Business

Britain’s biggest business organisations have closed ranks against a wave of antisemitism sweeping the country, with 40 trade bodies and employer groups signing a joint letter pledging to root out anti-Jewish prejudice from the nation’s workplaces.

The intervention, co-ordinated by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), lands at a politically charged moment. It coincides with a stark warning from Sir Mark Rowley, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, who told MPs in a letter revealed this week that “British Jews are not currently safe in their capital city”, a phrase that has reverberated through Westminster, the City and Britain’s small business community alike.

“We, as leaders from across the UK business community, unreservedly condemn antisemitism in all its forms,” the signatories said in the letter, published by the British Chambers of Commerce. Signatories have agreed to speak up against antisemitism, adopt a zero-tolerance approach to it in the workplace, embed antisemitism within racism and inclusion training, and provide tailored support for Jewish employees.

A rare show of unity fromBbritain’s ‘B5’

The breadth of the coalition is striking. Alongside the BCC and CBI, the letter has been signed by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), the Institute of Directors (IoD) and ADS Group, which represents more than 1,700 UK firms in the aerospace, defence, security and space sectors. After three years of public splits between the so-called “B5” business lobby groups, particularly in the wake of the CBI’s 2023 crisis, this is the broadest joint statement the sector has produced on a social policy issue in recent memory.

Shevaun Haviland, director-general of the BCC, said: “The rise in antisemitism is deeply concerning and demands a clear, collective response. This letter is the starting point … by acting together, business can be a powerful force for good.”

Kevin Craven, chief executive of ADS Group, was among those who described antisemitism bluntly as racism and “a daily experience” for Jewish people living and working in Britain.

Tina McKenzie, policy chair at the FSB, and Jonathan Geldart, director-general of the IoD, said they were taking a stand for the “sake of our Jewish colleagues and friends” and for the “health of our society”. Rain Newton-Smith, chief executive of the CBI, described antisemitism as “abhorrent”, adding: “The breadth of organisations backing this statement reflects the strength of feeling across the business community. Inclusive workplaces are vital for individuals, for businesses and for the success of our economy.”

‘Not currently safe’: Rowley’s warning to MP’s

The corporate intervention follows a sharp deterioration in community safety. Sir Mark Rowley’s letter to MPs on the home affairs select committee referenced “a sustained period of attack” on Jewish Londoners over the past six weeks, including the declaration of a terrorist incident in Golders Green, northwest London, after two men suffered stab wounds just over a fortnight ago. The Met has since launched 11 counter-terrorism investigations and made 35 arrests, while a new 100-strong community protection team has been stood up.

The King met victims of last month’s stabbings the same day Rowley’s warning emerged, a juxtaposition that has sharpened the political pressure on government and on employers to demonstrate visible action rather than mere words.

From boardroom statements to workplace culture

For Business Matters readers, particularly the owner-managers of the UK’s 5.5 million small and medium-sized firms, the practical question is what zero tolerance actually looks like in a payroll of 10, 50 or 250 people. Employment lawyers expect the letter to accelerate three trends already evident in HR departments: the explicit naming of antisemitism within diversity training (rather than its absorption into a generic anti-racism module), the development of complaints procedures sensitive to Jewish identity and religious practice, and tougher action on social media conduct that strays into anti-Jewish stereotypes.

Those shifts dovetail with a wider regulatory direction of travel. Ministers have already used the Employment Rights Bill to ban non-disclosure agreements that silence victims of harassment and discrimination, narrowing the room for employers to settle complaints quietly. Surveys from the sector continue to suggest that British firms are still failing to measure their impact on diversity and inclusion in any meaningful way, a data gap that is likely to come under fresh scrutiny following this week’s declaration.

The letter is part of growing momentum in industry. Peter Kyle, the business secretary, hosted a roundtable on antisemitism with senior business leaders this week. “I’m pleased to see workplaces begin to discuss the action they can take to combat this hatred,” he said. “Businesses have a crucial role to play in facing this challenge head-on.”

A BCC spokesperson described tackling antisemitism in the workplace as a “shared responsibility”, citing concern at the “increased experience” of antisemitism reported by Jewish employees. For owner-managers weighing how to operationalise the pledge, the practical playbook for building diversity, equity and inclusion into SME growth plans offers a useful starting point, but specialists caution that antisemitism, with its distinct history and contemporary tropes, demands its own dedicated lens rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

Whether the joint letter marks a genuine inflection point or a familiar cycle of statements followed by drift will be judged by what changes inside the country’s offices, factory floors and shop counters over the coming year. With the Met openly conceding that Britain’s Jewish citizens are not yet safe in their own capital, employers may find that the cost of inaction has rarely been higher.

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UK business chiefs unite to combat workplace antisemitism as Met chief warns jews ‘not safe’ in London

The billionaire chairman of JCB has warned that ministers risk provoking a public revolt over Britain’s spiralling £333.7 billion welfare bill, accusing Westminster of “conning” taxpayers by allowing some claimants to pocket as much as £60,000 a year without working.

In an unusually pointed intervention from one of Britain’s most prominent industrialists, Lord Bamford said the country could not “carry on conning the people for so long” and warned that voter patience with the benefits system was wearing dangerously thin.

“I don’t think you can get away with people on welfare getting up to £60,000 a year and not working for it. I just don’t think you can, in the end,” the JCB chairman told The Telegraph. “You could end up with a lot of people revolting or giving up entirely, and then what does that do to our economy? The economy really does depend on people working and us producing things.”

