Three of Britain’s best known banking brands, Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley, are to be phased out by the end of next year. The Spanish banking group Santander is rebranding all of its UK subsidiaries under its own name, reflecting the company’s policy of operating under a single global brand. Santander says that one of the key drivers in implementing the brand change has been the switch to Santander’s global IT platform, Partenon. Abbey has moved to Partenon over the last three years, Bradford & Bingley is expected to complete the switch by July 2009 and Alliance & Leicester’s branches will migrate to the Partenon system by the end of 2010. When the rebranding is complete there will be 1,300 Santander branches throughout the UK. 

The High Court has decided in favour of eBay in a trademark infringement case between the online marketplace and L’Oreal.  The Court ruled that as eBay makes efforts to minimise the sale of counterfeit goods on its site it is not jointly liable with the sellers who place fake items on there. L’Oreal had argued that restricting the distribution of its products and preventing them from being sold on eBay would protect consumers against counterfeit products. eBay says that of the 2.7 billion items it listed globally in 2008, only 0.15% of them were identified as “potentially counterfeit”.

BT Group is to cut a further 15,000 jobs this year on top of the 5,000 full-time and 10,000 agency and third-party positions that went in 2008/9.  The telecoms company reported an annual loss of £134m for the year to March, which it blamed on “an unacceptable performance in BT Global Services”, its business services and IT solutions division.

The European Commission has imposed a record fine of £950m on the microchip maker Intel for “engaging in illegal anti-competitive practices to exclude competitors from the market for central processing units (CPUs)”. The Commission says that Intel gave hidden rebates to computer manufacturers on condition that they bought almost all their CPUs from Intel and made payments to the manufacturers so that they would delay the launch of products containing competitors’ CPUs. It also says that Intel made payments to a major retailer on condition that it stocked only computers with Intel CPUs. The computer manufacturers concerned are Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and NEC, while the retailer is the German chain, Media Markt. The Commission’s investigation followed complaints from AMD, Intel’s only significant competitor. Intel is to appeal and its chief executive says, "Intel takes strong exception to this decision. We believe the decision is wrong and ignores the reality of a highly competitive microprocessor marketplace, characterised by constant innovation, improved product performance and lower prices. There has been absolutely zero harm to consumers.”

The latest figures from the Office For National Statistics show the largest quarterly increase in unemployment since 1981. The unemployment rate was 7.1 per cent for the three months to March 2009, up 0.8 percentage points from the previous three months and up 1.8 percentage points on the year. The number of people out of work stood at 2.22 million, up 244,000 from the three months to December 2008 and up 592,000 from a year earlier. The redundancy rate for the period was 11.3 per 1,000 employees, up 1.1 from the three months to December 2008 and up 6.9 from a year earlier.

The government has announced that the minimum wage for workers aged 22 and over will increase from £5.73 to £5.80 an hour in October. The rate for 18 to 21-year-olds will also rise from £4.77 to £4.83, while the rate for 16 and 17-year-olds will go up to £3.57 an hour from £3.53. The increases will benefit nearly one million people.  The government has also accepted a Low Pay Commission recommendation that the adult minimum wage should be extended to 21-year-olds and this will be implemented from October 2010.

John Lewis is launching a new smaller shop format that will focus exclusively on home electrical and technology products. The retailer has identified 30 suitable locations across the UK, the first of which is in Poole in Dorset, where the first new format store opens in the Autumn, creating 100 new jobs.

Ferrari has opened its first UK store in Regent Street in London. The two-storey 530 square metre store offers a selection of products for Ferrari owners and enthusiasts and is one of more than 40 stores that the Italian sports car manufacturer plans to open over the next three years in Europe, America and the Middle and Far East.

The European Commission has proposed new legislation to regulate and supervise hedge funds and private equity, which it says managed €2 trillion in assets in the European Union at the end of 2008. The proposals suggest that all alternative investment fund managers should be authorised, are subject to robust regulatory standards and are ”transparent to supervisors, investors and other key stakeholders”.  The Alternative Investment Management Association said that the proposals were “hastily prepared and without consultation” and contained “many ill-considered provisions which are impractical and may prove unworkable”, adding that they “may put thousands of jobs in several major European industries under threat and slow down any economic recovery”.

An advertising campaign featuring the 62-year-old rock star Iggy Pop has helped increase the sales of the online insurance firm Swiftcover by almost a third in the first quarter of 2009. The success of the Iggy Pop campaign, coupled with news that sales of Country Life butter jumped more than 25% after former punk rocker John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) starred in its "Great British Butter" adverts, suggests that we can expect to see more ageing rockers on our screens promoting unlikely products in the months to come.

