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Barclays will no longer sponsor Latitude, Download or Isle of Wight festivals after musicians and comedians dropped out in protest over the bank’s ties to the Israel-Hamas war.

Live Nation, the concert promoter, told Sky News: “Following discussion with artists, we have agreed with Barclays that they will step back from sponsorship of our festivals.”

Upcoming Live Nation festivals across the UK this summer include Latitude, Download and the Isle of Wight.

Barclays signed a five-year sponsorship deal with Live Nation in 2023. It’s not clear if the suspension will apply to all events up to 2028.

Comedians Joanne McNally, Sophie Duker, Grace Campbell, and Alexandra Haddow all announced they would be boycotting Latitude Festival last week.

Musicians including CMAT, Pillow Queens, Mui Zyu, and Georgia Ruth had also pulled out of the event.

Download Festival, which comes to Donington Park, Leicestershire this weekend, had seen acts including Pest Control, Ithaca, Scowl, Speed and Zulu pull out, also over the festival’s sponsorship.

‘Facilitating genocide’

In a statement on Instagram, Pest Control wrote: “We will not take part in an event whose sponsor profits from facilitating a genocide”.

Meanwhile, Ithaca wrote on X: “Whilst we hate letting anyone down, this moment of solidarity sends a powerful message to the organisers about where the younger generation of bands stand”.

A spokesperson for Barclays told Sky News: “Barclays was asked and has agreed to suspend participation in the remaining Live Nation festivals in 2024”.

Pic: Palestine Action/X
Image:
Pic: Palestine Action/X

Barclays calls on ‘leaders’ to ‘stand united’ against activist pressure

Palestine Action, a group whose members attacked 20 of the bank branches across England and Scotland last week, has accused Barclays of having financial interests in both Israel’s weapons trade and fossil fuels.

The UK-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign has called for a general boycott of the bank, while the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has named Barclays as one of their “divestment and exclusion” targets.

Barclays’ statement went on: “The protestors’ agenda is to have Barclays debank defence companies which is a sector we remain committed to as an essential part of keeping this country and our allies safe.

“They have resorted to intimidating our staff, repeated vandalism of our branches and online harassment. The only thing that this small group of activists will achieve is to weaken essential support for cultural events enjoyed by millions.

“It is time that leaders across politics, business, academia and the arts stand united against this.”

Barclays has said while it provides financial services to “public companies that supply defence products to NATO and its allies” it does not directly invest in the firms.

Latitude Festival told Sky News: “Following discussion with artists, we have agreed with Barclays that they will step back from sponsorship of Latitude Festival”.

Comedians pull out en masse

Taskmaster star McNally, who had been set to close the Latitude Festival on Saturday wrote in an Instagram story last week: “I’m getting messages today about me performing at Latitude when it’s being sponsored by Barclays.

“I’m no longer doing Latitude. I was due to close the comedy tent on the Sunday night, but I pulled out last week.

“I’m on the old artwork but I haven’t been listed on the site since I pulled out a week ago.”

Comedian Duker had shared a photo of her at a previous Latitude Festival, and confirmed she would be boycotting the event.

She wrote: “I am committed to minimising my complicity in what I consider to be a pattern of abhorrent, unlawful violence”.

The 34-year-old comedian also said her pro-Palestinian stance “has gained me violent abuse, targeted pile-ons and death threats”.

Fellow comedian Grace Campbell, who is the daughter of Sir Tony Blair’s former spokesman Alastair Campbell, shared Duker’s post in an Instagram story, announcing she was also pulling out of the festival.

Meanwhile, comedian Alexandra Haddow said she too would no longer appear at Latitude, writing on Instagram: “I can’t in good conscience take the fee.”

In a post shared on her Instagram account last week, Irish singer-songwriter CMAT said she would boycott Latitude, writing: “I will not allow my precious work, my music, which I love so much, to get into bed with violence.”

Isle Of Wight Festival. Pic: AP
Image:
Isle Of Wight Festival. Pic: AP

Campaign groups celebrate victory

In response to the exodus of acts, Barclays previously defended its position, saying it recognised “the profound human suffering” caused by the Israel-Hamas war.

“We provide vital financial services to US, UK, and European public companies that supply defence products to NATO and its allies,” it said in a statement published online.

“Barclays does not directly invest in these companies. The defence sector is fundamental to our national security and the UK government has been clear that supporting defence companies is compatible with ESG considerations.

“Decisions on the implementation of arms embargos to other nations are the job of respective elected governments.”

Bands Boycott Barclays declares victory

In response to Barclays stepping away, campaign group Bands Boycott Barclays, which has been leading the protests, wrote on Instagram: “This is a victory for the Palestinian-led global BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement.

“As musicians, we were horrified that our music festivals were partnered with Barclays, who are complicit in the genocide in Gaza through investment, loans and underwriting of arms companies supplying the Israeli military.