The intervention from the Staffordshire-based digger maker — a bellwether for British heavy industry and a barometer for SME sentiment in the Midlands manufacturing belt — comes as the welfare debate rapidly shifts from Westminster wonkery to kitchen-table politics.

A bill that has overtaken income tax

The Office for Budget Responsibility expects the government to spend £333.7 billion on welfare in the current fiscal year, eclipsing the £331 billion raised through income tax receipts last year. It is the first time in modern British fiscal history that the welfare line has overtaken the single largest source of tax revenue, and the OBR projects the bill will reach more than £406 billion by 2030-31 if left unchecked.

For business owners already grappling with higher employer National Insurance contributions, a tighter labour market and the rising cost of statutory sick pay, the imbalance is fast becoming a political flashpoint. Several recent reports have charted a record surge in long-term sickness claims, with 2.8 million working-age Britons now signed off, a structural drag on productivity that economists say is feeding directly into stagnant growth.

The Blair Institute warning

Bamford’s intervention echoes findings from the Tony Blair Institute, which in April warned that public tolerance for the existing system had collapsed almost everywhere in the country. YouGov polling commissioned by the institute found that in all but five of Britain’s 634 parliamentary constituencies, voters believed the welfare system was “too easy to access and does not do enough to prevent misuse” rather than “too strict”.

The think tank has called for an “emergency handbrake” on welfare spending, including the creation of a new statutory category of “non-work-limiting conditions” covering anxiety, stress-related disorders and certain musculoskeletal complaints. Business Matters previously detailed how the institute’s proposals could slow the runaway sickness benefits bill, which is on track to hit £78 billion before the end of the decade.

Bamford’s political weight

Lord Bamford has chaired JCB, the digger manufacturer founded by his late father, since 1975. The Bamford family has donated more than £10 million to the Conservative Party over the past two decades, making it one of the most consequential financial backers of the British centre right.

But the family’s allegiance has begun to fracture. In November, JCB confirmed it had given £200,000 to both the Conservatives and Reform UK, the first time the company had backed Nigel Farage’s insurgent party. The shift, first reported by Business Matters, is widely interpreted in Westminster as a signal that traditional Tory donors are hedging their bets ahead of what is expected to be a bruising electoral cycle.

A warning shot against the left

Bamford was equally unsparing about the prospect of a sharper turn to the left under Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership, suggesting that the country had little appetite for a return to 1970s-style state intervention.

“Do people really want to turn further left, with the country nationalising businesses?” he asked. “I lived through that. I lived through Wilson’s governments, I lived through three-day weeks. I remember it, and I’m not sure that is ever the right solution for Britain.”

For Britain’s small and medium-sized employers, the constituency that JCB has historically represented in industrial policy debates, the message is unambiguous. With the welfare bill overtaking income tax, sickness claims accelerating and confidence in the system collapsing across constituency lines, the political space for radical reform is widening fast. Whether ministers seize it before voters reach Bamford’s predicted breaking point is now the central fiscal question facing both Downing Street and the next general election.

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JCB chairman Lord Bamford warns ministers face public revolt over £333bn welfare bill

Ministers have set the high street banks on notice. The Treasury has commissioned an independent review into the impact of more than 6,700 bank branch closures across the UK, and has signalled it is prepared to compel lenders to provide face-to-face services where the evidence shows communities and small businesses are being left adrift.

The Access to Banking Review, announced on Thursday by Lucy Rigby, the economic secretary to the Treasury, will be led by Richard Lloyd OBE, the former executive director of consumer group Which? and a one-time interim chair of the Financial Conduct Authority. Lloyd has been asked to report back by October, gathering evidence on where branch withdrawals have bitten hardest, who has suffered most and where new intervention is needed.

The review lands alongside the government’s Enhancing Financial Services Bill, trailed in the King’s Speech, which the Treasury said would arm ministers with powers to “act swiftly if the evidence supports intervention on access to banking services”. In Whitehall parlance, that is unusually direct language — and a clear shot across the bows of an industry that has spent a decade thinning out its physical estate.

A decade of decline

The scale of the retreat is striking. According to consumer champion Which?, 6,719 branches have shuttered since 2015 — an average of roughly two a day. Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, Barclays, HSBC and Santander have all taken the axe to their networks, with a fresh tranche of more than 130 closures pencilled in for May and June alone.

The economics from the banks’ perspective are not in dispute. Customers have migrated en masse to mobile apps, footfall has collapsed and the cost of running a Victorian-era branch estate has become harder to justify to shareholders. But the human and commercial fallout has been uneven, with rural towns, older customers and cash-reliant small traders disproportionately affected — a pattern Business Matters has tracked over several years and documented in its reporting on more than 6,000 UK branch closures.

Hubs: helpful, but not enough

The industry’s answer has been the shared banking hub: a Post Office counter for everyday cash and cheque needs, with the big lenders taking it in turns to send their own staff into a private room for more complex queries, typically one bank per weekday. Some 234 hubs have opened since April 2021, and Labour pledged in its manifesto to push the total to 350 by 2029.

Yet hubs come with a structural weakness. While the Financial Conduct Authority polices access to cash, there are no statutory rules governing what banking services must actually be provided inside a hub, those decisions remain at the banks’ discretion. The Post Office’s role as the de facto banking partner has been a lifeline for many high streets, but small business owners say the model still falls short on lending conversations, complex account servicing and the kind of relationship banking that used to be taken for granted.