Southampton Leisure Holdings, the AIM-listed holding company that owns Southampton Football Club, has been placed into administration. A buyer is being sought for the club, which has just been relegated from the Football League Championship.

In his second budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling announced the following changes:

- a new 50% rate of tax will be introduced for those earning more than £150,000

- the £6,475 personal allowance will be removed for people earning more than £100,000

- the amount that can be invested in an ISA will be increased from £7,200 to £10,200

- the higher-rate tax relief on pension contributions is to be abolished

- the period that company losses can be carried back and set against previous profits is to be extended to three years

- the names and details of individuals and companies who deliberately default on tax bills over £25,000 will be published

- owners of cars that are more than ten years old can get £2,000 discount on new vehicles if they trade them in before next March

- under-25s who have been out of work for more than a year will receive a guaranteed job offer or training placement.

ITV is searching for a new chief executive following Michael Grade’s decision to stand down from the executive chairman role a year earlier than planned.

Shares in the loan firm Cattles have been suspended because the company was unable to publish its annual report and accounts on time. This was due to ongoing discussions with Cattles’ bankers. Earlier this year Cattles announced that it would be necessary to restate the group's financial statements for 2007 and that profit for 2008 would be substantially lower than expected as a result of “a breakdown in internal controls”. Cattles also suspended two of its directors and five directors of its subsidiary Welcome Financial Services pending the outcome of an inquiry which is being conducted by Deloitte.

The latest results for Tesco show that the retailer turned over more than £1bn a week in 2008/9, while its profits increased by 10% compared with the year before.

A Swedish court has handed the founders of the illegal digital downloads site The Pirate Bay prison sentences and fines totalling millions of pounds. The Pirate Bay offers links to sites where users can download copyrighted films, music and TV shows for free. In their defence The Pirate Bay founders said that the site was simply a search engine. The site continues to operate and has reported a huge surge in membership as a result of the publicity surrounding the trial.

The high-profile former governor of the Bank of England Eddie George has died at the age of 70. During his time at the Bank he dealt with crises such as Black Wednesday and the collapse of BCCI. He was the Bank’s governor when it was made independent by Tony Blair when Labour came to power in 1997.

According to the independent consultancy Centre for Economics and Business Research, the temporary reduction in the rate of VAT is having the desired effect of boosting the volume of retail sales. CEBR estimates that retail sales over the December-February period were £2.1bn higher than would otherwise have been the case and is calling for the Chancellor to “extend the duration of the cut to July 2010 when the economy will be stronger”. The rate of VAT is currently scheduled to revert from 15% to 17.5% at the end of 2009.

The website of totesport was down for several days in mid-April, losing the government-owned bookmaker significant income from customers wishing to bet on events such as the Masters golf, the Chelsea-Liverpool Champions League quarter final and the Irish Grand National. On the third day of the site being down, a totesport spokesman said, “We are working with our network partners at BT and other suppliers to resolve the problem as quickly as possible, but as yet cannot offer a definite timescale for service to be back to normal.” The government wants to privatise the Tote but announced in October 2008 that the sale would be delayed due to market conditions.

The European Investment Bank is to lend Jaguar Land Rover £340m to help it design and build cleaner cars with lower CO2 emissions. The EIB is also lending €400m to Nissan’s European operations which will be used to develop and build more fuel-efficient vehicles in the UK and Spain. Set up by the Treaty of Rome in 1958, the EIB raises funds on the capital markets which it lends on favourable terms to projects that further European Union policy objectives.

The smoothie maker Innocent has sold a minority stake in its business to The Coca-Cola Company. Innocent says that the £30m deal will fund its European expansion, but the company is obviously aware that the tie-up with the global manufacturer of sugar-based drinks will raise questions about Innocent’s much-vaunted ethical stance.  Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent says, ‘Every promise that Innocent has made - about making only natural healthy products, pioneering the use of better, socially and environmentally aware ingredients, packaging and production techniques, donating money to charity and having a point of view on the world - will remain.’ 

Royal Bank of Scotland has announced plans to cut up to 4,500 back office jobs in the UK over the next two years. The job cuts form part of a range of initiatives aimed at reducing annual costs by £2.5bn within the next three years and preparing the bank for a return to being a standalone business without government backing.

Norwich Union Life is to cut 800 permanent staff and 590 contract positions by the end of 2009. Mark Hodges, chief executive at Norwich Union Life, said: "We have made significant progress in improving our operational efficiency and are also nearing completion on a series of major change projects. Unfortunately, this means that a reduction in the number of roles in the business is inevitable”.

