Business

The turmoil on the markets started with a sharp drop in the New York stock exchange, which has been fluctuating wildly so far today. Alan Valdes, senior partner at Silverbear Capital, explains what is happening.

What goes up must come down, and there’s been another tumultuous day on markets around the world, with frantic trading following two days of heavy losses. On Wall Street, prices briefly rebounded before taking another tumble, while in London the FTSE ended the day almost 200 points lower. It’s all been fuelled by concern over…

It supplies a raft of services for the public sector, has posted a profit warning, and today saw its share price fall by almost 50 per cent. But the chief executive told Channel 4 News the decisive action he’d taken today meant what happened to Carillion won’t happen to them. Unions have called on the…

In the last hour the government has said it will review all personal independent payments, a decision that  comes after the Department for Work and Pensions decided not to challenge a court ruling that said changes to PIP were unfair to people with mental health conditions. Heidi Allen is a Conservative MP on the Work…

MPs have accused Carillion’s bosses of failing in their obligations towards the firm’s pension fund. The company collapsed in January with huge debts and a black hole in the scheme, which, it’s emerged today, could be as much as a billion pounds.  So could the pension trustees and the regulator have done more?

The British economy at the end of last year grew faster than predicted.  Figures from the Office for National Statistics showed GDP rose by half a percent,  fuelled by a strong performance in parts of the services sector. But despite this better-than-expected figure, overall, 2017 saw Britain record the slowest growth for five years.

Cockroaches, rats, pools of urine and blocked toilets. The “squalor” at Liverpool Prison is bad enough, but Her Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons has branded it the worst in the country. There have been six suicides at Liverpool Prison since 2015. Violence among inmates and against prison officers is rife. In the six months leading up…

A spending watchdog has warned that paying for schools and hospitals through the Private Finance Initiative will cost hundreds of billions of pounds. The National Audit Office said taxpayers will have to foot a 199 billion pound bill for projects outsourced to private companies over the next three decades under PFI. The report was compiled…

The anger over the pay-offs to Carillion bosses was widespread. But today it emerged that the directors stopped receiving bonuses or severance payments on the day the company went into liquidation. In addition, the Insolvency Service has said that 90 per cent of the company’s private contractors have said they will go on paying the…

Labour peer Lord Adonis,  the former chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, who quit over Christmas, and Conservative MP Gillian Keegan, a member of the Commons publicaccounts committee, discuss Carillion.  

Downing Street confirmed today that no fewer than eight contracts have been signed with Carillion since the profit warning in July, while it’s emerged that a government representative to manage the relationship between the firm and the public sector was “rotated off” at around the same time. It’s added fuel to Labour’s fury. They’ve accused the government…

There are talks going on now with the members of the COBRA crisis committee, but this is not a crisis meeting, insists No 10 tonight. Carillion had government contracts worth £1.7 billion, from the rail network to hospitals and schools. But amid a series of profit warnings and mounting debts, the construction giant has collapsed, putting thousands of jobs at…

Regulators and government officials are holding urgent talks on the huge construction group Carillion  and its half billion pound pensions deficit. The firm, which holds major outsourced government contracts, including the HS2 high-speed rail link, is struggling to avoid collapse. Unions are urging the government to step in and protect the thousands of jobs which…

Women are still earning less than men at many major firms including Ladbrokes, Easy Jet and Virgin Money. All companies employing more than 250 workers must publish their gender pay figures by April.