Connect with us

Published

on

The future of new oil and gas projects in the UK has been thrown into doubt following a landmark decision by the Supreme Court.

The court concluded the environmental impact of emissions from burning fossil fuels must be considered in planning applications for new extraction projects – not just the impacts of the emissions produced in extracting the oil.

The case hinged around an oil drilling project at Horse Hill in Surrey, granted planning permission by Surrey County Council in 2019.

Local campaigner Sarah Finch argued the environmental impact of the project should have taken into account not just the carbon emissions created in extracting the oil, but the environmental impact when they are burned.

She challenged an earlier Court of Appeal ruling dismissing her case, having also lost a legal battle in the High Court.

But the Supreme Court justices ruled on Thursday three to two in favour of allowing her appeal, and quashed the decision to grant planning permission for the site.

Sarah Finch outside court
Image:
Environmental campaigner Sarah Finch brought about the appeal

Speaking after the ruling, former Surrey resident, Ms Finch said she was “absolutely over the moon” adding that it was a “welcome step towards a safer, fairer future”.

In his judgement, Lord Leggatt concluded: “In my view, there was no basis on which the council could reasonably decide that it was not necessary to assess the combustion emissions.”

He went on: “Given the agreed fact that all the oil produced would be refined, I see no reason why environmental impacts resulting from the process of refining oil should not in principle fall within the scope of the EIA for the extracting of oil.”

The court did not conclude that fossil fuel emissions were unlawful, only that they must be considered in an environmental impact assessment – a tool used in the planning process to assess the effects of a project on the environment.

Campaigners celebrating the landmark win
Image:
Campaigners celebrate the landmark win outside court

Campaigners celebrate the ruling

In relation to the Horse Hill project Justice Leggatt said: “It is not disputed that these emissions, which can easily be quantified, will have a significant impact on climate. The only issue is whether the combustion emissions are effects of the project at all. It seems plain to me that they are.”

Given the burden of scientific evidence of the negative environmental impact of carbon emissions, the ruling that the downstream impacts of burning extracted oil and gas must be considered by anyone applying to extract them is significant.

Read more:
Just Stop Oil activists target Stonehenge

World breaching key 1.5C threshold for past year
Europe swelters in heatwaves as UK remains cool

The decision, from the UK’s highest court, could have immediate implications for other fossil fuel extraction projects facing legal challenge by environmental campaigners.

West Cumbria Mining (WCM), the company behind a coal mine in Whitehaven approved by the government in 2022, clearly felt this could be a possibility as their lawyers intervened in this latest case.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Protesters spray private jets orange

WCM did not respond to a request for comment on why it did so, but, if the campaigners’ appeal against the Surrey oil site wins next month, it could mean “that you have to completely reassess whether that coal mine in Cumbria can happen at all”, according to barrister Sam Fowles.

“It is extremely difficult to overstate the significance of this case,” Mr Fowles, who specialises in planning and environment law at Cornerstone Barristers, said.

It has the potential to trigger the “beginning of the end of… new fossil fuel extraction in the UK going forward”, he added.

The ruling could also have a bearing on offshore oil and gas projects such as the giant Rosebank oil and gas field in the North Sea.

Follow Sky News on WhatsApp
Follow Sky News on WhatsApp

Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News

Tap here

While planning rules offshore are different, EIAs are also required.

Charles McAllister, director of industry group UK Onshore Oil and Gas, called it “incontrovertible” that the UK needs some oil and gas beyond 2050, “even with huge growth in renewables”.

“It’s a case of where we got it from, not if we need or not,” he said.

Developers, or future governments, could argue that the economic or energy security benefits of extracting fossil fuels could outweigh the environmental impacts of burning them.

However, the ruling opens a new avenue for climate campaigners to challenge future oil, gas or coal projects in the UK.

The government is due to make a decision imminently on Rosebank.

Continue Reading

Business

O2 arena lease snapped up by pensions giant Rothesay

Published

on

By

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.

Read more from Sky News
Carlyle to seize control of Very Group
Martin Sorrell approached about S4 Capital deal

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.”

Continue Reading

Business

Advertising mogul Sorrell approached about S4 Capital deal

Published

on

By

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.

Read more from Sky News
Freddo creator’s daughter will never buy one again
Visma owners close to picking banks for £16bn float
Reeves’s flagship policy could end up having opposite effect

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.”

Continue Reading

Business

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

Published

on

By

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.

More from Money

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.

Continue Reading

Trending