The Canadian corporate jet manufacturer Bombardier Aerospace is to lay off 975 workers at its Belfast plant. The company says that demand for business aircraft “deteriorated rapidly during the second half of 2008 and is expected to remain weak for the foreseeable future”. The job losses are on top of 300 announced in February. Nortel, Visteon, and FG Wilson have also announced the loss of manufacturing jobs in Northern Ireland in the past few weeks.

As the recession continues to bite across Europe, there have been several cases of “boss-napping” in France, where sacked workers have taken their bosses hostage and held them until the companies agreed to discuss improved redundancy terms. Four managers were barricaded into a Caterpillar factory in Grenoble, following similar incidents at plants owned by 3M and Michelin, while the chief executive and an HR manager of Sony France were held captive in a meeting room by angry workers for 18 hours.

Waitrose has signed a franchise deal with the motorway services operator Welcome Break that will see the supermarket open two 2,500sq ft food shops at Welcome Break motorway service areas. Waitrose says that the new stores will offer over 850 lines and will operate from 7am until 10pm, 365 days a year, with the potential to reach up to nine million customers.

From 6 April 2009 Royal Mail increased the price of first and second class stamps for standard letters weighing up to 100g by 3p, to 39p and 30p respectively. Despite the price of a second class stamp going up by more than 11%, Royal Mail says that average price increases for business customers will actually be 4.2%; as long as they use franking machines, pre-paid accounts or bulk business services such as Mailsort 2. Royal Mail points out that, even after these price rises, it will still be making a loss on stamped mail.

Panasonic is entering the UK fridge-freezer and washing machine markets for the first time with the launch of a range of premium energy-efficient products. The company is already a leading supplier of these products in Asia, and Yorihisa Shiokawa, managing director of Panasonic marketing Europe, says "Wherever we go to market with our refrigerators and washing machines, we end up in a leading position, which speaks volumes for our products. So as far as Europe is concerned, we are planning on becoming a major player in the top segment".

JJB Sports has sacked its chief executive for “gross misconduct”. Chris Ronnie was dismissed after giving up his 27.5% shareholding in JJB to an Icelandic bank without promptly informing the retailer’s board. JJB’s finance director is also to leave the company. 

Tidjane Thiam has been appointed the first ever black chief executive of a FTSE 100 company. The Ivory Coast national succeeds Mark Tucker at Prudential. Marjorie Scardino became the first female FTSE 100 chief executive in 1997 when she took up the top role at Pearson. Twelve years later, just three FTSE 100 companies are headed by women: Anglo American, Drax Power and Pearson, where Scardino remains CEO.

The recession has forced the cancellation of next year's British International Motor Show. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders says that the economic downturn and the unprecedented challenges facing the industry have made it impossible for exhibitors to commit to a 2010 event.

Credit and debit card fraud in the UK amounted to £609.9m in 2008, according to APACS, the UK payments association. Card fraud losses as a percentage of plastic card turnover amounted to just over 0.1% - that is around a tenth of a penny lost to fraud in every £1 spent on cards. A rise in the number of “account takeovers”, whereby criminals take over the running of another person’s account, using a genuine card and a genuine PIN in shops and at cash machines, led to card ID theft losses increasing by 39% on the previous year to £47.4m. The numbers of phishing and malware attacks continued to rise, with online banking fraud losses going up by 132% to £52.5m.

The Competition Commission has ordered BAA to sell both Gatwick and Stansted as well as either Edinburgh or Glasgow airports within the next two years. The Commission says that the sale of these airports will bring substantial benefits to passengers and airlines, such as lower prices, improved levels of service and more efficient investment in response to customers’ needs. BAA, which was bought for £10bn by the Spanish firm Ferrovial in 2006, says that while it accepts the need to change and that the sale of Gatwick is already underway, it believes that “the Commission’s analysis is flawed and its remedies may be impractical in current economic conditions”.