That gap matters. For owner-managers running a café, a building firm or a one-van logistics operation, the disappearance of a local branch is not an inconvenience, it is a productivity tax. Cash takings have to be banked further afield. Loan applications increasingly run through opaque, centralised credit-scoring systems. And the local manager who once knew the business, and could vouch for it, has all but disappeared.

A turning tide?

There are tentative signs the industry is reading the room. Barclays last year began reopening high street branches and reinstating the role of the bank manager, an explicit bet that physical presence, and human judgement, is once again a competitive advantage. Whether that becomes a trend or remains a marketing flourish will depend in no small part on what Lloyd’s review concludes.

Rigby was careful to frame the exercise as evidence-led rather than punitive. “We are supporting industry’s rollout of banking hubs, but we also need a clear picture of where communities are still losing out,” she said. “This independent review will show us where the problems are and what further action may be required, and we will move quickly to legislate where the evidence shows it is needed.”

Lloyd, for his part, signalled an open-door approach. “It’s important to take stock of the impact that the big shift to digital services has already had, and to understand the need for access to in-person banking in the future,” he said. “I hope to hear from as wide a range of views as possible.”

What it means for SMEs

For Britain’s 5.5 million small businesses, the review is more than a consumer issue dressed up in policy language. Access to a banker who understands the trading rhythms of a local economy has historically been a quiet but consequential ingredient in SME growth. Should Lloyd’s report conclude — as campaigners expect — that hubs alone cannot plug the gap, the Enhancing Financial Services Bill gives ministers the statutory teeth to mandate minimum service levels.

That would represent a significant philosophical shift: from leaving branch strategy to commercial discretion, to treating face-to-face banking as something closer to a regulated utility. The banks will lobby hard against any such reframing. But after a decade in which the lights have gone out above 6,700 high street branches, the political mood in Westminster, and the patience of small business owners, is wearing visibly thin.

Read more:
Treasury orders review into bank branch closures as small firms count the cost

Lidl GB has thrown its weight behind one of the most ambitious surplus food redistribution trials yet seen on the British high street, drafting in the consumer food-sharing app Olio alongside its long-standing charity partner Neighbourly in a move that could keep millions of additional meals out of the bin each year.

The German-owned discounter, which has been one of the fastest-growing grocers in Britain over the past decade, will switch on the new three-way model on Friday 15 May across 20 stores in London and the north of England. If the pilot delivers as hoped, Lidl expects a nationwide rollout by the end of 2026 — a step change that would see more than 5,000 tonnes of edible surplus, equivalent to roughly 11.9 million meals, redirected annually from landfill to people who need it.

The partnership is unusual in that it knits together two of the most prominent names in British food redistribution for the first time. Neighbourly, the Bristol-based social impact platform that already manages Lidl’s “Feed it Back” scheme, will continue to coordinate the pipeline. Olio, the London-headquartered app that has built a community of more than nine million users globally around the idea of sharing rather than binning leftover food, will plug its volunteer “Food Waste Heroes” into Lidl’s evening collection slots as a second tier behind charities.

In practical terms, registered Food Waste Heroes will arrive at participating stores after trading hours to collect chilled lines, including meat, fish and poultry, as well as Lidl’s popular bakery range. The food is then offered, free of charge, to neighbours through the Olio app — extending the reach of the redistribution network into the evenings, when charity partners traditionally find collections hardest to staff.

It is also a clear signal that the discount sector has no intention of being outflanked on sustainability. Lidl has already smashed its previous food waste target, cutting waste by more than 40% ahead of schedule, and has since raised the bar to a 70% reduction by the end of FY2030. According to WRAP, the government’s waste advisory body, only around 7% of retail and manufacturing food surplus in the UK is currently redistributed, leaving a significant prize for any retailer prepared to crack the logistics.

Matt Juden, head of sustainability at Lidl GB, framed the move as the next logical step in a programme the supermarket has been refining since 2016. “At Lidl GB, we believe that no good food should ever go to waste,” he said. “While we have already made massive strides in reducing our surplus, this extension of our Neighbourly-managed programme allows us to have even more impact. It ensures that we are reaching every corner of the communities we serve, making sure edible food stays on plates and out of the bin.”

The pilot also lands at a sensitive moment for retailers who collect surplus only in the evening. Recently concerns were raised by charities about Tesco’s evening-only collection policy, and Neighbourly’s chief executive Steve Butterworth was at pains to stress that the Lidl model would not crowd out third-sector partners. “Our mission has always been to ensure as much edible surplus food as possible goes to those in our communities that need it most,” he said. “By expanding the programme to evening collections and including Olio’s Food Waste Heroes, we are providing Lidl with a robust additional redistribution layer. This isn’t about diverting food away from charities, it’s about opening up new streams of chilled and fresh produce for them, while ensuring nothing goes to waste if a charity can’t make it.”

For Olio, the deal marks another significant institutional endorsement of a model the start-up has been quietly scaling since 2015. Co-founder and chief operating officer Saasha Celestial-One described the tie-up as a chance to push more surplus into hyper-local hands. “We’re delighted to be joining forces with Neighbourly and Lidl,” she said. “We’re looking forward to working together to maximise the amount of edible surplus that can reach local communities from Lidl stores, and making sure as little food as possible goes to waste. We’re excited to see the impact of the trial, and we know our volunteers will be thrilled to have the chance to rescue Lidl food via our app.”

