Searchlight Capital Partners, the private equity firm which has backed companies including Secret Escapes, is to lead a new funding package for Wefox, the European insurance company, that could be worth up to €170m (£141m).

Sky News has learnt that Searchlight has effectively proposed stepping in to refinance Wefox’s existing bank debt as the group seeks to avoid a fire-sale of its most prized assets.

Banking sources said a deal was close to being struck with Searchlight, which would be accompanied by an equity raise of between €80m (£66.5m) and €100m (£83.1m).

Last month, Sky News revealed that existing shareholders in Wefox, which operates across a swathe of European markets, were preparing to back a fresh cash call.

This group is understood to be led by Chrysalis, the London-listed investor in companies such as Klarna and Starling Bank, and Target Global.

One banker said that if completed, the wider refinancing deal involving Searchlight could be announced as soon as next month.

The share sale has been designed to allow Wefox to avert a sale of TAF, one of its prized subsidiaries.

It said earlier this month that it had reached an agreement to sell its insurance carrier arm to a group of Swiss companies led by BERAG, an independent provider of pension services.

Wefox is also backed by prominent investors including the Abu Dhabi state fund Mubadala.

The company has twice this year warned that it faced running out of money within months.

It has been ravaged by losses in a number of its key markets including Italy, although its operations in the Netherlands remain profitable.

The company was valued at $4.5bn (£3.6bn) in a funding round less than two years ago and counts Barclays and JP Morgan among its lenders.

It is now valued at far less than the $1bn (£796m) needed to preserve its status as a tech unicorn.

Earlier this year, the company bought itself time by raising roughly €20m (£16.6m) from existing investors, while it has also sold Assona, a subsidiary which offers insurance cover for electric bikes.

Founded in 2015, Wefox sells insurance products through in-house and external insurance brokers, and has frequently boasted of its ambition of revolutionising the insurance industry through the use of technology.

It has more than 2 million customers across its business.

In July 2022, Wefox raised a $400m (£318m) Series D funding round valuing it at $4.5bn (£3.6bn), making it one of the largest fintechs in Europe.

That followed a $650m round in May 2021 valuing it at $3bn, reflecting the frothy appetite of investors to back scale-ups regarded as having the potential to become global competitors of genuine scale.

Neither Wefox nor Searchlight could be reached for comment.

Many months before farmers found themselves on the front pages of newspapers, after protesting in Whitehall against the new government’s inheritance tax rules, we at Sky News embarked upon a project.

Most of our reports are relatively short affairs, recorded and edited for the evening news. We capture snapshots of life in households, businesses and communities around the country. But this year we undertook to do something different: to spend a year covering the story of a family farm.

We had no inkling, at the time, that farming would become a front-page story. But even back in January, 2024 was shaping up to be a critical year for the sector. This, after all, was the year the new post-Brexit regime for farm payments would come into full force. Having depended on subsidies each year for simply farming a given acreage of land, farmers were now being asked to commit to different schemes focused less on food than on environmental goals.

This was also the first full year of the new trade deals with New Zealand and Australia. The upshot of these deals is that UK farmers are now competing with two of the world’s major food exporters, who can export more into Britain than they do currently.

You can watch the Sky News special report, The Last Straw, on Sky News at 9pm on Friday

Read more
How climate change and red tape could be jeopardising UK access to affordable food
Rhetoric rises in farmer inheritance tax row – with neither side seemingly prepared to budge

On top of this, the winter that just passed was a particularly tough one, especially for arable farmers. Cold, wet and unpredictable – even more so than the usual British weather. It promised to be a challenging year for growing.

With all of this in mind, we set out to document what a year like this actually felt like for a farm – in this case Lower Drayton Farm in Staffordshire. In some respects, this mixed farm is quite typical for parts of the UK – they rear livestock and grow wheat, as well as subcontracting some of their fields to potato and carrot growers.

A look at farming reimagined

But in other respects, the two generations of the Bower family here, Ray and Richard, are doing something unusual. Seeing the precipitous falls in income from growing food in recent years, they are trying to reimagine what farming in the 21st century might look like. And in their case, that means building a play centre for children and what might be classified as “agritourism” activities alongside them.

The upshot is that while much of their day-to-day work is still traditional farming, an increasing share of their income comes from non-food activity. It underlines a broader point: across the country, farmers are being asked to do unfamiliar things to make ends meet. Some, like the Bowers, are embracing that change; others are struggling to adapt. But with more wet years expected ahead and more changes due in government support, the coming years could be a continuing roller coaster for British farming.

With that in mind, I’d encourage you to watch our film of this year through the lens of this farm. It is, we hope, a fascinating, nuanced insight of life on the land.

