Business

Britain is about to lose one of its oldest banking brands. Santander has confirmed it will retire the TSB name and fold the lender into its UK arm, drawing a line under more than two centuries of history that began with a Scottish parish savings scheme in 1810.

The decision follows the Spanish giant’s £2.9bn takeover of TSB, which completed last week and instantly elevated the combined business to Britain’s third-largest bank with close to 28 million customers. Santander expects to wring £400m of annual cost savings out of the integration, with executives understood to have discussed a further £100m of UK-wide cuts from 2028.

For account holders on either side, the message is one of patient continuity. Santander has stressed that customers can keep using their cards, accounts and apps exactly as they do today, and that no material changes are expected for at least 12 months, according to reports in the *Financial Times*. “We will consider carefully how to make the most of the brand value in our model long-term and expect no immediate changes,” a Santander spokesman said.

The branch network tells a different story. TSB operates around 175 high-street outlets, and Santander is already mid-way through shuttering 44 of its own, with hundreds of jobs in the firing line. A separate cull of 95 Santander branches announced earlier this year put a further 750 roles at risk. TSB, for its part, has launched an internal “listening exercise” to help anxious staff navigate the uncertainty.

The takeover marks the third change of ownership for TSB in a decade. Sabadell bought the lender from Lloyds Banking Group in 2015, hunting for growth outside a Spanish market still bruised by the 2008 financial crash. With roughly five million customer accounts and £71.5bn of deposits and lending on its books, TSB has been a substantial but never quite settled franchise.

Its lineage runs deeper than most of its rivals. The first self-supporting savings bank was set up in Dumfriesshire in 1810 to help poor parishioners put money aside for hard times. By 1817, more than 80 “trustee savings banks”, from which TSB takes its name, were operating across Scotland and England. The regional network consolidated into TSB Group during the 1980s, merged with Lloyds in 1995, and was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2014 in the post-crisis clean-up.

Santander’s swoop emerged last year after chairman Ana Botín repeatedly batted away speculation that the bank was preparing to exit the UK altogether — speculation fuelled by the £295m provision it had taken against the car finance mis-selling scandal. The acquisition has, in effect, doubled down on Britain rather than retreated from it.

“The acquisition of TSB is about creating a stronger, more competitive bank in the UK, with the scale to invest significantly more in customer service, technology and products,” the Santander spokesman said. “TSB is a strong consumer banking brand and we recognise the value it has built with customers and within the UK market over a long time. Our focus is on creating the best bank for customers in the UK and we are optimistic in the value this will create for all involved.”

For SMEs and consumers alike, the immediate consequence is a quieter, more concentrated banking landscape. The longer-term question, whether a bigger Santander UK delivers genuinely sharper service, or simply a larger version of the same, will not be answered for some years yet.

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TSB name to vanish from Britain’s high streets after two centuries as Santander absorbs lender

For decades, British workplaces have measured employee wellbeing in days off. A bout of flu, a chest infection, a sprained ankle: a few sick notes, a fit-to-return form, and the matter is closed.

Yet a growing body of clinical evidence, and a steady drumbeat of employment tribunal cases, suggests that this tidy framework is wholly unfit to deal with the reproductive health challenges that thousands of British workers quietly navigate every day.

Fertility treatment, pregnancy loss and the menopause are, in the words of one consultant, fundamentally different beasts. They cannot be cleared by a course of antibiotics. They are not, in any meaningful sense, temporary. And, crucially for employers, the cost of getting the response wrong is no longer simply a matter of compassion, it is a matter of retention, productivity and, increasingly, legal exposure.

The conventional model of workplace illness assumes a hurdle that the body eventually clears. IVF, miscarriage and menopause do not behave that way. They are tied to identity, to the future a person had imagined for themselves, and to a biological transition that can play out over months or years rather than days.

A miscarriage is, in effect, a bereavement requiring emotional processing alongside physical recovery. IVF involves systemic hormonal shifts that are unpredictable in both timing and intensity. The menopause, increasingly recognised as a workplace issue in its own right, brings vasomotor and cognitive symptoms that can persist for the better part of a decade. None of these is a short-term medical issue, and treating them as such is the first mistake too many British employers continue to make.