“Hundreds of artists have taken action this summer to make it clear that this is morally reprehensible, and we are glad we have been heard.

“Our demand to Barclays is simple: divest from the genocide, or face further boycotts. Boycotting Barclays, also Europe’s primary funder of fossil fuels, is the minimum we can do to call for change.”

Last month, more than 100 acts dropped out of The Great Escape Festival in Brighton and Hove due to its ties to Barclays.

Climate campaigners also welcomed the move to suspend the Barclaycard sponsorship.

‘Rotten bank’

Joanna Warrington at Fossil Free London said: “Barclays is a rotten bank: artists, brands, clients, and customers are all abandoning Barclays because of the billions Barclays is ploughing into fossil-fuel companies like Shell and Israeli arms companies dropping bombs on innocent Palestinian children.

“This won’t stop until Barclays stops funding destruction.”

Greenpeace UK’s co-executive director Areeba Hamid said: “This bank is the biggest fossil-fuel funder in Europe, bankrolling oil and gas to the tune of billions of pounds, and has now been linked to arms companies involved in the conflict in Gaza.

“By putting an end to the greenwashing, festival organisers are sending a clear signal to Barclays that it’s time they took responsibility for the destructive industries they fund.”

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Festival sponsors face growing scrutiny

Barclays has confirmed that despite no longer being associated with the festivals, their customers with tickets will not be affected and their tickets will remain valid.

In a similar turn of events, Hay Festival dropped its sponsorship with investment management firm Baillie Gifford last month, after numerous celebrities pulled out due to the company’s links with fossil fuels and businesses linked to the Israeli defence industry.

Activist group Fossil Free Books urged high-profile figures to distance themselves from the literary event, which saw performers including comedian Nish Kumar, singer Charlotte Church and Labour MP Dawn Butler pull out.

While in March many artists refuse to play SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas, due to the event’s connections to the US army and weapons companies linked with the conflict.

Download Festival will be held in Donington Park, Leicestershire this weekend.

The Isle of Wight Festival will be held in Seaclose Park, Newport, between 20 – 23 June, headlined by The Prodigy, Pet Shop Boys and Green Day.

Tens of thousands of people are expected to attend Latitude Festival at Henham Park in Suffolk, held from the 25-29 July.

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O2 arena lease snapped up by pensions giant Rothesay

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O2 arena lease snapped up by pensions giant Rothesay

The long-term lease to the O2, London’s best-known live entertainment venue, has been sold to Britain’s biggest pensions insurance specialist.

Sky News understands a deal was signed last week for Rothesay, the title sponsor of England’s home Test cricket matches, to acquire the landmark’s 999-year lease for about £90m.

The agreement, which is likely to be announced within days, comes more than two months after Sky News reported that Rothesay was the frontrunner to clinch a deal.

Rothesay has become one of Britain’s most successful specialist insurers, having been established in 2007.

It now protects the pensions of more than one million people in Britain and makes more than £300m in pension payouts every month.

The auction of the O2 lease kicked off several months ago, when Cambridge University’s wealthiest college, Trinity, instructed advisers to launch a sale process.

Trinity College, which ranks among Britain’s biggest landowners, acquired the site in 2009 for a reported £24m.

The O2, which shrugged off its ‘white elephant’ status in the aftermath of its disastrous debut as the Millennium Dome in 2000, has since become one of the world’s leading entertainment venues.

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Operated by Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), it has played host to a wide array of music, theatrical, and sporting events over nearly a quarter of a century.

Trinity College, which was founded by Henry VIII in 1546, bought the O2 lease from Lend Lease and Quintain, the property companies that had taken control of the Millennium Dome site in 2002 for nothing.

In a joint statement issued in response to an enquiry from Sky News, Rothesay and Trinity College Cambridge said they were “pleased to confirm that Rothesay will be the long-term owner of The O2 arena, following a competitive auction process for the lease of this London landmark”.

A spokesperson for Rothesay said separately: “Prestigious and high-quality property assets like the O2 form an important part of Rothesay’s investment strategy, providing the predictable and dependable returns which create real security for the one million-plus pensions we protect.”

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Advertising mogul Sorrell approached about S4 Capital deal

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Advertising mogul Sorrell approached about S4 Capital deal

Sir Martin Sorrell, the advertising mogul, has received a number of merger approaches for S4 Capital, the London-listed marketing services group he founded seven years ago.

Sky News can reveal that Sir Martin has been contacted in recent weeks by potential suitors including One Equity Partners, a US-based private equity firm which focuses on acquiring companies in the healthcare, industrials, and technology sectors.

This weekend, analysts suggested that One Equity would seek to combine S4 Capital with MSQ, a creative and technology agency group it bought in 2023.

Further details of the possible tie-up were unclear on Saturday, including whether a formal proposal had been made or whether S4 Capital might remain listed on the London Stock Exchange if a deal were to be completed.

