Business

The relentless squeeze on household budgets is reshaping how consumers buy clothes, and few businesses are reaping the rewards quite like Vinted.

The Lithuanian-founded online marketplace has reported annual revenues of €1.1 billion, a 38 per cent jump on the previous year, as shoppers increasingly swap the high street for the second-hand rail. Gross merchandise value, the total worth of goods sold through the platform, climbed 47 per cent to €10.8 billion, underscoring the sheer scale of the shift towards pre-owned goods.

Founded in Vilnius in 2008 by Milda Mitkute and Justas Janauskas, Vinted arrived in Britain a decade ago and found its stride during the pandemic. The UK is now the platform’s second-largest market behind France, with more than 16 million registered users, a remarkable footprint for a business that many mainstream consumers had barely heard of five years ago.

Much of that popularity rests on a simple commercial proposition: unlike eBay and Depop, Vinted charges sellers zero commission. That model, which allows sellers to pocket every penny of their sale price, has attracted everyone from celebrity users including Paul Mescal, Ferne McCann and Alexa Chung to ordinary households using the platform as a genuine income stream.

The company has also been busy broadening its offer well beyond wardrobe clear-outs. Buyers can now pick up computer games, books, crockery and vinyl records, while category expansion into sports equipment and collectables has opened fresh revenue streams. A push into new territories, Latvia, Estonia and Slovenia among them, has further widened the top line.

Not everything in the results made for comfortable reading, however. Adjusted earnings before interest, tax and amortisation slipped 5 per cent to €151 million, while net profit fell 19 per cent to €62 million. Vinted attributed the margin pressure to heavy investment in Germany, where it has battled fierce local competition, and to the expansion of Vinted Go, its in-house logistics arm, into Portugal and Spain.

Vinted Go, launched in 2022 with a pilot of parcel lockers around Paris, now operates across five markets and has ambitions that stretch well beyond its parent platform. The division has begun handling deliveries for third-party retailers, positioning Vinted as a would-be player in the broader European logistics market, a bold strategic bet that will take time to prove its worth.

The wider second-hand sector is consolidating rapidly. Depop, the Gen Z vintage fashion favourite, recently changed hands from Etsy to eBay at a notable discount, roughly $1.2 billion against the $1.6 billion Etsy paid in 2021. Vinted, meanwhile, has been on an acquisition spree of its own, snapping up Denmark’s Trendsales, Sweden’s Rebelle and the Netherlands’ United Wardrobe to cement its position as Europe’s dominant resale marketplace.

For Britain’s growing army of second-hand sellers and bargain hunters, the message is clear: the thrift economy is no passing fad. With household finances still under pressure and sustainability concerns adding moral weight to the trend, platforms such as Vinted look well placed to keep growing, provided they can balance expansion costs against the profitability investors will eventually demand.

Read more:
Vinted breaks the billion-euro barrier as thrifty shoppers embrace second-hand fashion

The brief sigh of relief across global markets lasted barely a day. Brent crude climbed sharply back towards $100 a barrel on Thursday after Iran moved to close the Strait of Hormuz, sending a clear signal that the fragile Middle East ceasefire was already fracturing.

The benchmark was trading at $98.61 a barrel in early afternoon dealing, a rise of 4 per cent, having fallen as much as 16 per cent the previous day to below $91 on optimism that a two-week pause in hostilities might pave the way for a lasting peace. That optimism now looks badly misplaced.

Iran’s decision to shut the strait, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas passes, came in direct response to Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, which Tehran condemned as a breach of the ceasefire agreement. It is a move that strikes at the heart of global energy security and one that will alarm policymakers and business leaders in equal measure.

Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of Abu Dhabi’s state oil company Adnoc, did not mince his words. He made clear that Iran was using passage through the waterway as a tool of political leverage rather than respecting freedom of navigation, a distinction that matters enormously for businesses dependent on uninterrupted supply chains.

Nigel Green, chief executive of the financial advisory group deVere, echoed those concerns, pointing out that a fifth of the world’s oil supply continues to move through a corridor effectively controlled by one of the belligerents. For SMEs already grappling with elevated energy costs, it is a deeply uncomfortable position.

Stock markets reflected the souring mood. The FTSE 100, which had enjoyed its strongest single session since April 2025 with a 2.5 per cent gain on Wednesday, gave back 0.2 per cent to trade at 10,585. On the continent, Germany’s DAX shed 1.4 per cent and France’s CAC 40 fell 0.7 per cent. Across Asia, Japan’s Nikkei, South Korea’s Kospi and China’s SSE Composite all closed lower.

