Connect with us

Published

on

An expert on the Post Office Horizon IT systems has denied suggestions he was “protecting the monster” in evidence he gave to the trial of a sub-postmaster who was wrongly convicted while pregnant.

Former senior Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins told the Post Office Inquiry he did not hide glitches in the branch accounting system at the trial of Seema Misra in 2010 – widely seen as a crucial test case at the time.

Mrs Misra was jailed for 15 months on the back of his evidence as an expert witness.

On his fourth day in the witness box at the inquiry, Mr Jenkins insisted he was telling the truth about what he knew of Horizon glitches in answers to questions on the scandal from her lawyer Flora Page.

Money latest:
How to stop your car being stolen – or even ‘cannibalised’

Ms Page described Horizon as an “out of control monster” by the time of her client’s trial and added that “hundreds of people had already had their lives ruined to protect it”.

She put it to Mr Jenkins: “Isn’t the truth that you knew Horizon was a monster and it was causing harm?”

He replied: “No, that’s not how I felt.”

Ms Page put to Mr Jenkins that he “threw mud in the jury’s eyes”, to which he said: “I did not.”

She put it to Mr Jenkins that failing to tell the court that he knew that transactions were being injected at the counter was failing to tell the whole truth.

He said: “I didn’t think that at the time.”

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Former engineer defends Horizon system

It was put to him that there were “thousands of known error log entries”, and Mr Jenkins said: “I’m not sure how many known error log entries there were, I don’t know the volumes.”

Ms Page said that during the trial Mr Jenkins was asked if he knew whether there were any problems with the Horizon system that Fujitsu was aware of, and put it to him that the truthful answer would have been “cash accounts, remote access, tampering, bad error handling, silent faults across the system, the EPOSS code, the terrible code, hardware failures, persistent hardware failures, recovering transactions that were lost”.

Mr Jenkins replied: “That was not how I understood the question to be.”

“You hid all these issues and problems when you gave evidence against Seema Misra, didn’t you?” Ms Page said.

He replied “no”, then later added: “I did not believe that I deliberately hid anything.”

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Misra: ‘It’s too little, too late’

Mr Jenkins, who is facing a police investigation for alleged perjury, told the inquiry in his witness statement that Post Office, which has a power to bring its own prosecutions, had applied pressure on him to support its case.

He claimed Post Office lawyer Warwick Tatford had looked over a draft of his witness statement for Mrs Misra’s trial and recommended he “make some points more strongly in favour of the Post Office”.

He explained how he thought such actions had been “normal practice”, saying he had not understood his duties of impartiality as an expert witness in trials until 2020, by which time he had been involved in more than a dozen cases.

Read more:
Former union boss denies being ‘too close’ to Post Office
Investigation into Horizon predecessor to report in autumn

He later conceded, however, in his evidence that he had seen advice setting out what was expected of him in 2016, explaining that had not been the focus for him in the documents he received.

Also on Thursday, Mr Jenkins told the inquiry where he thought the blame could be laid.

“My feeling was then and is now that the issues to do with this are down to the way Post Office has behaved rather than actual faults in the Horizon system… I believe that I told the truth as I understood it at the time.”

“You were a Fujitsu man doing what Fujitsu needed you to do to protect the monster,” Ms Page put to him.

Mr Jenkins said: “I didn’t think it was a monster.”

During his evidence, Mr Jenkins has said he was sorry for what happened to Mrs Misra.

She told Sky News on Tuesday that she would not accept that apology.

Continue Reading

Business

Poundland owner drafts in advisers amid discounter crisis

Published

on

By

Poundland owner drafts in advisers amid discounter crisis

The owner of Poundland, one of Britain’s biggest discount retailers, has drafted in City advisers to explore radical options for arresting the growing crisis at the chain.

Sky News has learnt that Pepco Group, which has owned Poundland since 2016, has hired consultants from AlixPartners to address a sales slump which has raised questions over its future ownership.

City sources said this weekend that the crisis would prompt Pepco to explore more fundamental for Poundland, including a formal restructuring process that could prompt significant store closures, or even an attempt to sell the business.

AlixPartners is understood to have been formally engaged last week, with options including a company voluntary arrangement or restructuring plan said to have been floated by a range of advisers on a highly preliminary basis.

Sources close to the group said no decisions had been taken, and that the immediate focus was on improving Poundland’s cash performance and reviving the chain’s customer proposition.

A sale process was not under way, they added.

Poundland trades from 825 stores across the UK, competing with the likes of Home Bargains, B&M and Poundstretcher, as well as Britain’s major supermarket chains.

More from Money

Last year, the British discounter recorded roughly €2bn of sales.

It employs roughly 18,000 people.

Earlier this week, Pepco Group, the Warsaw-listed retail giant which also trades as Pepco and Dealz in Europe, said Poundland had seen a like-for-like sales slump of 7.3% during the Christmas trading period.

In its trading statement, Pepco said that Poundland had suffered “a more difficult sales environment and consumer backdrop in the UK, alongside margin pressure and an increasingly higher operating cost environment”.

“We expect that the toughest comparative quarter for Poundland is now behind us – the same quarter last year represented a period prior to the changes made within our clothing and GM [general merchandise] ranges – and therefore, we expect the negative sales performance for Poundland to moderate as we move through the year.”

It added that Poundland would not increase the size of its store portfolio on a net basis during the course of this year.

“We are continuing a comprehensive assessment of Poundland to recover trading and get the business back to its core strengths, including undertaking a thorough assessment of all costs across the business, as well as evaluating its overall competitive positioning,” it added.

The appointment of AlixPartners came several weeks after Stephan Borchert, the Pepco Group chief executive, said he would consider “every strategic option” for reviving Poundland’s performance.