The political and regulatory backdrop is also shifting in favour of redistributors. Ministers have signalled growing impatience with the volume of edible food still going to waste, with Labour recently backing a £15m rescue fund aimed at supporting food redistribution organisations and helping them invest in the logistics and technology required to handle bulkier, more perishable donations. Pilots like the Lidl-Olio-Neighbourly trial slot neatly into that direction of travel, demonstrating how the private sector can plug the gap without waiting for primary legislation.

Lidl GB has now donated more than 50 million meals through Feed it Back since 2016, linking every one of its UK stores to a local good cause. With the Olio extension layered on top, the discounter is making a calculated bet that combining the efficiency of a national charity partner with the long tail of a consumer-led app can finally close the awkward last-mile gap in surplus redistribution — and turn what is still one of the grocery industry’s most stubborn problems into a marker of competitive advantage.

Read more:
Lidl ropes in Olio and Neighbourly in landmark surplus food trial that could rescue 11.9 million meals a year

The 150-year-old British sweeteners and ingredients group Tate & Lyle has confirmed it is in advanced discussions with the American food science giant Ingredion over a possible £2.7 billion cash takeover, a move that, if completed, would lift another household name off the London market and forge a transatlantic ingredients heavyweight valued at more than $10 billion (£8 billion).

The FTSE 250 company said on Thursday that the Illinois-headquartered suitor had tabled a conditional 615p-a-share proposal, comprising 595p in cash and up to 20p in dividends. That represents a punchy 64 per cent premium to Tate & Lyle’s closing price the previous evening and prompted an immediate scramble in the stock, which jumped 45.4 per cent to close at 545p. Even after that one-day surge, the shares remain well shy of the 800p-plus levels they were changing hands at three years ago.

In a brief statement to the London Stock Exchange, Ingredion confirmed it had lodged the offer and said it “believes a potential transaction would deliver significant benefits to customers, consumers, employees and Ingredion shareholders”. The Westchester, Illinois-based business added that it was “engaged in discussions and a period of due diligence with Tate & Lyle to further explore a potential transaction. Discussions are ongoing, and there can be no certainty that a binding offer will be made.”

Under City Takeover Panel rules, Ingredion has until 5pm on 11 June either to put a firm offer on the table or to walk away. Tate & Lyle’s board has indicated that the latest approach is one of a series of overtures from the same suitor, and stressed there is no guarantee that a binding bid will materialise.

A price the board will struggle to dismiss

For a company that has spent the past two years grappling with softer bakery demand in the United States, weaker European pricing and stubbornly high input costs, the timing is awkward — and the price is generous. Shares in Tate & Lyle have underperformed those of its American suitor over the past 12 months, leaving the board with little obvious cover for digging in.

Lucinda Guthrie, head of mergers and acquisitions research firm Mergermarket, said the proposal sat at “a level that the board would have to consider”, adding that the public disclosure “will act as a price discovery mechanism to see if a deal can be struck.”

A combination would marry Tate & Lyle’s expertise in low- and no-calorie sweeteners, including the sucralose used in Coca-Cola’s diet ranges — with Ingredion’s broader portfolio of starches, texturisers and plant-based ingredients. Both groups view the United States, where consumers are increasingly steering towards low-calorie drinks and reformulated packaged foods, as their single most important market.

From victorian sugar cubes to silicon-age science

Tate & Lyle’s roots reach back into Victorian Britain, when sugar refiners Henry Tate and Abram Lyle built up rival operations on opposite banks of the Thames. Tate is credited with introducing the sugar cube to the UK in 1875, while Lyle, refining cane sugar in east London, discovered the viscous byproduct he later canned as Lyle’s Golden Syrup.

The instantly recognisable green-and-gold tin, featuring bees emerging from the carcass of a lion in a nod to the biblical riddle of Samson, was entered into the Guinness Book of Records in 2006 as the world’s longest unchanged commercial brand packaging. The two refining houses formally merged in 1921, shortly after the deaths of their founders.

The modern Tate & Lyle bears little resemblance to that Victorian sugar giant. After diversifying through the 1970s, the company eventually sold its sugar refining business, including the historic Plaistow Wharf refinery in London’s Docklands, to American Sugar Refining in 2010, along with the rights to use the Tate & Lyle name on retail sugar packets. What remains in London is a leaner, business-to-business food science group that helps multinational manufacturers cut salt, fat and sugar from their products.

Another london name in foreign sights

The approach lands at a sensitive moment for the City. With more than 30 companies having delisted or announced plans to leave the London exchange this year, much of it driven by private equity and overseas industrial buyers, a Tate & Lyle exit would only sharpen the debate about the steady drift of UK plc into foreign ownership and the wider London market exodus.

It also comes against a backdrop of broader fragility in corporate Britain. Business Matters has previously reported on the record wave of business closures amid a tough operating environment and on the £300 million pulled by investors from UK equities amid inheritance tax fears — trends that have left mid-cap names such as Tate & Lyle particularly exposed to opportunistic offshore bidders.

For its part, Ingredion is hardly a stranger to the global ingredients game. The New York-listed group employs around 12,000 people, sells into more than 120 countries and traces its own history to the mid-20th century, when National Starch was absorbed into the Corn Products Refining Company to create one of America’s dominant corn refiners. The company markets itself as a business that turns “grains, fruits, vegetables and other plant materials into ingredients that make crackers crunchy, candy sweet, yogurt creamy, lotions and creams silky, plastics biodegradable and tissues softer and stronger” — and which now helps brand owners reformulate their products for health-conscious consumers.