A report by the accountancy and business advisory firm BDO Stoy Hayward predicts that 36,000 UK businesses (or one in every 56) will fail in 2009. The Industry Watch report is based on data for company failures provided by the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform, and suggests that companies in the construction, property and manufacturing sectors will be hardest hit. According to the report, things will get even worse in 2010, with 39,000 businesses (one in 50) going to the wall. Last year 22,600 businesses failed in the UK.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has closed down a business that illegally sold a database of the personal details of more than 3,000 construction workers. The database was owned by The Consulting Association and held sensitive personal information such as construction workers’ personal relationships, trade union activity and employment history, which was used by over 40 construction companies to vet individuals for employment. The ICO is prosecuting the owner of the database for breaching the Data Protection Act and is considering what regulatory action to take against construction firms who have been using the system. The ICO says that Amec, Balfour Beatty, Costain, Haden Young, NG Bailey, Sir Robert McAlpine and Vinci were among the firms who used the data. Alan Ritchie, General Secretary of the construction workers’ union UCATT, said: “UCATT members know from bitter experience of being refused work that blacklisting exists in construction. However the extent of the practice and the fact that most of the major companies in construction are involved in the practice is truly shocking. It is outrageous that construction workers have been barred from jobs simply for being trade unionists.”

Jaguar Land Rover workers have agreed to a one year pay freeze and a four day week in return for no compulsory job losses for the next two years.

Everything But The Music (EBTM), the website that sells rock band merchandise, has been placed into administration.

Mosaic Fashions, the owner of a raft of high street chains, was briefly put into administration before a company set up by the former management of Mosaic and Kaupthing Bank bought back many of the brands. The move sees ownership of the UK business and assets of Warehouse, Oasis, Coast, Karen Millen and Anoushka G transfer to the new company, Aurora Fashions. The retailers will continue to trade in 647 concessions and 268 stores across the UK. However the deal did not include the Principles brand, and as the administrators were unable to find a buyer for it, they have sold the majority of the Principles stock to Debenhams, including the 121 Principles concessions that operate within Debenhams stores.  The administrators have closed 66 high street Principles stores, but are continuing to trade the remaining 19.  For the time being the remaining 172 non-Debenhams concessions will also remain trading but there will be significant redundancies over the coming weeks and 110 head office staff have already been made redundant. 

HSBC has become the latest bank to ask its shareholders for cash. HSBC says that the £12.5bn it hopes to raise from the rights issue will enhance its ability to “deal with the impact of an uncertain economic environment and to respond to unforeseen events”.  Stephen Green, HSBC’s group chairman, says that the rights issue is “in the best interests of shareholders, helping us strengthen our competitive positioning so that we can better deliver sustained value over time”. On the same day that the rights issue was announced, HSBC also revealed that its profits for 2008 were down 62% on the previous year, with its North American division reporting a loss of $15.5bn, including a $10.6bn write off in its US personal financial services business.

Liberty Electric Cars is to begin manufacturing the world’s first zero emission electric four-wheel drive vehicles in North East England later this year. The company is investing £30m and creating 250 jobs at a plant in Cramlington, Northumberland, where it plans to manufacture more than 1,000 plug-in Range Rovers annually. The cars have 80% lower running costs than petrol models, run for 200 miles before needing a recharge and have top speeds in excess of 100mph. The market for electric cars is still in its infancy, but Liberty anticipates exponential growth, starting at the luxury end of the market, spurred on by changes in legislation, social awareness and technological advances. A plug-in Range Rover will cost around £125,000.

Around 20% of estate agent offices have gone out of business since July 2008, according to the property website Rightmove.co.uk. Rightmove’s chairman, Scott Forbes, describes the current situation as “the worst UK housing market in modern history”.

Elvi, the fashion retailer specialising in clothes for women size 16 and up, has gone into administration.

Royal Bank of Scotland has announced that in 2008 it made a loss of £24.1bn – by far the biggest loss in British corporate history. Stephen Hester, the bank’s new chief executive, points out that all of its divisions were profitable except Global Banking and Markets and Asia Retail & Commercial Banking, with many of the losses stemming from ABN AMRO which RBS bought in 2007. Going forward, the bank says that its “business mix should be more biased to stable customer businesses than before in retail, commercial and wholesale”, relying “less on volatile unsecured wholesale funding”. It plans to set up a “non-core” division that will be separately managed and will comprise assets, portfolios and businesses that will be run off or disposed of during the next 3-5 years. It also plans to cut back its global activities and will significantly reduce or sell its operations in approximately 36 countries. 

According to a survey by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), a typical small firm loses up to £800 a year to fraud and online crime. More than half of the businesses surveyed said that they had been the victim of crime in the last twelve months, with phishing emails, card not present fraud and computer viruses and hackers being among the most common problems. The survey found that a third of small firms do not report fraud or online crime to the police or their banks because of a lack of faith in the system. The FSB says that online crime is becoming an increasingly serious issue for small firms and that a central, well advertised and accessible method of reporting fraud and e-crime is needed, which businesses can trust to understand the issue and to take proper follow-up action.

