1 Rishi Sunak has encouraged young people to return to working in the office by saying there are significant benefits from office working, and warned that video conferencing is no substitute for meeting people in person. The chancellor made the comments in an interview with LinkedIn News, part of the business networking website. Transport and city centre businesses have suffered as people have worked from home.
2 Nearly two million more homes across 26 counties, including Shropshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Hampshire, will gain access to superfast broadband as part of a £5 billion scheme by the government to “level up” the country.
3 Night nurses are being offered a “welcome bonus” of up to £10,000 as employers attempt to address staff shortages worsened by the “pingdemic”. HC One, the care home operator, is promising the bonus on two jobs for registered night nurses in Scotland.
4 The American takeover spree of British businesses gathered pace with two US firms splashing almost £8 billion in deals with two of the country’s leading engineering groups. Meggitt, the aerospace group, agreed a £6.3 billion takeover by its Ohio-based rival Parker-Hannifin and Smiths struck a deal to offload its medical division to TA Associates, the Boston-based private equity group, for £1.3 billion.
5 Square, the American payments platform run by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, has agreed to buy Afterpay, an Australian pioneer of the “buy now, pay later” phenomenon, in a $29 billion all-stock deal.
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6 A sevenfold surge in sales has given Cazoo’s founder Alex Chesterman confidence that the used car website will make $1 billion revenues this year as it gears up to close its blank-cheque US listing this month.
7 Bolt Technology, a ride-hailing group based in Estonia viewed as a main rival to Uber, has been valued at €4 billion after raising cash to accelerate its push into the grocery delivery market.
8 The manufacturing sector expanded at a robust pace last month even though rising costs and material shortages dampened growth, a closely watched survey suggests. IHS Markit’s purchasing managers’ index for the manufacturing sector fell from a record high of 65.6 to 60.4 in July.
9 Profits at HSBC have surged to $10.8 billion, more then double the previous year’s, as the bank rides a recovery in the economy and releases cash it had earmarked to cover loans it feared would sour during the pandemic.
10 Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, has boosted pay for junior bankers after internal complaints over long hours, amid similar moves by rivals designed to maintain Wall Street’s allure.