Wider coverage from Bloomberg and Food Dive suggests City advisers expect the bid talks to dominate the agenda at Tate & Lyle’s next round of investor briefings, with hedge funds already piling in on the spread between the offer price and Thursday’s closing level.

Whether or not Ingredion ultimately stumps up a firm offer before the 11 June deadline, the disclosure has already done its work. For shareholders who have watched the share price drift for three years, a 64 per cent premium will be hard to wave away. For the London market, it is another reminder that some of its most historic names are now firmly in play.

Read more:
Tate & Lyle weighs £2.7bn approach from US rival Ingredion

For most small and medium-sized British exporters, the painful moment is rarely the order itself. It is the phone call a few days later, when the bank politely points out that the working capital required to fulfil it sits stubbornly the wrong side of an agreed credit ceiling. A career-defining contract becomes, almost overnight, a balance-sheet problem.

That is precisely the bind that Masters Speciality Pharma, a 41-year-old Hertfordshire specialist pharmaceutical company, found itself in last year after winning two sizeable orders from Saudi Arabia worth a combined £2.3 million. The remedy, as is increasingly the case for ambitious British SMEs eyeing the Gulf, came from UK Export Finance (UKEF), the government’s export credit agency, which stepped in with insurance cover against the risk of non-payment and gave HSBC UK the confidence to lift its credit thresholds.

The deal is the latest example of how government-backed insurance is quietly underwriting British SME ambition in one of the world’s most lucrative regions, and it lands at a moment when UKEF is leaning harder than ever into the SME exporter agenda.

A 41-year-old elstree exporter that punches above its weight

Founded in 1984 by Dr Zulfikar Masters OBE and based in Elstree, Masters Speciality Pharma is precisely the sort of business that ministers like to wheel out at trade receptions but that the wider public rarely hears about. The company specialises in making hard-to-source medicines available in markets that the big pharmaceutical multinationals often overlook, and now serves more than 75 countries across the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The Saudi contracts in question were not vanity wins. One covered the supply of a treatment for sickle cell disease, a debilitating inherited blood disorder that disproportionately affects patients in the Middle East and Africa. The other was for a specialised antibiotic used to treat life-threatening infections. In both cases, demand was urgent and the procuring authorities expected delivery on terms that demanded substantial up-front cash.

Therein lay the problem. Masters needed to pay its own suppliers well before the Saudi buyers were due to pay it, and the orders themselves were larger than its existing credit facility with HSBC UK. Without additional headroom, the contracts would have been physically impossible to deliver without straining the rest of the business.

How UKEF’s insurance unlocks the bank

The mechanism UKEF deployed is one that more British SMEs will encounter as the agency expands its remit. By insuring HSBC UK against the risk that the Saudi buyers fail to pay, the government effectively de-risked the additional lending the bank needed to provide. With UKEF on the hook for the downside, HSBC was able to raise its credit thresholds and free up the working capital that Masters needed to fulfil the orders, all without disrupting the company’s day-to-day operations.

It is a model UKEF has been deploying with growing frequency. The agency, which now has authority to provide up to £80 billion of support to British exporters, has set out a target of helping UK firms win more than £12.5 billion of new export contracts by 2029, with the Middle East firmly at the centre of that ambition. It forms part of a broader push that has seen UKEF step up support for SME exporters through faster-track products and higher auto-inclusion limits.

Tim Reid, chief executive of UK Export Finance, said the case for backing companies such as Masters extended well beyond GDP arithmetic. “British businesses like Masters Speciality Pharma are doing vital work, not just for the UK economy, but for patients around the world who depend on access to critical medicines. These are exactly the kind of exports we want to support,” he said. “UKEF is open for business, and we will continue to provide insurance and guarantees to UK exporters of all sizes as they take on new opportunities in the Middle East and across the world.”

The ceiling problem every sme exporter knows

For Simon Clarke, chief operating officer at Masters Speciality Pharma, the appeal of the arrangement boiled down to a frustration that is wearily familiar to any SME finance director who has tried to scale internationally. “A problem for SMEs like us is that you can get a certain amount of credit, but when you hit the ceiling you can go no further,” he said. “UKEF’s support made the difference – it meant we could take on these contracts that would otherwise have been beyond our reach or would have stretched working capital to the detriment of the rest of the business.”

That ceiling is one of the most reliable killers of British export ambition, particularly in higher-ticket sectors such as pharmaceuticals, engineering and capital equipment where customers expect long payment terms and suppliers want their money quickly. James Cundy, head of corporate and leveraged finance at HSBC UK, which already banks Masters in several markets, said the partnership with UKEF had allowed the bank to back the customer without flinching. “HSBC supports Masters Speciality Pharma in several markets across the globe. We know customers exporting overseas often struggle with freeing up working capital, so we were delighted to work with UKEF and increase our facilities to allow Masters Speciality Pharma to continue their vital work without disruption,” he said.

Why the middle east, and why now

The Middle East is becoming an ever more strategic plank of UK export policy. Saudi Arabia is the UK’s largest market for healthcare products and medical equipment in the region, and its Vision 2030 reform programme is creating sustained demand for everything from specialist medicines and medical devices to clean energy infrastructure, education services and advanced manufacturing. UK goods and services exports to Saudi Arabia ran into the billions of dollars in 2024, and ministers expect that trajectory to steepen.