S4 Capital is also understood to have attracted recent interest from other parties, the identities of which could not be immediately established.

In March 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported that Sir Martin had rebuffed several offers from Stagwell, an advertising group led by Mark Penn, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton.

New Mountain Capital, another American private equity firm, was also said at the time to have held talks about buying parts or all of S4 Capital.

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News of One Equity’s approach puts the venture founded by one of Britain’s most prominent business figures firmly in play after a torrid period in which it has been buffeted by macroeconomic headwinds and a number of accounting issues.

Sir Martin founded S4 Capital in 2018, months after his unexpected and acrimonious departure from WPP, the group he transformed from a manufacturer of wire baskets into the world’s largest provider of marketing services.

The businessman, who has voting control at S4 Capital, used his deep network of institutional relationships to raise money for an acquisition spree at S4, which included technology-focused agencies such as MediaMonks and MightyHive.

S4’s clients now include Alphabet, Amazon, General Motors, Meta, T-Mobile, and Walmart.

Sir Martin’s decision to target acquisitions in the digital content and programmatic media arenas reflected the priorities of what he described as a marketing services group for a new era.

At WPP, he was the architect of a now-widely replicated strategy to assemble hundreds of agency brands under one holding company.

By the time he stepped down, WPP was the owner of creative agency networks such as JWT and Ogilvy, while its media-buying muscle was channelled through the global subsidiary GroupM.

The latest approaches for S4 Capital come during a period of profound change in the global marketing services industry, as artificial intelligence dismantles practices and creative processes that had evolved over decades.

Sir Martin has spurned few opportunities to criticise his successor at WPP, Mark Read, as well as the wider advertising industry, in the seven years since he established S4 Capital.

Last month, WPP announced that Mr Read would be replaced by Cindy Rose, a senior Microsoft executive who has sat on the company’s board as a non-executive director since 2019.

“Cindy has supported the digital transformation of large enterprises around the world – including embracing AI to create new customer experiences, business models and revenue streams,” the WPP chairman, Philip Jansen, said.

“Her expertise in this landscape will be hugely valuable to WPP as the industry navigates fundamental changes and macroeconomic uncertainty.”

WPP has also forfeited its status as the world’s largest marketing services empire to Publicis, and will be shunted even further behind the sector’s biggest players once Omnicom Group’s $13.25bn (£9.85bn) takeover of Interpublic Group is completed.

At the time of Sir Martin’s exit from WPP in April 2018, the company had a market capitalisation of more than £16bn.

On Friday, its market value at its closing share price of 367.5p was just £4.23bn.

Last month, the advertising industry news outlet Campaign reported that WPP had held tentative discussions with the consulting firm Accenture about a potential combination or partnership, underscoring the pressure on legacy marketing services groups.

This weekend, it remained unclear how likely it was that Sir Martin would consummate a deal to combine S4 Capital with another industry player such as One Equity-owned MSQ.

Shares in S4 Capital closed on Friday at 21.2p, giving the company a market capitalisation of £140m.

The stock has fallen by nearly 60% during the last 12 months, and is more than 90% lower than its peak in 2022.

At one point, Sir Martin’s stake in S4 Capital was valued at close to £500m.

A spokeswoman for S4 declined to comment, while a spokesman for One Equity Partners said by email: “OEP is not commenting on this matter.”

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Visma owners close to picking banks for £16bn London float

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Visma owners close to picking banks for £16bn London float

The owners of Visma, one of Europe’s biggest software companies, are close to hiring bankers for a £16bn flotation that would rank among the London market’s biggest for years.

Sky News understands that Visma’s board and shareholders have convened a beauty parade of investment banks in the last fortnight ahead of an initial public offering (IPO) likely to take place in 2026.

Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are understood to be among those in contention for the top roles on the deal, City insiders said on Friday.

Several banks are expected to be appointed as global coordinators on the IPO as soon as this month.

Visma is a Norwegian company which supplies accounting, payroll, HR and other business software to well over one million small business customers.

It has grown at a rapid rate in recent years, both organically and through scores of acquisitions, and has seen its profitability and valuation rise substantially during that period.

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The business is now valued at about €19bn (£16.4bn) and is partly owned by a number of sovereign wealth funds and other private equity firms.

The majority of the company is owned by Hg, the London-based private equity firm which has backed a string of spectacularly successful companies in the software industry.

Visma’s owners’ decision to pick the UK ahead of competition from Amsterdam represents a welcome boost to the City amid ongoing questions about the attractiveness of the London stock market to international companies.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, used last month’s speech at Mansion House to launch a taskforce aimed at generating additional IPO activity in the UK.

Spokespeople claiming to represent Visma at Kekst, a communications firm, did not respond to a series of enquiries about the IPO appointments.

Hg also failed to respond to a request for comment.

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