You can watch the Sky News special report, The Last Straw, on Sky News at 9pm on Friday

The rugged mountains, limestone caves and spectacular waterfalls of Bannau Brycheiniog – the Brecon Beacons – attract visitors from all over the world.

Tourism is a vital part of the local economy. But local attractions say the industry would be devastated by the Welsh government’s plans for a nightly visitor tax.

“In an area like this all we’ve got is tourism and farming – there is nothing else,” says Ashford Price from the National Showcaves Centre, a visitor complex of cathedral sized caverns, winding tunnels, a dry ski slope, shire horse centre, self-catering accommodation and campsite.

“If they go on like this the future for Welsh tourism is really, really bleak. It will be an absolute catastrophe.”

The proposed fee would be £1.25 for those staying at hotels, bed and breakfasts and self-catering accommodation – and 75p for campsites, caravan sites, and hostels.

Ashford is secretary of the Welsh Association of Visitor Attractions. In protest against the plans, its more than one hundred members closed their attractions for a day.

“Even Welsh people who live in Wales will be clobbered by this tourism tax,” he said.

“It’s quite high, there’s no reduction for children. For a family that will add roughly £35, £40 a week. If you’re staying two weeks, as many people do, it’s £70 on top of your bill. At a time when everybody’s earnings are really struggling, it’s utter insanity to put Wales at such a disadvantage.

“There will be no more big developments. We already cancelled a development for £1.5m and I know other attractions are doing the same. I don’t think the Welsh government really understands how demoralised people feel.”

‘It’s a disaster’

In the nearby village, Anthony Christopher, landlord of the Penycae Inn, is deeply frustrated.

“I just feel like calling this government a bunch of weasels,” he said.

“We’re a small family business and all these extra taxes are taking away the will to do anything else.

“We have national insurance already – contributions are very high. VAT is very high. Now this tax is coming – it’s a disaster. We have to put this extra charge on the customers – how much more can we put on the customers? It’s terrible.”

Anthony has just converted an old school building into a 14-bedroom hotel – due to open in January.

“If I knew this was going to happen I may not have built my hotel. It’s very worrying.”

Many areas in Wales have struggled with the impact of tourism in recent years, with complaints about overflowing car parks, traffic jams, litter and even human faeces on Mount Snowdon.

The Welsh government argues giving councils the power to charge a tourism tax would help pay for better local services.

“During a period of sustained austerity of the sort we’ve seen over the last 14 years, local authorities inevitably end up focusing their spend on those things for which they’ve got statutory obligations – social care, education and so on,” said Finance Secretary Mark Drakeford.

“That has meant there’s been a reduction in the amount of money available for local authorities to invest in infrastructure that makes them successful places for tourists to visit. This is a way of collecting a very small contribution from every one of us who makes a visit to be reinvested in the conditions that make for that visit to be a success.

“It’s money that would be reinvested in the tourism industry, for example, clean beaches and safe footpaths and car parks and public toilets.”

‘People simply absorb it’

The tourism industry accounts for 11% of all jobs in Wales. But an impact assessment commissioned by the Welsh government predicted that in a worst case scenario, 730 jobs could be lost in the sector if a visitor tax was introduced across the country, with an economic cost of £47.5 million. It also predicted 340 local authority jobs would be created.

Mr Drakeford insists the tax will boost tourism – not damage it.

“For those who have fears that the very modest visitor levy will put visitors off, the experience of around the world is that simply isn’t the case. There is a great deal now of empirical evidence for many places that have introduced visitor levies of this sort, not just abroad, but in Manchester, for example,” he said.

“The evidence is not just from big places like Venice, but from rural France, where there’s a levy of this sort. People simply absorb it as part of the costs of their holiday.”

Tourism taxes in cities across Europe range from around 50p to £5 a night, although businesses generally benefit from lower rates of VAT than the 20% paid in the UK.

The idea is becoming increasingly popular across the UK.

The Scottish Parliament voted through similar legislation to that proposed for Wales in July, with Edinburgh set to become the first council to start charging visitors a tourist tax of 5%.

While some regional mayors like Andy Burnham have been calling for equivalent powers to be introduced in England, the Westminster government has no plans to do so.

But local areas can work around this through businesses coming together to set up their own schemes. Manchester’s £1 a night charge raised £2.8m in its first year and hoteliers in Liverpool are about to vote on a similar idea.

Other cities, including York and London, are also considering the option – though a plan for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole has been put on hold after objections from hotel owners about the ballot held there.

Read more:
Cambridge considering tourist tax at hotels
Venice plans to double tourist tax after trial

Despite the backlash from local businesses, the Senedd are due to vote on the legislation in the summer.

If passed, councils will then consult with local people on whether to take up their new powers. Tourists could then start being charged in 2027.