He is expected to set out formal plans for the future of Poundland, along with the rest of the group, at a capital markets day in Poland on 6 March.

Among the measures the company has already taken to halt the chain’s declining performance have been to increase the range of FMCG and general merchandise products sold at its traditional £1 price-point.

Poundland’s crisis contrasts with the health of the rest of the group, with Pepco and Dealz both showing strong sales growth.

A spokesman for Pepco Group, which has a market capitalisation equivalent to about £1.7bn, declined to comment further on the appointment of advisers

AlixPartners also declined to comment.

Continue Reading

Business

FTSE 100 closes at record high

Published

on

By

FTSE 100 closes at record high

The UK’s benchmark stock index has reached another record high.

The FTSE 100 index of most valuable companies on the London Stock Exchange closed at 8,505.69, breaking the record set last May.

It had already broken its intraday high at 8532.58 on Friday afternoon, meaning it reached a high not seen before during trading hours.

Money blog: Major boost for mortgage holders

The weakened pound has boosted many of the 100 companies forming the top-flight index.

Why is this happening?

Most are not based in the UK, so a less valuable pound means their sterling-priced shares are cheaper to buy for people using other currencies, typically US dollars.

This makes the shares better value, prompting more to be bought. This greater demand has brought up the prices and the FTSE 100.

The pound has been hovering below $1.22 for much of Friday. It’s steadily fallen from being worth $1.34 in late September.

Also spurring the new record are market expectations for more interest rate cuts in 2025, something which would make borrowing cheaper and likely kickstart spending.

What is the FTSE 100?

The index is made up of many mining and international oil and gas companies, as well as household name UK banks and supermarkets.

Familiar to a UK audience are lenders such as Barclays, Natwest, HSBC and Lloyds and supermarket chains Tesco, Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s.

Other well-known names include Rolls-Royce, Unilever, easyJet, BT Group and Next.

Read more:
Russia sanctions: Fears over UK enforcement by HMRC
Trump tariff threat prompts IMF warning ahead of inauguration

FTSE stands for Financial Times Stock Exchange.

If a company’s share price drops significantly it can slip outside of the FTSE 100 and into the larger and more UK-based FTSE 250 index.

The inverse works for the FTSE 250 companies, the 101st to 250th most valuable firms on the London Stock Exchange. If their share price rises significantly they could move into the FTSE 100.

A good close for markets

It’s a good end of the week for markets, entirely reversing the rise in borrowing costs that plagued Chancellor Rachel Reeves for the past ten days.

Fears of long-lasting high borrowing costs drove speculation she would have to cut spending to meet self-imposed fiscal rules to balance the budget and bring down debt by 2030.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

They Treasury tries to calm market nerves late last week

Long-term government borrowing had reached a high not seen since 1998 while the benchmark 10-year cost of government borrowing, as measured by 10-year gilt yields, was at levels last seen around the 2008 financial crisis.

The gilt yield is effectively the interest rate investors demand to lend money to the UK government.

Only the pound has yet to recover the losses incurred during the market turbulence. Without that dropped price, however, the FTSE 100 record may not have happened.

Also acting to reduce sterling value is the chance of more interest rates. Currencies tend to weaken when interest rates are cut.

Continue Reading

Business

Trump tariff threat prompts IMF warning ahead of inauguration

Published

on

By

Trump tariff threat prompts IMF warning ahead of inauguration

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned against the prospects of a renewed US-led trade war, just days before Donald Trump prepares to begin his second term in the White House.

The world’s lender of last resort used the latest update to its World Economic Outlook (WEO) to lay out a series of consequences for the global outlook in the event Mr Trump carries out his threat to impose tariffs on all imports into the United States.

Canada, Mexico, and China have been singled out for steeper tariffs that could be announced within hours of Monday’s inauguration.

Mr Trump has been clear he plans to pick up where he left off in 2021 by taxing goods coming into the country, making them more expensive, in a bid to protect US industry and jobs.

He has denied reports that a plan for universal tariffs is set to be watered down, with bond markets recently reflecting higher domestic inflation risks this year as a result.

While not calling out Mr Trump explicitly, the key passage in the IMF’s report nevertheless cautioned: “An intensification of protectionist policies… in the form of a new wave of tariffs, could exacerbate trade tensions, lower investment, reduce market efficiency, distort trade flows, and again disrupt supply chains.

Follow our Money blog: Major boost for mortgage holders

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Trump’s threat of tariffs explained

“Growth could suffer in both the near and medium term, but at varying degrees across economies.”

In Europe, the EU has reason to be particularly worried about the prospect of tariffs, as the bulk of its trade with the US is in goods.

The majority of the UK’s exports are in services rather than physical products.

The IMF’s report also suggested that the US would likely suffer the least in the event that a new wave of tariffs was enacted due to underlying strengths in the world’s largest economy.

Read more: What Trump’s tariffs could mean for rest of the world

The WEO contained a small upgrade to the UK growth forecast for 2025.

It saw output growth of 1.6% this year – an increase on the 1.5% figure it predicted in October.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

What has Trump done since winning?

Economists see public sector investment by the Labour government providing a boost to growth but a more uncertain path for contributions from the private sector given the budget’s £25bn tax raid on businesses.

Business lobby groups have widely warned of a hit to investment, pay and jobs from April as a result, while major employers, such as retailers, have been most explicit on raising prices to recover some of the hit.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said of the IMF’s update: “The UK is forecast to be the fastest growing major European economy over the next two years and the only G7 economy, apart from the US, to have its growth forecast upgraded for this year.

“I will go further and faster in my mission for growth through intelligent investment and relentless reform, and deliver on our promise to improve living standards in every part of the UK through the Plan for Change.”

Continue Reading

Trending