From 1 April 2009, the statutory minimum paid annual leave entitlement rose from 4.8 weeks to 5.6 weeks a year. For those working a five-day week, this means an increase from 24 to 28 days off, including public holidays.

The latest auction of live broadcasting rights for Premiership football has seen Sky tightening its grip on the sport by winning 115 of the 138 matches available for each season from 2010/11 to 2012/13. The outcome is a blow to Setanta which will see its coverage cut to just 23 matches per season. The Premier League raised £1.782bn from the bidding process and the money will be divided between the participating football clubs.

Despite the recent fall in the price of oil BP and Shell have reported two of the biggest British corporate profits in history. In 2008 BP’s profits were £18bn while Shell’s were £22bn. Jeroen van der Veer, the chief executive of Shell, said, “Industry conditions remain challenging, and we are continuing the focus on capital and cost discipline in Shell."

Ten years after the launch of the device at the beginning of 1999, Research In Motion has sold its 50 millionth Blackberry smartphone. There are now approximately 21 million active BlackBerry subscribers worldwide and the company is still growing, taking on 4,000 new employees in 2008.

TalkTalk has introduced an Emergency Plan that waives its £6.49 monthly home phone and broadband charge and gives six months’ free access to the internet and phone to those of its customers suffering economic hardship. TalkTalk’s chief executive, Charles Dunstone, says, “If you're anticipating hardship, perhaps as part of a job loss, your home phone and broadband service has never been more important in helping you get back on your feet. We hope our Emergency Plan will keep people connected, and give them the opportunity to apply for jobs and learn new skills." The offer is only available to customers who have been with TalkTalk for six months or more.

While the recession is decimating most sectors of the economy, the supermarkets are continuing to grow. Waitrose has announced plans to open at least nine new branches in 2009, creating 2,500 jobs. It is also taking over 13 Somerfield stores in what the Waitrose managing director, Mark Price, describes as “the biggest period of growth in the history of Waitrose”.  Britain’s leading supermarket Tesco has also announced expansion plans that will create 10,000 new jobs while Sainsbury’s and Wm Morrison each plan to increase their headcount by 5,000.

The chairman of one of India’s leading IT outsourcing companies has resigned following his admission that he has been falsifying the company’s accounts for several years. Satyam Computer Services employs more than 50,000 people and has a global presence including offices in Canary Wharf in London and is listed on the New York, Mumbai and Amsterdam stock exchanges. Its clients include many of the world’s biggest companies, such as Tesco, General Electric, Unilever and Nestle. In Ramalinga Raju’s resignation letter he confesses that he has been fabricating profit and margin figures for years and that £1bn that the company’s accounts show to be in the bank does not exist. He says that the gap in the balance sheet reached “unmanageable proportions as the size of company operations grew significantly” and describes his situation as “like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten”. The value of Satyam shares fell 80% following publication of the letter.

According to the TUC, more than five million people worked unpaid overtime in 2008, with its total value amounting to £26.9bn. The TUC has calculated that if everyone who works unpaid overtime did all their unpaid work at the start of the year, the first day they would get paid would be 27 February. The general secretary of the TUC, Brendan Barber described the figures as “disappointing”. He said, “Long hours are bad for people's health, and employers should never forget that each extra hour worked makes people less productive once they are over a sensible working week. The recession should instead provide a spur to make workplaces more productive, and for managers to get staff to work together, not compete for who can stay the latest”.

The rash of high profile administrations has thrown a spotlight on the practice of so-called “pre-pack administration”. In a pre-pack, a buyer is found for the business before it is handed to the administrators, and then the buyer purchases the profitable parts of the business, leaving the remainder of it, including the creditors, with the administrators. It has been suggested that in such cases, the administrator does not always look for alternative buyers and therefore does not get the best possible price for the business. On 1 January The Insolvency Service, the government body that oversees company failures, introduced new rules that require administrators to reveal to creditors the name of the buyer and the price paid when carrying out a pre-pack administration. Directors of insolvent companies can be banned by the Insolvency Service for a period of between 2 to 15 years if their conduct in the period leading to the insolvency proceedings is considered to be unfit.

Ofcom has introduced a new code of practice that it hopes will give broadband users more accurate information about the speed of the service they are receiving. Under the code, at the point of sale Internet Service Providers are to provide consumers with an accurate estimate of the maximum speed that their line can support, explain clearly and simply how technical factors may reduce speeds, explain fair use policies and offer an alternative package without any penalties if the actual speed turns out to be a lot lower than the estimate. Ofcom’s research shows that around a quarter of people do not receive the broadband speed they expected when they signed up for the service.