For UKEF, the Masters deal is also a useful case study in selling its proposition to British SMEs who often assume export credit agencies are the preserve of defence primes and civil engineering giants. The agency’s recent push has included a £6.5 billion boost for British exporters and a tighter focus on the kind of insurance and guarantee products that suit smaller, faster-growing companies.

The takeaway for finance directors at Britain’s SMEs is straightforward enough. The Gulf contracts are there for the winning, the medicines, machines and services they want are squarely in British wheelhouses, and the working capital problem that has historically killed those wins can, increasingly, be solved with a phone call to UKEF and a sympathetic bank.

For Masters Speciality Pharma, the result is two delivered contracts, patients in Saudi Arabia receiving treatments they urgently need, and a Hertfordshire SME that has demonstrated, once again, that British specialist manufacturing remains very much open for business.

Read more:
Hertfordshire Pharma lands £2.3m Saudi contracts after UKEF steps in to plug working capital gap

A swelling queue of British exporters hoping to recoup money lost to Donald Trump’s now-discredited emergency tariffs may discover that they are entitled to precisely nothing, the audit, tax and business advisory firm Blick Rothenberg has warned.

According to John Havard, a consultant at the firm, roughly 126,000 claims have been lodged through the US Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) system since it opened for business on 20 April. Yet a sizeable proportion of those applications are expected to be bounced, either because the claimant is not legally eligible or because the paperwork has fallen foul of the portal’s exacting requirements.

“Some UK businesses hoping for compensation may find they are ineligible for it and receive nothing,” Mr Havard said. “A number of small British firms may never have encountered tariffs until President Trump’s second term. They are likely unaware that, although falling sales and higher shipping costs have inflicted significant harm on their finances, legally they are owed nothing by the US Government.”

Who actually owns the tariff bill

The crux of the issue, Mr Havard argues, lies in the small print of international trade contracts. Where British firms shipped goods to American customers on an “ex-works” or “cost and freight” basis, the legal obligation to settle the tariff sat with the US importer rather than the UK seller.

“Reimbursing the US importer for its additional costs does not qualify the UK entity to apply for a tariff refund,” he explained. In other words, even where British exporters voluntarily absorbed the cost to preserve a customer relationship, they cannot now walk into the CAPE system and ask for it back.

It is a hard truth for the cohort of SMEs that scrambled to keep American buyers on side after Mr Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to slap tariffs on a wide range of imports, measures that were subsequently struck down by the US Supreme Court, opening the door to refund claims in the first place.

A system creaking under the weight of claims

An official status report timed at 7am Eastern on Monday 11 May 2026 indicated that of the 126,000 claims received, roughly 87,000 had been validated. The remainder are sitting in limbo, with many of the rejections traceable to mundane formatting problems in the CSV files uploaded to the portal.

“Rejections may be because the CSV files submitted to the online portal could not be read and processed by the system due to formatting mistakes,” Mr Havard said. “But some rejections will be due to the claimants’ ineligibility for refunds.”

He added that before businesses can even attempt to file, they must hold an account with US Customs and Border Protection’s Automated Commercial Environment. “Anecdotally there has been considerable activity in new account registrations since the Supreme Court ruled the IEEPA tariffs to be unlawful, but this presents another system for businesses to navigate before they can attempt to get refunds.”

A further pitfall is mistaken identity. “Another reason for rejection could be that the person who filed for a tariff refund is not in Government records as the listed importer, or that person’s broker, for the particular tariffs identified in the claim. This could be people trying to game the system, but it is also potentially because individuals do not fully understand who is supposed to make the claim.”

Refunds trickling out – and bank details missing

Despite Washington signalling that no payments would land before 12 May, Mr Havard said there is reliable evidence that some refunds have already been paid out, with at least one claimant receiving interest on top.

But the process is being held up at the final hurdle for nearly 1,900 claimants who have failed to supply bank details. “As at 7am Eastern time on Monday 11 May 2026, there were 1,880 consolidated refunds which could not be passed from the Office of Trade to US Treasury for payment because the claimant had still to provide the necessary bank account details,” Mr Havard said.

Importers whose applications have been rejected can correct errors and resubmit. “However, no amount of resubmission will help if the claim is invalid in the first place – or if they are not getting clear messages from CAPE to explain why they were rejected.”

The next legal front: the 10% global tariff

Even as refunds for the IEEPA tariffs begin to flow, a second courtroom battle is unfolding over Mr Trump’s replacement measure, a blanket 10% “global tariff” introduced under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 after the Supreme Court struck down the original duties.

A coalition of small businesses and roughly two dozen, mostly Democrat-led, states challenged the move at the US Court of International Trade, which ruled by a 2:1 majority on 7 May that the new tariffs were also invalid. The Government has appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has granted an administrative stay, meaning the 10% levy continues to be collected on US-bound shipments while the legal process plays out.

“Whatever decision the Appeals Court eventually hands down, it seems inevitable that the losing side, as with the IEEPA tariffs, will want to make a further appeal to the US Supreme Court,” Mr Havard said.

The sums at stake are far from trivial. Estimates suggest some $8 billion of Section 122 tariffs were collected in March alone, a substantial slice of the wider tariff burden being shouldered by British exporters, which has weighed heavily on UK trade flows and prompted British factories to cut their exposure to the US market.

For SME exporters watching from this side of the Atlantic, the message from Blick Rothenberg is sobering: those who think a cheque is in the post would do well to check the terms of their export contracts, and the bank details on their CBP account, before they start spending it.

