1 Defence company stocks have risen dramatically as the war in Ukraine prompts a “massive reinvestment” in arms, according to industry sources. Western governments are flooding Ukraine with guns, ammunition and sophisticated portable missile systems, sending share prices for weapons companies up by as much as 72 per cent since the day Russia invaded.
2 Rishi Sunak has warned critics that the country’s national debt is ballooning as No 10 was forced to publicly back the embattled chancellor amid a Tory backlash over the cost of living crisis. The chancellor vowed to tackle the £400 billion black hole in the nation’s finances.
3 National Grid has sold a majority stake in its gas transmission business to the same Australian bank which attracted heavy criticism for its past ownership of key British infrastructure assets. The FTSE 100 group confirmed that it had agreed to sell a 60 per cent stake in its UK gas transmission and metering business to a consortium of overseas investors, including Macquarie.
4 Britain’s biggest institutional investor Legal & General has put its weight behind a group of rebel shareholders who have forced a resolution on Sainsbury’s calling on the supermarket giant to pay higher wages.
5 A £1.5 billion pandemic relief scheme for businesses has been described as a travesty after research found that most of the money has yet to be distributed a year after the business rates relief fund was launched.
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6 The pension funds and investments of more than a million people are to be disinvested from the tobacco industry after Scottish Widows announced it would sell shares and bonds worth £1 billion in cigarette companies.
7 The number of people reporting that they were victims of cryptocurrency scams rose by 64 per cent to 9,458 last year as fraudsters sought to take advantage of the boom in the trade.
8 Cornwall’s last tin mine could be back in production by 2026 after Cornish Metals, the company hoping to revive the site, won the backing of Sir Mick Davis, the former chief executive of Xstrata.
9 Starbucks, which has more than 1,000 outlets in Britain, is to open 140 new coffee shops in the UK this year after its British operation swung back into the black from losses in 2020 and resumed paying corporation tax.
10 The government is already falling behind on its commitments to get rid of dirty diesel trains, with the industry warning that Britain has no chance of hitting a net-zero target by 2050 unless ministers start making decarbonisation decisions and funding pledges.