Wall Street, which had rallied sharply overnight with the S&P 500 up 2.5 per cent and the Dow Jones gaining nearly 3 per cent, was expected to open in the red.

President Trump weighed in on social media, confirming that American forces would remain deployed in the Gulf until an agreement was both reached and honoured, warning of severe consequences should it not be.

Meanwhile, Israel intensified its military campaign in Lebanon with its heaviest strikes since the conflict with the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia escalated last month, with more than 250 reported killed.

For British businesses, particularly those in manufacturing, logistics and any sector exposed to energy pricing, the message is stark. The ceasefire may have offered a momentary respite, but the underlying volatility in the Middle East, and its direct bearing on the cost of doing business, is far from resolved. With Brent hovering just shy of triple figures, boardrooms across the country will be revisiting their hedging strategies and bracing for what could be a prolonged period of uncertainty.

Read more:
Oil price surges towards $100 as Middle East ceasefire begins to unravel

There is a market in the UK that rarely makes headlines, never attracts venture capital, and is almost entirely invisible to the business press.

It is worth an estimated two billion pounds annually, it is growing year on year, and it is being driven by a convergence of factors that show no sign of reversing.

The market is home hardware replacement — door handles, locks, window fittings, letterboxes, hinges, and the hundreds of small components that keep the UK’s thirty million homes functioning. It is not new construction. It is not a renovation. It is the quiet, unglamorous business of replacing the parts that wear out.

The Scale Nobody Talks About

The UK housing stock is ageing. The uPVC door and window installation boom of the 1990s and 2000s means that between fifteen and twenty million UK homes are now running on door and window hardware that is fifteen to twenty-five years old. Springs have weakened. Finishes have deteriorated. Lock mechanisms have worn to the point where they no longer meet current security standards.

Every one of those homes will need replacement hardware at some point — many of them within the next five years. A single front door requires a handle, a euro cylinder lock, a multipoint gearbox mechanism, a letterbox, hinges, and weatherseals. A typical three-bedroom house has eight to twelve windows, each with a handle and a pair of hinges. The average hardware replacement spend per property, when multiple components are addressed at once, runs between seventy-five and two hundred pounds.

Multiply that by the millions of properties approaching the replacement window, and the market opportunity is substantial. Yet it remains largely served by small specialist retailers rather than major chains.

Why the Big Retailers Cannot Win This Market

The structural challenge for large DIY retailers in this market is specificity. Home hardware replacement is not a category where one size fits all. A customer replacing a door handle needs a product that matches the exact PZ distance, backplate length, spindle type, and fixing configuration of their existing door. A customer replacing a euro cylinder needs the exact length to match their door thickness. A customer replacing window hinges needs the correct stack height and hinge length for their window type.

Large retailers optimize for the most popular specifications and ignore the long tail. The result is that a customer visiting a major DIY chain to replace a door handle has perhaps a thirty percent chance of finding the exact product they need. The remaining seventy percent leave empty-handed or buy something that does not fit, generating a return and a second trip.

Specialist online retailers have inverted this model. By focusing exclusively on door and window hardware, they carry the full specification range — every PZ distance, every cylinder length, every hinge type. A specialist selling replacement uPVC door handles stocks forty or fifty models where a general retailer stocks five. The conversion rate difference is dramatic.

The Content Advantage

The most successful businesses in this space have recognised that the customer’s primary challenge is not finding a cheap product — it is identifying which product they need. A homeowner staring at a broken door handle does not know what PZ distance means. They do not know whether they have an espagnolette or a cockspur window handle. They cannot tell a multipoint from a mortice lock.

Specialist retailers that invest in educational content — measuring guides, identification tools, fitting instructions, video walkthroughs — solve this knowledge gap and capture the customer at the moment of highest purchase intent. The customer searches for how to identify their door handle, finds a comprehensive guide on the specialist retailer’s website, identifies their product, and purchases it in the same session.

This content-led acquisition model generates organic traffic at effectively zero marginal cost, in contrast to the paid advertising that general retailers rely on for the same customer. Over time, the specialist builds a library of authoritative content that compounds in search visibility, creating a widening competitive moat.

