Government officials fly to China to win support for British Steel bailout

Published

2 years ago

February 21, 2023

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Government officials will this week fly to China in an effort to convince the owner of British Steel to finalise plans for a state funding package amid hundreds of job cuts at the company.

Sky News has learnt that civil servants from the Department for Business and Trade are travelling to meet executives from Jingye Group amid protracted talks about a £300m grant to the Scunthorpe-based company.

Sources said the talks were expected to focus on the value of an energy subsidy package, which could take the overall value of government support for British Steel to approximately £1bn.

It comes just days after Kemi Badenoch, the new business and trade secretary, told Sky News’ economics and data editor, Ed Conway, that “nothing is ever a given” when asked whether Britain needed a steel industry.

A government spokesperson said: “The government recognises the vital role that steel plays within the UK economy, supporting local jobs and economic growth and is committed to securing a decarbonised, sustainable and competitive future for the UK steel sector.

“Government officials are engaging with Jingye regularly as part of the ongoing discussions with the company and our routine work with businesses across the steel sector.

“The Business and Trade Secretary considers the success of the steel sector a priority and continues to work closely with industry to achieve this.”

Sky News revealed last month that Jingye was drawing up plans to cut around 800 jobs at British Steel, with the BBC reporting on Tuesday night that 300 redundancies would be announced this week arising from the closure of coking ovens at the Scunthorpe plant.

Mrs Badenoch’s predecessor, Grant Shapps, told Jingye last month that proposals to make hundreds of workers redundant were “unhelpful” amid negotiations over a £300m taxpayer support package.

British Steel confirmed recently that it was “reluctantly having to consider cost-cutting” but did not specify the number of jobs that were at risk.

Nusrat Ghani, the business minister, had told MPs that talks between the government and British Steel were ongoing, even though the conditions attached to the taxpayer aid include a six-month moratorium on redundancies and a guarantee to preserve an unspecified proportion of the company’s workforce for the next decade.

Jingye said in January that steelmaking in Britain was “uncompetitive” in an international context.

“Unfortunately, like many other businesses we are reluctantly having to consider cost cutting in light of the global recession and increased costs,” the company said.

Sky News revealed last month that British Steel and larger rival Tata Steel would be required to guarantee thousands of jobs until 2033 in return for £600m of government support to help decarbonise the industry.

Any taxpayer funding is to be linked to the replacement of blast furnaces at the company’s sites with greener electric arc furnaces, while Jingye would be obliged to invest at least £1bn in the business by 2030.

A decision to grant the state aid would not be without controversy, given British Steel’s Chinese ownership and doubts about its adherence to financial commitments made when it bought the business out of insolvency proceedings in 2020.

In a letter to Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, in December, Mr Shapps and Michael Gove, the levelling-up secretary, warned that British Steel’s demise could cost the government up to £1bn in decommissioning and other liabilities.

They cautioned Mr Hunt that British Steel “does not have a viable business without government support”.

“Closing one blast furnace would be a stepping-stone to closure of the second blast furnace, resulting in a highly unstable business model dependent on Chinese steel imports,” Mr Shapps and Mr Gove wrote.

“Given the magnitude of the liabilities due to fall on HMG in the event of blast furnace closure, and following the PM’s steer, we would like officials to test whether net Government support in the region of £300m for British Steel could prevent closure, protect jobs and create a cleaner viable long-term future for steel production in the United Kingdom.”

British Steel employs about 4,000 people, with thousands more jobs in its supply chain dependent upon the company.

Tata Steel employs substantially more people in the UK, including more than 4,000 at its Port Talbot steelworks in Wales.

According to the ministers’ letter, British Steel had already informed the government that it could close one of the Scunthorpe blast furnaces as soon as next month, with the loss of 1,700 jobs.

This would be “followed by the second blast furnace closing later in 2023, creating cumulative direct job losses of around 3,000”, Mr Shapps and Mr Gove wrote.

