cost of replacing boiler to soar

It was confirmed last week that Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho had asked the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to investigate the home heating market.

The NAO suggested that a decision on the role that hydrogen could play in future in reducing emissions should come before the government’s planned deadline of 2026.

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “Government needs to engage every household to achieve its objective to decarbonise home heating as part of the transition to net zero.

“DESNZ’s progress in making households aware and encouraging them to switch to low-carbon alternatives has been slower than expected.”

A DESNZ spokesperson said: “By helping rather than forcing families to install heat pumps, with a 50% bigger heat pump grant, we have boosted applications by nearly 40%.

“Our Welcome Home to Energy Efficiency campaign is running on TV, radio and newspapers, reaching 16.6 million households with advice and information about how heat pumps, insulation and solar panels can cut their emissions and energy bills.”

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