Financial news

• UK firms to be forced to justify pay gap between bosses and staff

  10-06-2018 16:53
  Labour and unions say plans in wake of shareholder revolts fail to tackle ‘entrenched inequality’ The country’s biggest public businesses will have to publish the gap between the pay of their chief executive and an average worker, according to rules to be unveiled in parliament on Monday. Greg Clark, the business secretary, said directors of all companies with more than 250 employees would be required to disclose and explain this difference, known as the “pay ratio”
  
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• Devon 'log bank' set up to help those struggling with fuel poverty

  10-06-2018 13:44
  Foresters cooperative forging links with food banks and charities to reach those in needA band of volunteer foresters working from a base tucked away in a steep West Country valley is pioneering a “log bank” scheme designed to help struggling families and individuals out of fuel poverty. Inspired by the food bank system that has become a feature of austerity Britain, the idea is that people in Devon who are unable to afford to heat their homes will be supplied with free logs for open
  
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• Theresa May misses a trick after U-turn over workers on boards | Larry Elliott

  10-06-2018 12:57 via theguardian.com
  Something is awry when rising executive pay sits alongside flatlining earnings for employees Theresa May could hardly have been clearer. While campaigning to be prime minister in 2016, she attacked the levels of corporate pay and said there had to be changes to the way UK companies were run. “If I’m prime minister,” she said, “we’re going to have not just consumers represented on company boards but workers as well.”May was not the first prime minister to think
  
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• House of Fraser’s survival bid creates anger and fear

  10-06-2018 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Cull of stores infuriates landlords and alarms retail consultantsThey are ghosts from the retail past: Hugh Fraser, James Howell and John Rackham. Long-dead retail entrepreneurs who made their fortunes opening local department stores when they represented an exciting future.But last week the stores, still affectionately called Frasers, Rackhams and Howells by local shoppers who resisted attempts to rebrand them, were on a brutal closure list announced by stricken department store chain House of
  
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• Bad weather delayed a rate rise. Now the political climate’s the problem

  10-06-2018 08:00 via theguardian.com
  The Bank of England is once more signalling that borrowing costs might increase. Again, there are good reasons to hold offIt’s early February all over again inside the Bank of England. Not that governor Mark Carney and his colleagues in Threadneedle Street are missing out on the good weather: it’s just that they are all making speeches about how they are poised, should the economic climate be conducive, to raise interest rates.Carney wrote to the chancellor, Philip Hammond, on 8 Febr
  
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• For WPP, Sorrell really is the hardest word

  10-06-2018 07:59 via theguardian.com
  The legacy (and pay) of the former ad agency boss will loom large at the firm’s AGM this weekThere seems to be a sudden trend for ageing rockers to announce farewell tours at which they generously allow their fans to grant them one final payday in return for knocking out the greatest hits.Elton John and Paul Simon have unveiled such spectacles, and this week we get the City equivalent, as we all hum along to the familiar lyrics sung about the Square Mile’s most notable septuagenarian
  
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