1 Businesses will be supported with fresh state funding, including a potential return to furlough, if Boris Johnson orders further lockdown restrictions to tackle the Omicron variant. The Times understands that Rishi Sunak will fire up the Treasury’s business support package again if pubs, bars and restaurants are ordered to close.
2 Tour operators and airlines have slashed the price of Christmas holidays in an effort to tempt Britons abroad. Holiday companies are knocking up to 50 per cent off departures in the coming weeks, while airlines are “flooding” the market with cheap seats. Ministers are set to approve the scrapping of hotel quarantine for arrivals from countries on the red list today.
3 The Bank of England is to scrap affordability rules to make it easier for some homebuyers to take out mortgages.
4 The City regulator watered down a compensation scheme at the expense of small and medium sized businesses who were the victims of mis-selling after the Treasury intervened amid fears the bill for banks would be too high, an official report from John Swift QC’s review of the redress programme will suggest.
5 NatWest, the taxpayer-controlled lender, has been fined £265 million for failing to stop a money-laundering scheme involving hundreds of millions of pounds, dozens of branches and cash carried in bin bags being deposited.
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6 A senior executive of Tesco reportedly told City analysts that retailers are making better profit margins on fuel sales after Asda’s takeover by the Issa brothers. A source at Britain’s biggest supermarket group said that the senior Tesco staff who were at the meeting did not recall those words being used.
7 Rio Tinto, the Anglo-Australian mining group, has offered to cancel $2.3 billion of debt owed by Mongolia to get its project in the Gobi desert back on track. The Oyu Tolgoi site would be one of the biggest copper mines in the world.
8 Shares in Purplebricks tumbled another 20 per cent after the online estate agent warned that it faces a multimillion-pound payout to tenants because of a “process error” in its lettings business.
9 A return to revenue growth at Capita left the market underwhelmed as rising costs and Covid-19 uncertainty continue to put the brakes on its recovery.
10 A boom in demand for speedy deliveries is encouraging Screwfix to open a further 350 shops, increasing the hardware retailer’s UK chain to 1,000 outlets. The retailer began trialling its Screwfix Sprint service in June with Gophr, a courier firm, to deliver items to tradesmen on the job.