The DIY Shift

A decade ago, most home hardware replacement was handled by locksmiths and general handymen. The homeowner called a professional, paid a callout fee of sixty to one hundred and fifty pounds, and had the work done for them. The professional sourced the parts through trade suppliers and marked them up accordingly.

That model is changing rapidly. The combination of cost-of-living pressure, widely available fitting guides, and the simplicity of most hardware replacement tasks has shifted a significant proportion of the market to DIY. Replacing a door handle is a ten-minute job with a screwdriver. Changing a euro cylinder takes five minutes. Fitting new window hinges requires twenty minutes and basic tools.

The customer who previously paid a locksmith one hundred and fifty pounds for a cylinder replacement now watches a two-minute video guide, orders a thirty-pound cylinder online, and fits it themselves. The locksmith loses the job. The specialist retailer gains a direct-to-consumer sale with full margin.

This shift has been accelerating since the pandemic, when homeowners became more comfortable with DIY and less willing to pay for services they could perform themselves. The trend shows no sign of reversing.

Insurance and Regulation as Growth Drivers

Home insurance policies have become increasingly specific about door and window security requirements. Policies that once required simply “adequate locks” now specify TS007 3-Star euro cylinders, British Standard multipoint locks, and key-operated window fittings on ground-floor windows.

A homeowner who discovers at policy renewal — or worse, at the point of a burglary claim — that their existing hardware is non-compliant has a strong financial incentive to upgrade immediately. The cost of a rejected insurance claim dwarfs the thirty to fifty pounds required for compliant replacement hardware.

This regulatory tightening has created a recurring upgrade cycle that did not exist a decade ago. As standards evolve, properties that met previous requirements fall below the new threshold and require hardware replacement regardless of whether the existing hardware has physically failed.

The Energy Efficiency Angle

Building energy performance standards are tightening across the UK, with particular focus on rental properties. Landlords are increasingly required to demonstrate minimum energy efficiency standards, and external doors and windows are a significant factor in thermal performance assessments.

Worn draught seals, letterboxes with failed springs, and handles that do not compress the door tightly against the frame all contribute to measurable heat loss. Replacing these components is one of the cheapest ways to improve a property’s thermal performance — and for landlords facing minimum EPC requirements, it is often the most cost-effective first step before investing in more expensive measures.

The Business Opportunity

For entrepreneurs and small business owners considering this market, the barriers to entry are relatively low but the barriers to excellence are significant. Setting up an online shop selling door handles is straightforward. Building the product knowledge, identification guides, fitting support, and full-specification inventory that creates a competitive advantage against both general retailers and other specialists requires genuine expertise and sustained investment.

The businesses that are winning in this space share common characteristics: deep product knowledge that translates into authoritative content, comprehensive inventory that covers the long tail of specifications, and customer service that can identify the correct product from a description or photograph. These are not capabilities that can be bought off the shelf or replicated by a competitor overnight.

For investors and analysts tracking the home improvement sector, the hardware replacement segment deserves more attention than it currently receives. It is counter-cyclical — hardware fails regardless of economic conditions. It is recurring — every replacement creates a future replacement need. And it is structurally shifting toward direct-to-consumer channels that favour specialists over generalists.

The market may not be glamorous. But it is large, it is growing, and it is being won by businesses that understand their products better than anyone else.

Read more:
The UK’s Overlooked £2 Billion Market: Why Home Hardware Replacement Is Booming

The iconic property arm of the Knightsbridge department store has closed its last remaining office after a perfect storm of stamp duty hikes, the scrapping of non-dom tax status and a shift in tastes among ultra-wealthy buyers left it fatally exposed.

For the best part of 130 years, Harrods Estates occupied a rarefied corner of the London property market. Founded in 1897 on the ground floor of the famous Knightsbridge department store, it spent decades connecting British aristocrats and wealthy international buyers with some of the capital’s most desirable addresses. Princess Diana’s stepmother, Countess Raine Spencer, served as a director for a decade, lending the brand a touch of genuine celebrity cachet.

Now, however, the final chapter has been written. The agency has confirmed what it called a “very difficult” decision to close its last remaining office on Brompton Road, bringing an end to operations that once stretched from the Home Counties to Monte Carlo.

Shaun Drummond, Harrods Estates’ residential director, said the closure was part of a broader group strategy to refocus on luxury retail. Service will continue for existing tenants, landlords and those with sales already under way, but even these arrangements will wind down in phases, ceasing entirely by March next year.

