COVID-19 Business News

Businessman in handcuffs. Covid scheme fraud illustration

Lengthy bans for directors who fiddled Covid scheme

AN AVERAGE of 35 directors are being banned by the UK Insolvency Service each month for abusing the Covid Support Scheme. That’s almost treble the...
Zara shop

Online push from Inditex as up to 1,200 stores to close

INDITEX, the Spanish owner of fashion and clothing stores Zara, Bershka, Pull & Bear and Massimo Dutti, will close up to 1,200 outlets around...
Lazy office worker

Slackers! Back to work! And switch off that Netflix series!

EIGHT out of 10 Brits are working from home, but it has come to light that not all of them have their noses to...
Tesco Colney Hatch by Michelle Davies

A crazed new world: coronavirus, paranoia, and Zombie Apocalypse shopping tips

By Hal Williams YOU WALK into the supermarket, intending to just pick up a few things, and wha…. ? The place is swarming. Shelves are...
Hands, calculator, paperwork

Bid to ease virus impacts on cash flow ‘flawed’ — CEO

THE UK government’s proposed Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CIBLS) is coming in for some criticism. HM Treasury and the Bank of England last week...
CitySprint van

Stand and deliver: CitySprint puts out a call for new drivers

UK SAME-DAY distribution company CitySprint is looking for 600 couriers with small or large vans — across the country. They will join the 3,500 vans,...
Contactless payment with smartphone

Contactless ‘in-touch with wary consumers’ — cash ‘faring poorly’

CONTACTLESS spending could soon account for 47 percent of all transactions, according to research carried out by the Centre of Retail Research (CRR). It examined...
Business closed

Relief for small firms as rent moratorium runs until 2022

THE FEDERATION of Small Businesses (FSB) has welcomed the extension to a moratorium on commercial tenant evictions in England until March 25 next year. FSB...
Spanish property market, €3m plus house

Dream is alive, but the landscape has changed for UK second-home...

The pandemic pain in Spain falls mainly on the lower end of the property market — but, as HAL WILLIAMS discovers, international second-home owners...
Man with dog working from home

Straddling the fence: will hybrid working be middle ground in home-or-office?

By ROSS SEYCHELL IT’S BEEN a year since the UK entered the biggest — and longest — remote-working experiment in history. But with the vaccine rollout...