Read more:
Many British exporters chasing US tariff refunds may end up with nothing

For Fiona McCoss, business is not about hustle culture or rigid corporate structures, it’s about creating sustainable success through intuition, connection, and embodied leadership.

As founder of Wild Feminine Retreats and creator of the Wild Feminine Facilitator Training, she has built a thriving international community supporting women to reconnect with themselves, their bodies, and their creativity. From transformational retreats in Greece and Ibiza to mentoring female entrepreneurs around the world, McCoss has developed a business model rooted in what she calls “feminine business”, one that values nervous system regulation, pleasure, flexibility, and authentic human connection over burnout and one-size-fits-all formulas.

What do you currently do at your business?

My core offerings are my signature Wild Feminine Facilitator Training, one-to-one mentorship, and immersive retreats. Right now, I’m supporting 16 women through the current training cohort while preparing to host retreats in Crete and my online Wild Feminine Solstice Festival, which reaches over a thousand women globally.

No two days are ever the same. One day I may be teaching a masterclass, another focused on strategy, marketing, or client mentorship. What matters most to me is intimacy and genuine connection. I don’t see clients as names on a spreadsheet, I know their stories, their families, their dreams, and often even their pets’ names.

Together, we work on everything from nervous system healing and feminine leadership to pleasure, emotional expression, and business sustainability. My work is centred around helping women reconnect with themselves in a world that often encourages disconnection and over-performance.

Who do you admire?

Honestly, the women I work with who are mothers.

I’m child-free by choice, and I’ve chosen to pour my creative energy into the businesses and communities I’ve built. But I witness every day the depth of work many mothers are doing, not only raising children, but consciously breaking generational patterns and creating emotionally healthier environments for their families.

They’re teaching their children about boundaries, emotional literacy, consent, and self-worth in ways previous generations often didn’t experience. That level of self-awareness, sacrifice, and devotion deserves far more recognition and support than society currently gives it.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

I probably would have studied business or economics earlier on. When I first started, I had to teach myself everything from scratch and invested heavily in coaches and programmes to understand how to build a sustainable company.

Some of those investments were invaluable. Others weren’t.

What I eventually realised was that many traditional business formulas simply didn’t align with how I wanted to work or live. I had to create my own blueprint, one that balanced success with sustainability and nervous system health.

Personally, I’d also remind myself to enjoy the process more. Entrepreneurship can easily become an endless pursuit of the next milestone. I’m still learning to slow down and appreciate the beautiful moments along the way.

What defines your way of doing business?

The way I run my business is deeply rooted in feminine principles, which looks very different from traditional business culture.

For me, feminine business means working cyclically rather than mechanically. It means understanding energy, nervous system regulation, intuition, pleasure, creativity, and sustainability. I structure my work around what allows me to operate at my best, not around rigid nine-to-five expectations.

It’s also about rejecting performative hustle culture. You won’t find aggressive sales tactics or “bro marketing” here. I believe business can be deeply successful without burnout, urgency, or constant pressure.

My approach blends intuition with strategy. I trust what feels aligned while also applying systems and structure that genuinely support growth. Ultimately, I want to build businesses that support life, not consume it.

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

Get support early and build slowly.

I often describe feminine business as a “slow burn” model. It takes time to build sustainable momentum, but once it’s established, it creates something far more enduring than overnight success culture.

Too many people leave corporate seeking freedom and accidentally recreate the same stress and burnout patterns inside their own businesses. That’s why structure, systems, and support matter so much.

I’d also ask people to be honest with themselves: do you truly have the resilience and vision to build something long-term? Entrepreneurship is incredibly rewarding, but it’s also deeply challenging. Without a strong “why,” it becomes very difficult to stay committed when things get hard.

And finally, don’t let fear stop you. Most people regret the opportunities they didn’t take, not the ones they did.

What are your favourite things to do outside of work? How do you maintain a healthy work/life balance?

Pleasure and spaciousness are priorities in my life, not rewards I “earn” after overworking.

I’ve intentionally designed my business to support balance. I don’t check my phone before 8am or after 7pm, I avoid client calls on Mondays, and I don’t start desk work before 10am. These boundaries allow me to stay regulated, creative, and present.

Outside work, I love gardening, dancing, redecorating our home in Somerset, and spending time outdoors. Earlier this year, my partner and I bought a house in Frome, so I’ve been planting flowers and creating a space that feels nourishing and grounding.

And when I travel for retreats, I always stay a few extra days, preferably near a beach.

Read more:
Getting to Know You: Fiona McCoss, founder of Wild Feminine Retreats

In a move that has set the M&A community talking on both sides of the Atlantic, eBay has firmly slammed the door on a $55.5bn (£40.9bn) unsolicited takeover approach from American video games retailer GameStop, branding the bid “neither credible nor attractive”.

The rejection, communicated in a sharply worded letter from eBay’s board to GameStop chief executive Ryan Cohen, will come as little surprise to anyone with a passing acquaintance of the relative scale of the two businesses. GameStop, the bricks-and-mortar gaming chain that found cult status in 2021 as the original “meme stock”, is roughly a quarter of the size of the online auction house it is attempting to swallow, a David-and-Goliath dynamic that City analysts have long viewed as a near-insurmountable hurdle.