In May 2019, the Official Receiver was appointed to take control of the company after negotiations over an emergency £30m government loan fell apart.

British Steel had been formed in 2016 when India’s Tata Steel sold the business for £1 to Greybull Capital, an investment firm.

As part of the deal that secured ownership of British Steel for Jingye, the Chinese group said it would invest £1.2bn in modernising the business during the following decade.

Jingye’s purchase of the company, which completed in the spring of 2020, was hailed by Boris Johnson, the then prime minister, as assuring the future of steel production in Britain’s industrial heartlands.

Business

Interest rate cut – but budget means inflation will rise, Bank says

Published

15 hours ago

November 7, 2024

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Interest rate cut - but budget means inflation will rise, Bank says

The Bank of England has forecast Rachel Reeves’s first budget as chancellor will increase inflation by up to half a percentage point over the next two years, contributing to a slower decline in interest rates than previously thought.

Announcing a widely anticipated 0.25 percentage point cut in the base rate to 4.75%, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) forecast that inflation will return “sustainably” to its target of 2% in the first half of 2027, a year later than at its last meeting.

“Since the MPC’s previous meeting, the market-implied path for the Bank rate in the United Kingdom has shifted up materially,” the MPC said in its minutes.

Interest rate falls – latest updates

The Bank’s quarterly Monetary Policy Report found Ms Reeves’s £70bn package of tax and borrowing measures will place upward pressure on prices, as well as delivering a three-quarter point increase to GDP next year.

Governor Andrew Bailey stressed however that the underlying trend was “continued progress in disinflation”.

The MPC, whose members voted 8-1 in favour of the cut, with the single opponent favouring a hold at 5%, maintained its view that rates will need to fall “gradually” as it monitors the economic response to falling inflation.

“Inflation is just below our 2% target and we have been able to cut interest rates again today,” said Mr Bailey.

“We need to make sure inflation stays close to target, so we can’t cut interest rates too quickly or by too much. But if the economy evolves as we expect it’s likely that interest rates will continue to fall gradually from here.”

Why will inflation rise?

The Bank forecasts that the upward pressure on prices will begin in the first half of next year, with the addition of VAT to private school fees and the £1 increase in the bus fare cap to £3.

The increase in employer national insurance to 15%, the largest single measure in the budget, is “assumed to have a small upward impact on inflation,” offset by the freeze in fuel duty rates.

Together these will push inflation up by 0.3 percentage points next year, with the near-half point peak coming in 2026 only after the removal of the fuel duty-freeze, a measure the Bank is compelled to assume will happen, despite successive chancellors, including Ms Reeves, maintaining it for 11 years.

The Bank found that the national insurance increase and the uprating in the national living wage “is likely to increase the overall costs of employment”, and will be passed on by employers through a mix of higher prices, marginal costs and wages, but the balance between those is not yet clear.

“The combined effects of the measures announced in the autumn Budget 2024 are provisionally expected to boost the level of GDP by around three-quarter per cent at their peak in a year’s time, relative to the August projections,” the minutes read.

“The budget is provisionally expected to boost CPI inflation by just under half of a percentage point at the peak, reflecting both the indirect effects of the smaller margin of excess supply and direct impacts from the budget measures.”

Business

Thames Water bondholders submit rival £3bn financing offer

Published

18 hours ago

November 7, 2024

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Thames Water bondholders submit rival £3bn financing offer

The battle for control of Thames Water’s future has deepened after a second group of bondholders tabled a fully underwritten offer to provide £3bn of new debt.

Sky News has learnt that the utility’s class B bondholders submitted a proposal to the company on Thursday morning which aims to trump a rival offer from its class A creditors.

The submission of the class B group’s legally binding agreement sets up a tussle between some of the world’s largest pension funds, hedge funds and insurers for a key role in determining the fate of Britain’s biggest water company.

Thames Water, which has about 16 million customers, is scrambling to avert the threat of insolvency and temporary nationalisation as it seeks a compromise from Ofwat, the industry regulator, over its spending plans for the next five years.