The demise of such a storied name is being attributed to a confluence of forces that have battered the top end of the London market. Chief among them is the government’s decision to abolish non-dom tax status, a move that has proved a significant disincentive for wealthy overseas buyers considering a move to the capital. Coupled with stamp duty surcharges of up to 19 per cent for foreign purchasers, the effect has been stark: Savills calculates that average prices for homes valued at £4.5 million and above fell by 4.8 per cent last year.

The geographical dynamics of prime central London have shifted, too. Knightsbridge, once the undisputed pinnacle of luxury living in the capital, has been overtaken in the affections of wealthy buyers by Mayfair, Belgravia and Notting Hill. According to Rosy Khalastchy, a director at Beauchamp Estates, a younger generation of Middle Eastern purchasers no longer shares the desire of their parents and grandparents to live within walking distance of the Harrods store.

Then there is the shadow cast by the late Mohamed Al Fayed, who owned Harrods until selling it to the Qatar Investment Authority for £1.5 billion in 2010. Allegations of historical sexual abuse against Al Fayed, who died in 2023, have caused reputational damage that some industry figures believe drove clients towards rival agencies.

Others point to strategic confusion under Qatari ownership. The property arm is said to have become overly dependent on a narrow pool of international buyers and sellers whose preferences can shift rapidly. One telling anecdote emerged in the summer of 2024, when a visiting lawyer found a large section of the Knightsbridge store given over to a pop-up exhibition advertising luxury homes in Saudi Arabia — a curious choice given the well-documented rivalry between Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

For those who remember the agency’s heyday under managing director Mark Collins, who built an enviable client roster of high-net-worth individuals and opened four London offices, the closure will feel like the end of an era. As Khalastchy recalled, there was a time when every serious seller in prime central London wanted to list with Harrods Estates, and Countess Spencer’s presence at property launches added genuine star power.

The brand’s website now carries a stark banner in capital letters confirming it is no longer accepting new enquiries. A Harrods spokesman said the wind-down followed the natural end of the office lease and that plans were in place to ensure no disruption for remaining clients.

For the wider London luxury property sector, the closure of Harrods Estates serves as a cautionary tale. A brand name alone, however illustrious, offers little protection when the tax environment turns hostile, buyer demographics shift and the competition is hungry. The era of wealthy foreigners beating a path to Knightsbridge simply because the Harrods name was above the door appears to be well and truly over.

Read more:
Harrods Estates shuts up shop after 130 years as tax raids on wealthy overseas buyers take their toll

Britain’s solar sector delivered a statement of intent this week, smashing generation records on back-to-back days as ministers gave the green light to the country’s biggest solar installation.

Solar farms across England, Wales and Scotland produced 14.1GW of electricity at midday on Monday, eclipsing the previous benchmark of 14GW set last July. That mark lasted barely 24 hours before Tuesday afternoon’s output pushed the bar to 14.4GW.

The milestones landed on the same day the government confirmed approval for Springwell, a vast solar farm in Lincolnshire expected to generate enough power for roughly 180,000 homes at peak capacity. Energy minister Michael Shanks framed the decision as central to shielding consumers and businesses from volatile international fossil fuel markets, calling solar “one of the cheapest forms of power available.”

Springwell follows the approval of Tillbridge, another large-scale Lincolnshire installation backed six months earlier,  a notable doubling down in a county where Reform UK’s anti-renewables stance has been gaining traction. Together with 23 other major clean energy projects approved since Labour took office in 2024, the pipeline could supply the equivalent of up to 12.5 million homes.

The solar records come barely a fortnight after wind generation hit its own new peak of 23.9GW, pushing gas-fired output to a two-year low and providing a dry run for the government’s ambition of a virtually carbon-free grid by 2030. The electricity system operator is understood to be preparing to run the network without any gas generation for short spells as early as this summer.

For the thousands of smaller firms watching their energy costs with understandable anxiety, the direction of travel matters. The government has streamlined planning for so-called plug-in solar installations and updated building standards to require solar panels on all new homes from 2028, measures that should, in time, ease the burden on businesses operating from newer commercial and mixed-use premises.

Whether the pace of deployment proves fast enough to deliver the bill reductions ministers are promising remains the critical question. But with records tumbling and consents flowing, the trajectory is difficult to argue with.