In its rebuff, the eBay board cited “uncertainty” over how the deal would be financed, alongside concerns about “the impact of your proposal on eBay’s long-term growth and profitability”. Directors also pointed to “operational risks, and leadership structure of a combined entity”, as well as questions over “GameStop’s governance”, a pointed reference, observers will note, to a company whose share price has historically been driven as much by social media sentiment as by retail fundamentals.

GameStop had attempted to bolster the credibility of its overture with a commitment letter from TD Securities for roughly $20bn of debt financing. Yet that prospective debt pile is precisely what gave eBay’s board, and a chorus of independent analysts, pause for thought. Sucharita Kodali, retail analyst at Forrester, told Business Matters the proposition was hardly “a terribly good offer”, warning that it would saddle the auction giant with GameStop’s borrowings at a moment when eBay is finally finding its feet again.

That recovery is no idle boast. Despite the well-documented competitive squeeze from Amazon, Etsy and, more recently, the Chinese disruptor Temu, eBay posted net profits of $418.4m in 2025, more than treble the $131.3m delivered the year before, even as sales softened. The board insists its turnaround strategy is bearing fruit and is in no mood to surrender the upside to an opportunistic suitor.

Mr Cohen, however, is unlikely to retreat quietly. The GameStop chief, who built his fortune through online pet retailer Chewy before becoming the unofficial figurehead of the meme-stock movement, claimed last week that eBay could be transformed under his stewardship into a credible challenger to Amazon. He has also signalled his willingness to bypass the boardroom and take his proposition directly to eBay’s shareholders, a hostile gambit that would set the stage for one of the more colourful takeover battles of the year.

For Britain’s SME owners watching from across the Atlantic, the saga is more than a transatlantic curiosity. eBay remains a vital sales channel for thousands of small British retailers, many of whom built post-pandemic businesses on its platform. Any prolonged ownership dispute, or a deal that materially loaded the company with debt, could have tangible consequences for the fees, listing policies and seller protections those firms depend on.

For now, eBay’s chairman and chief executive will be hoping the matter ends here. The bookies, and most of Wall Street, are betting it won’t.

Read more:
ebay rebuffs GameStop’s surprise $55.5bn swoop

National Grid has unveiled what amounts to the most ambitious capital programme in its history, pledging a further £70bn over the next five years to rewire the energy systems of Britain and the north-eastern United States.

The FTSE 100 utility, which has spent the past two years reshaping itself into a pure-play networks business, said the fresh commitment would accelerate its march towards a net-zero electricity system on both sides of the Atlantic. The announcement, made alongside its full-year results, builds on a record £11.6bn of capital expenditure in the prior year and signals that the group sees no let-up in the structural demand for grid investment.

Of the headline figure, some £31bn will be funnelled into UK electricity transmission, expanding capacity to absorb the surge of offshore wind, solar and nuclear coming on stream this decade. The company described the spend as the foundation of a “decarbonised electricity network” by the 2030s, and the bill will, in part, be underwritten by Ofgem’s new RIIO-T3 framework, which has formally cleared the way for the heavier outlay.

Across the Atlantic, £17bn has been earmarked for New York and a further £12bn for New England, with around 60 per cent of the US allocation flowing directly into National Grid’s own networks. The group expects a 10 per cent uplift in returns from its asset base by the 2030/31 financial year on the back of the programme.

Zoe Yujnovich, who took the helm as chief executive earlier in the year, said the company was “embarking on the largest investment programme in our history… to modernise and expand energy networks across the UK and the US Northeast, networks that underpin economic growth, strengthen energy security and enable the transition to a cleaner, more flexible energy system.” She added that the group was “building the skilled workforce needed to deliver this investment at pace, creating thousands of jobs across our markets” — a message likely to play well in Westminster and Whitehall, where ministers have been pressing infrastructure operators to demonstrate the employment dividend of the green transition.

The growth ambitions came against a softer revenue backdrop. Total turnover slipped four per cent to £17.6bn from £18.3bn the previous year, a decline the company attributed to storm-related costs and the divestment of its renewables arm and US grain liquid natural gas business. Pre-tax profit, however, jumped to £4.2bn from £3.6bn, while earnings per share rose eight per cent to 78p.

Shareholders were rewarded with a final dividend of 32.1p, taking the full-year payout to 48.9p, a 3.8 per cent increase pegged to UK inflation. The market responded warmly, with shares climbing 1.5 per cent in early trading to 1,297p, leaving the stock up 11.9 per cent since January and comfortably outpacing the wider FTSE 100.

Looking ahead, National Grid expects UK electricity transmission revenue to rise by roughly £850m in the year ahead, with RIIO-T3 doing much of the heavy lifting. In New England, top-line growth of around $450m is forecast, driven by rate resets, though partially offset by the costs of the expanded build-out. New York is expected to follow a similar trajectory.

For SMEs reliant on a stable, predictable power supply, from manufacturers wrestling with energy-intensive processes to data-hungry tech firms, the scale of the commitment is significant. A more capacious, modern transmission network underpins the kind of long-term industrial planning that has been sorely lacking since the energy shock of 2022, and it puts hard numbers behind the government’s grid-connection reforms.

Yujnovich struck an appropriately customer-focused tone in her closing remarks. “Through… transforming our capabilities we will be able to meet the rapidly growing demand and enable a more efficient energy system, one that supports long-term affordability and reliability for customers,” she said.

For investors, the calculation is straightforward: a regulated, inflation-linked income stream married to a multi-decade capex story. For the wider economy, the prize is a grid finally fit for the century it has to serve.

Read more:
National Grid commits record £70bn to power the next decade of energy networks