The company’s shareholders have already abandoned plans to inject billions of pounds into it, describing it as uninvestible.

The tabling of the latest proposal will put pressure on Thames to reconsider its public support for a more expensive deal with the class A group, which includes the likes of Silverpoint and Elliott Advisors, the American hedge funds.

One of the members of the class B group said its plan provided Thames Water with “a deliverable and binding offer to address the company’s immediate funding needs”.

Amid a dispute with the class A debtholders about the relative cost to Thames Water of their proposals, the source said the class B financing would provide “twice the capital at a far lower cost and on more flexible terms”.

They added that it was open to all Class A and Class B holders.

It was unclear whether Thames Water would be able to engage on the class B proposal under the terms of the deal the company has already endorsed with the class A group.

The class B plan has been assembled and financed in less than a fortnight by DC Advisory, the investment bank, and law firms Quinn Emmanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Sidley Austin.

The Class B debtholders have calculated that Thames Water could save approximately hundreds of millions of pounds in interest payments and fees over a 12-month period if the company switches its backing to their proposal.

Alastair Cochran, Thames Water’s chief financial officer, said last month that the Class B group’s proposals, which include funding lent at an interest rate of 8%, were insufficiently detailed to garner the board’s support.

A separate equity-raising process is being run by bankers at Rothschild, with Sky News revealing last weekend that KKR, the American private equity behemoth, is the latest party to express an interest in a deal.

Any substantial pay packages for Thames Water executives – particularly at one standing on the brink of collapse – arising from the deal would be highly contentious, with the government recently having established an independent review of the industry that will look at far-reaching reforms.

A significant incentive plan would also be controversial given that Thames Water will require forbearance from Ofwat, the industry regulator, in terms of substantial fines and other penalties it is likely to have to pay because of its dire record on sewage leaks and wastage.

A spokesman for the class B group, whose members include BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, declined to comment.

Business

Higher employers’ national insurance contributions to cost Sainsbury’s £140m and cause inflation to rise – CEO Simon Roberts says

Published

19 hours ago

November 7, 2024

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Higher employers' national insurance contributions to cost Sainsbury's £140m and cause inflation to rise - CEO Simon Roberts says

Measures announced in the budget will cost one of the UK’s biggest supermarket chains £140m, its chief executive said.

The rise in employer’s national insurance contributions, announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in her budget last week, will cost Sainsbury’s £140m from April, CEO Simon Roberts said.

No price was put on the rise of the national minimum wage but Mr Roberts said the new measures would cause inflation – the rate of overall price rises – to go up.

The supermarket chain, the UK’s second-largest by market share, does not have the “capacity to absorb” a “barrage of costs”, Mr Roberts said so customers will have to pay more.

Money blog: House prices hit record high

He pointed to analysis from independent forecaster the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) which said Ms Reeves’s announcements would cause inflation to be higher than originally predicted, saying it was “difficult to disagree with”.

Mr Roberts said: “This impact on national insurance was unexpected and is coming in fast, it will have a very significant impact, it will impact our costs base… and our suppliers’ cost base.”

When asked to quantify the inflationary effect of minimum wage rises and upped national insurance contributions Mr Roberts said inflation was already on the up, there’s “a lot of pressure in the pipeline….there’s pressure in the system in inflation already”.

What had been expected, Mr Roberts said, was a reduction in business rates: “Business rates will go up this year I certainly didn’t expect them to go up next year I expected them to go down”.

What does it mean for staff?

When asked what the impact could be on the Sainsbury’s workforce Mr Roberts said the company had “difficult decisions to take as a result” but it was “too early to be specific”.

Earlier this week JD Wetherspoon, which owns more than 1,000 pubs across the UK, said the budget will add £60m in costs next year, while M&S expects to take a £120m hit.

Changing habits

Also announced by Sainsbury’s on Thursday morning was the return of the “big weekly shop” as people are going back to the office.