Read more:
Britain smashes solar records as ministers greenlight country’s largest solar farm

There is never an easy way to announce a hefty pay rise at the top while headcount is falling on the shop floor, and the John Lewis Partnership’s latest annual report lays that tension bare.

Jason Tarry (pictured), who took the chair of the employee-owned retailer in September 2024, saw his basic salary lifted from £990,000 to £1.2m for the year to January, a rise of just over a fifth. Factor in a modest annual bonus worth 2 per cent of pay, plus other benefits, and his total package nudged close to £1.26m.

The partnership justified the increase by pointing out that Tarry now combines the roles of chairman and chief executive, following the departure of Nish Kankiwala, whose position was scrapped. His predecessor Sharon White was on the same base salary of £990,000 throughout her tenure and took home a total of £1.12m in each of her last two full years, during which no bonus was paid at all.

For context, Tarry’s remuneration remains some way below the £1.53m peak reached by former chairman Charlie Mayfield in 2015, and well short of the nearly £2m paid to the Co-op Group’s former chief last year. A reduction in the number of senior roles also meant the total bill for key management, including directors, held steady at £8m.

Yet it is the workforce numbers that will attract closer scrutiny. The partnership now employs 65,700 people, down from 69,000 a year earlier, with Waitrose losing roughly 1,800 full-time positions and John Lewis shedding around 1,500. A spokesperson said the vast majority of departures reflected natural attrition, with fewer than 0.5 per cent of partners leaving through redundancy.

The trajectory, however, tells a starker story. The group had 76,400 staff on its books in 2023, and has now cut some 10,700 roles in the space of three years — broadly in line with earlier reports that it was considering the removal of up to 11,000 positions by 2029. In March the business signalled it would continue to pursue efficiencies, including greater use of electronic shelf labels and artificial intelligence, though it declined to say whether further reductions were on the cards.

There are brighter notes in the report. The partnership paid an annual bonus to all staff in March for the first time in four years, after underlying profits rose 6 per cent. Every employee, the chairman included, received the equivalent of 2 per cent of their salary.

Tarry’s first 18 months have been defined by a return to retail fundamentals: better stores, improved product availability and higher pay for frontline workers. The group is investing £800m across its estate and has already refurbished 23 Waitrose branches and five John Lewis stores over the past year. The department store chain has drawn queues with the high-street revival of Topshop and seen renewed footfall thanks to the return of its famous “never knowingly undersold” pledge.

While 16 John Lewis department stores have closed in recent years, the chain remains the largest of its kind in Britain, buoyed by the collapse of former rivals Debenhams and Beales and the radical downsizing of House of Fraser.

It has not all been smooth sailing under Tarry, however. The partnership faced criticism after letting go an autistic man who had volunteered as an unpaid shelf stacker at a Waitrose branch for years. More recently, the dismissal of a 17-year employee who intervened to stop a shoplifter stealing Lindt gold bunny Easter eggs attracted widespread attention, and a prompt job offer from rival grocer Iceland.

For a business built on the principle that every worker is a partner, squaring executive pay rises with a shrinking workforce will remain one of the defining challenges of Tarry’s leadership. The numbers may add up on paper, but the optics require careful handling in a retailer whose brand is inseparable from the people who run it.

Read more:
John Lewis chairman’s pay climbs 21% to £1.2m as 3,300 roles disappear across the partnership

The uncomfortable echoes of 2022 are growing louder. Britain’s private sector expanded at its weakest pace in six months during March, with the final composite purchasing managers’ index slipping to just 50.3, barely a whisker above the line that separates growth from contraction and well below the 51 reading analysts had pencilled in.

For the thousands of small and medium-sized businesses that form the backbone of the UK economy, the message from the latest S&P Global data is stark: costs are rising sharply while customer demand is falling away. It is, in short, the textbook definition of stagflation, and it is back.

The principal culprit is the war in the Middle East. Five weeks of US and Israeli strikes against Iran have sent oil and gas prices surging, with the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil previously flowed, choking off a vital supply artery. The knock-on effect for British firms has been immediate and painful: material costs across the private sector rose at their fastest rate since February 2023.

Manufacturing businesses bore the sharpest pain, recording their steepest month-on-month rise in cost inflation since Black Wednesday in 1992. The manufacturing PMI edged down to 51 from 51.7 in February, still in expansion territory, but only just, and with margins under severe strain.

