Fifty-nine jobs at a historic Dundee business have been saved after a U.S. synthetic sports turf specialist stepped in, Herald Scotland reported. Joint administrators Michelle Elliot and Callum Carmichael, partners of FRP Advisory, have sold Dundee-based carpet yarns specialist Bonar Yarns to Newman Yarns, a new business created for the purposes of the acquisition. Newman Yarns was founded by John Newman, owner of Elite Turf USA, a distributor and installer of synthetic sports turf.
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Britain’s inflation rate slowed last month, but is likely to bring only limited relief to households as it stubbornly held in the double digits because of rapidly rising food prices, the New York Times reported. Consumer prices rose 10.1 percent in March from a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday, a slightly slower pace than the 10.4 percent in February. But economists had expected the country’s inflation rate to drop below 10 percent for the first time since the summer.
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More companies in England and Wales entered insolvency during March than at any point since monthly records started three years ago, according to official data on Tuesday that showed a 16% increase on a year ago, Reuters reported. The Insolvency Service Agency reported 2,457 corporate insolvencies last month, up from 1,784 in February. The rate of companies falling into insolvency fell sharply with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to government support programmes and lockdowns slowing the progress of courts handling insolvency cases.
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There may need to be limits initially on the use of major stablecoins for payments, and they should also be backed by high quality and liquid assets to protect consumers, Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe said on Monday, Reuters reported. Britain is due to adopt rules for regulating stablecoins, a form of cryptocurrency backed by an asset or fiat currency, which consumers could use to make payments digitally. "Systemic stablecoins will need to be backed with high quality and liquid assets," Cunliffe told a conference held by Innovate Finance, a UK fintech industry body.
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The process that enables creditors to pursue struggling businesses at the Irish High Court has resumed in the north after three years, IrishNews.com reported. The Bankruptcy and Companies Master’s Court in Belfast has reopened to winding up petitions from Monday (April 17). It follows the introduction of the Insolvency (Amendment) Rules (Northern Ireland) 2023 last month, which effectively ended the three-year restriction on creditor winding up petitions.
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Legal and professional services firm Ince Group Plc plans to enter administration and pursue a sale of the company, it said on Wednesday, amid cash concerns and repeated delays in reporting its financial results, Reuters reported. Ince's directors applied to London's High Court on Wednesday to appoint administrators under UK insolvency law in relation to the company and four subsidiaries, court filings show. Trading in Ince on London's Alternative Investment Market was suspended from Jan. 3 following delays in publishing the company's annual report for the year ending Mar. 31, 2022.
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The bankruptcy filing by Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit Holdings Inc. has dealt a blow to Japan's hopes of building a domestic space industry, with plans for a Kyushu-based spaceport designed to attract tourism on hold for lack of funding, Reuters reported. Oita prefecture, home to Japan's largest number of hot springs, partnered with Virgin Orbit in 2020 to create its first Asian spaceport at Oita Airport using a Boeing 747 for horizontal rocket launches.
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The FTSE 100 lost almost 40 points and ended lower on Tuesday at 7,634.52 points, TipRanks reported. The index opened on a stronger note after reaching a three-week high on Monday. However, towards the closing hours of trading, the stocks went down in sync with their U.S. counterparts. The U.S. equities felt pressure from higher oil prices and weaker employment data. The pound gained strength against the dollar and traded at its highest point above $1.25 since June 2022. This came as a blow to U.K. companies with greater exposure to international markets.
Hundreds of Google employees staged a walkout at the company’s London offices on Tuesday, following a dispute over layoffs, Reuters reported. In January, Google’s parent company Alphabet announced it was laying off 12,000 employees worldwide, equivalent to 6% of its global workforce. The move came amid a wave of job cuts across corporate America, particularly in the tech sector, which has so far seen companies shed more than 290,000 workers since the start of the year, according to tracking site Layoffs.fyi.
The cinema chain has announced that it will no longer be selling its U.K., Irish and U.S. locations despite filing for bankruptcy protection last year, the (U.K.) Gazette and Herald reported. The global company operates brands like Cinema City, Picturehouse, Regal and Planet with 750 locations around the world. On Monday, April 3, it announced that it has now terminated the planned sale after struggling to find an acceptable offer. Instead, the chain will go under financial restructuring of its approximately £4 billion debt pile.