6:33 am, January 19, 2024
Thousands of jobs at risk as Tata ‘presses ahead with plan to close furnaces’
Steel giant Tata is to press ahead with plans to close blast furnaces at its biggest plant, threatening more than 3,000 jobs, according to sources.
Unions met the company yesterday after presenting alternative proposals aimed at saving jobs in Port Talbot.
But sources said Tata rejected the plan and was pressing ahead with proposals for a greener form of steelmaking to cut emissions and stem financial losses.
Luxury car maker Bentley suffers 11% fall in annual sales
Bentley’s global sales fell by 11% last year because of ‘challenging market conditions’, the luxury car maker said today.
The Crewe-based company, which is owned by the Volkswagen Group, said it delivered 13,560 cars in 2023, versus 15,174 during the previous 12 months.
The decline was driven by 18% decreases in sales to both the UK and China. Read more here
Sadiq Khan freezes Transport for London fares for a year
Transport for London fares will be frozen until March next year, Sadiq Khan has announced.
The Labour mayor of London, who chairs TfL, said he ‘wasn’t prepared to stand by’ while passengers pay more for public transport.
The freeze will apply to pay-as-you-go fares for bus, Tube, DLR and tram journeys, and most fares for London Overground and Elizabeth line trips, paid for by allocating £123m of Greater London Authority funding.
Google invests £790m in first UK data centre
Google has unveiled a $1bn (£790m) investment in its first UK data centre.
The tech giant – which will be presenting exclusive research at Car Dealer Live in March – said it had started building the facility on a 33-acre site in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, with aims for construction to be completed by 2025.
It marks the latest investment by a major US tech firm in Britain, coming less than two months after Microsoft announced it would spend £2.5bn on expanding data centres for artificial intelligence (AI) across the UK.
Fujitsu vows to compensate victims of Post Office Horizon IT scandal
Fujitsu has confirmed it will contribute to compensation payments to Post Office subpostmasters wrongfully convicted in the Horizon IT scandal.
It had earlier emerged that the company won’t bid for government contracts while an inquiry into the scandal is ongoing.
The Japanese technology firm offered its ‘deepest apologies’ to wronged subpostmasters and their families in a fresh statement yesterday.
Astronauts head to space station on chartered flight
Turkey’s first astronaut, a Swede and an Italian have set off for the International Space Station on a chartered SpaceX flight.
The Falcon rocket blasted off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre yesterday afternoon, carrying the three men, all with military pilot experience, and their escort – a retired Nasa astronaut who now works for Axiom Space, the company that arranged the private flight.
Their capsule should reach the space station tomorrow, where they will spend two weeks performing experiments, chatting to schoolchildren and soaking in the views of Earth, before returning home.
Updated Hyundai Bayon crossover brings redesign and extra tech
Hyundai has revealed an updated version of its Bayon – a compact crossover to rival the Nissan Juke.
Among the tweaks, it gets a new front light bar stretching out across the bottom of the bonnet, while the front grille gets a new pattern as part of the revised front bumper.
Inside, it now comes with a large 10.25-inch touchscreen as standard plus over-the-air updates. Expect prices to start from around £22,000 when orders open later in the year.
Yesterday’s headlines on Car Dealer you might have missed
- Now Lookers ‘asks staff to work weekends and longer hours due to staff shortages’
- Meet the independent used car dealers taking to the Car Dealer Live stage and find out what they’ll be talking about
- Single-franchise car dealer enjoys another stellar year as it rakes in £1.4m profit
- Police issue public plea after six vehicles are stolen from used car dealer
- Banks that lent money via motor finance could face total bill of £10bn as FCA investigates
- Electric car price war expected this year as Chinese brands eye large slice of UK market by 2030
Market movements
The FTSE 100 closed 12.80 points up yesterday to end the day on 7,459.09. The Cac 40 was up 82.66 points at 7,401.35, the Dax was up 135.66 points at 16,567.35, and the Dow Jones was up 201.94 points at 37,468.61.
Weather outlook
Today, the south will be mainly dry and sunny, according to BBC Weather. The north will turn cloudy, while western Scotland will have heavy rain and snow, with rain gradually gaining hold as the day progresses, and it’ll be breezy.
On Saturday, western parts of the UK will be windy with spells of heavy rain moving in from the west. It’ll stay drier to the east with some brighter spells in the south-east at first, while generally it’ll be milder.