Yet it is the services sector, responsible for roughly 80 per cent of British GDP, that should concern business owners most. Services activity slumped to an 11-month low of 50.5, a dramatic fall from 53.9 the previous month and a significant downgrade from the earlier flash estimate. New business among services firms fell for the first time since November 2025, a worrying sign for any SME dependent on a healthy domestic order book.

Tim Moore, economics director at S&P Global Market Intelligence, pointed to cutbacks in both business and consumer spending as the driving force behind the downturn, with rising uncertainty over the Gulf conflict further eroding confidence. Business optimism across the private sector fell to its lowest level since last June.

Thomas Pugh, chief economist at RSM UK, was blunter in his assessment, warning that another bout of stagflation now looks unavoidable, and that a prolonged conflict could tip Britain into outright recession.

The comparison with the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when soaring gas prices pushed inflation higher while growth stalled, is difficult to ignore. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has already suggested that Britain stands to suffer the worst growth hit of any G20 nation from the current crisis, alongside the sharpest inflation rise in the G7. GDP managed just 0.1 per cent growth in the final quarter of last year, offering precious little cushion.

For businesses already grappling with thin margins and cautious consumers, the interest rate outlook offers scant comfort. Markets now expect the Bank of England to raise rates twice from their current level of 3.75 per cent this year, with analysts at Pantheon Macroeconomics forecasting a quarter-point rise in June before two cuts follow in 2027. UK government bond yields have climbed steeply since the conflict began, limiting the chancellor’s room for fiscal support.

There was one small crumb of comfort buried in the data: the pace of job cuts among services companies eased to its slowest since October 2025. But with inflation forecasts suggesting prices could breach 5 per cent this year and the conflict showing no sign of swift resolution, the outlook for British businesses remains deeply uncertain.

The picture across the Channel is scarcely more encouraging. The eurozone’s composite PMI fell to a nine-month low of 50.7, dragged down by weakness in Germany and contraction in France. Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global, warned of clear risks that the European economy could shrink in the second quarter without a rapid end to hostilities.

Read more:
The spectre of stagflation returns as Britain’s private sector grinds to a near-halt

Britain’s standing as a global climate leader faces a critical test as senior figures in international diplomacy have warned that any move to open new oil and gas fields in the North Sea would deal a severe blow to worldwide efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The government is facing mounting pressure from the oil industry, the Conservative opposition, Reform UK, certain trade unions and factions within the Treasury to grant new drilling licences. This comes despite research showing that the two largest remaining fields, Rosebank and Jackdaw, would displace just 1% and 2% respectively of the UK’s gas imports, offering negligible benefit to either prices or energy security.

The North Sea basin is now more than 90% depleted, and extracting its remaining pockets of hydrocarbons is becoming progressively more costly and energy-intensive. Yet the political appetite for new licensing persists, placing Ed Miliband, the energy security and net zero secretary, in an increasingly uncomfortable position.

Nicolas Stern, professor at the London School of Economics, cautioned that fresh drilling would be damaging on multiple fronts, bad for growth, bad for energy security and a harmful signal to the international community. Lord Stern pointed to Britain’s track record as the first G7 nation to commit to net zero by 2050 and its influential climate legislation, arguing that the world pays close attention when the UK changes course.

The backlash from the developing world has been particularly fierce. A senior African negotiator, speaking anonymously, said the continent would reject any UK expansion of oil drilling, describing it as fundamentally at odds with the Paris agreement. Mohamed Adow, director of the Nairobi-based Power Shift Africa thinktank, warned that approval of new projects would signal that short-term interests were being placed above long-term responsibility, setting a precedent that could prove impossible to contain.

The timing is especially sensitive. Britain has been one of the principal supporters of a global conference on fossil fuel transition taking place in Colombia later this month. However, Miliband will not attend, with climate envoy Rachel Kyte going in his place, a decision likely to disappoint campaigners who credited the energy secretary with brokering a last-minute deal at the Cop30 summit in Brazil last November.

Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, acknowledged the geopolitical pressures driving the energy security debate but argued that expanding drilling risked locking in infrastructure that was increasingly out of step with the direction of the global energy system. True energy independence, she suggested, lay in scaling up clean domestic energy rather than prolonging the life of declining industries.

The strategic concern for Britain’s business community is clear. Many developing nations are weighing whether to exploit their own fossil fuel reserves rather than invest in renewables. If they choose the former path, the world would far exceed the carbon limits scientists say are necessary to avert the worst consequences of climate breakdown. A senior development official put the matter bluntly: developing countries are already asking why they should forgo their own resources if the UK will not do the same.

An ally of Miliband defended the government’s position, describing the decision to halt new exploration licences as a landmark stance for a major oil and gas producing nation. A government spokesperson confirmed that clean energy and climate action remained at the heart of the agenda, including what it called a world-leading commitment to stop issuing licences for new fields.

Whether that commitment holds in the face of political and industrial pressure will be one of the defining questions of Britain’s energy policy in the months ahead.

Read more:
New North Sea oil fields would “send a shock wave around the world”, climate experts warn

Elon Musk has never been one for convention, and his plans for the SpaceX initial public offering are no exception.

The aerospace-to-artificial intelligence conglomerate is preparing to court retail investors on an unprecedented scale as it targets a valuation of $2tn (£1.5tn) in what would be the largest stock market flotation ever attempted.

In a move that harks back to the great British privatisations of the 1980s, SpaceX has earmarked up to 30 per cent of its shares for non-professional investors rather than reserving the bulk of the offering for the City institutions and Wall Street heavyweights that typically dominate such deals. The company is banking on Musk’s devoted following to help it raise $75bn (£56bn) when it lists later this year.

Details of a summer roadshow emerged this week after SpaceX briefed the 21 banks retained to manage the deal. Analysts from the underwriting syndicate will receive their first formal briefing on 7 June, followed four days later by an event for 1,500 retail investors at a venue yet to be disclosed. Shares will also be offered to investors in the UK, the EU, Australia, Canada, Japan and South Korea.

Bret Johnsen, SpaceX’s chief financial officer, is understood to have told the banks that retail participation would be larger than in any previous IPO, describing the company’s individual supporters as people who have been “incredibly supportive of us and of Elon for a long time”. The approach echoes the way Margaret Thatcher’s government sold British Telecom shares directly to ordinary savers in 1984, giving millions their first taste of share ownership.

Industry observers have compared the excitement surrounding the listing to the frenzy that accompanied Google’s debut in 2004. The company’s implied valuation has climbed sharply in recent months, rising from $1.25tn when SpaceX merged with Musk’s artificial intelligence venture xAI in February to $1.75tn a month ago and now $2tn according to Bloomberg.

Whether that figure can be justified remains a matter of heated debate. George Ferguson, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, noted that the only publicly available financial data is top-line revenue, making a precise valuation difficult. He forecast revenues of $20bn for SpaceX this year but cautioned that xAI, which accounts for just $1bn of that figure, is “a laggard in the AI race right now” and represents a significant portion of the overall valuation.

SpaceX generated between $15bn and $16bn in revenue last year, with the satellite broadband service Starlink and US government defence and space contracts providing the lion’s share. A full prospectus is expected in late May, at which point investors will get their first detailed look at the company’s profitability.

Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are leading the fundraising, underscoring the sheer scale of the transaction.

Perhaps the most intriguing element of the investment case is Musk’s pivot from his long-held ambition of colonising Mars to a newer, arguably more commercial vision: datacentres in space. Proponents argue that orbiting facilities powered by a constant supply of solar energy could solve some of the terrestrial power constraints bedevilling the AI industry.

The concept remains untested, however, and the technological hurdles are formidable. Solar radiation, space debris and the sheer difficulty of transporting and assembling datacentre components in orbit all present challenges that would likely require advanced robotic systems not yet in existence. SpaceX’s new Starship rocket, billed as the world’s most powerful launch vehicle, is central to the plan, though a test launch scheduled for this week has been pushed back to mid-May.

Ferguson struck a cautious note. The further away space-based datacentres are from commercial reality, he suggested, the more the concept becomes a drag on valuation rather than a driver of it.

For UK investors tempted by the hype, the message is clear: this will be an IPO unlike anything seen before, but the gap between Musk’s soaring ambitions and proven financial performance remains considerable. As with all things Musk, the potential rewards are vast, but so too are the risks.

Read more:
SpaceX woos the small investor as Musk eyes the biggest flotation in stock market history

A former Chief Design Officer at Prequel, who led its photo and video apps to repeated No. 1 rankings in the App Store’s Photo & Video category, on why manual design is losing value.

Read more:
How Aleksandr Loginov Is Redefining Design in the Age of AI