Anyone who has sat through a difficult conversation at work knows the British instinct to reach for the silver lining. “At least you can try again.” “Everything happens for a reason.” “At least it was early on.” Said with the best of intentions, these phrases can land with extraordinary cruelty.

Clinically, “trying again” is never a guarantee. For a patient with low anti-müllerian hormone (AMH) levels, the marker used to assess ovarian reserve, each failed cycle or miscarriage represents a biological window that is closing rather than reopening. The phrase also ignores cumulative trauma: the physical and hormonal exhaustion that builds with every attempt. By looking to a hypothetical future, the colleague risks dismissing the very real grief and recovery happening in the present.

The advice from clinicians is simple. Drop the platitudes. Replace them with something direct: *”I’m sorry you are going through this. I’m here if you want to talk, or if you need anything.” Managers should go a step further, focusing on the practical: “I’m happy to adjust your workload and cover meetings so you can focus on your appointments and wellbeing.”

The principle is straightforward. Treat the situation as you would any other specialised medical need. Grant the employee the autonomy to attend appointments or take rest without making them justify themselves repeatedly. The goal is comfort and clarity, and reassurance that their career is not on the line because of their biology.

There is a hard-edged business case here, too, and it begins with cortisol. Sustained workplace stress and the fear of stigma trigger the chronic release of cortisol and adrenaline, the body’s fight-or-flight hormones. These are significant disruptors of an endocrine system that is already under intense pressure during IVF, miscarriage or menopause.

Elevated cortisol interferes with the body’s ability to regulate other essential hormones. For a perimenopausal employee, stress-induced inflammation can physically worsen the frequency and severity of hot flushes and night sweats. For an IVF patient, the same chemistry can sabotage the very treatment the company is, in many cases, helping to fund.

Stigma compounds the problem. When an employee feels they must conceal a miscarriage or a failed cycle to protect their professional standing, the body remains in a state of high tension. The parasympathetic nervous system, the state required for tissue repair and hormonal balancing, never gets a chance to take over. Patients delay seeking help, skip recovery days, and a standard recovery becomes a prolonged health crisis. The cost shows up later, on the absence rota and in the resignation letter.

Among the most misunderstood symptoms is so-called brain fog. During menopause or a high-intensity IVF cycle, the brain’s oestrogen receptors, which govern how the brain uses glucose for energy, are effectively starving or being overwhelmed. The result is a genuine power failure in the regions responsible for memory and executive function.

When a colleague undergoing fertility treatment loses a word mid-sentence or drifts in a meeting, this is not distraction or reduced effort. It is a physiological response to a hormonal storm. Managers who recognise this, and who quietly adjust expectations rather than file it under “performance concern”, will hold on to talented people that less informed competitors will lose.

Reproductive health, employers should understand, is rarely a day-of event. It takes roughly 90 days for a sperm cell to mature, and a similar window applies to the preparation of an egg for ovulation in an IVF cycle. The lifestyle, stress levels and workplace environment an employee experiences today will directly shape their clinical outcome three months from now.

This has profound implications for how SMEs structure their support. A single day of compassionate leave around an egg retrieval, while welcome, is not the point. The biological lead-in — the three months in which keeping cortisol low matters most, is the period in which the employer’s culture is doing its real work, for good or ill. True support is a sustained environment, not a one-off concession.

For UK employers, particularly those running smaller businesses where HR is often a part-time concern, the temptation has long been to handle these matters informally and on a case-by-case basis. That approach is no longer fit for purpose.

Workplace support should not be viewed solely as a wellbeing initiative. It is a factor that can influence treatment tolerance, recovery and overall health outcomes — and, by extension, attendance, productivity and retention. Reproductive medicine specialists routinely see how a lack of flexibility and the strain of uncertainty add to the physical and emotional burden their patients are already carrying.

The modern framework, clinicians argue, should include protected time for medical appointments and treatment cycles; appropriate leave and recovery support following pregnancy loss at any stage; and trained managers capable of handling these conversations sensitively. Confidentiality, flexible working and access to emotional support should be considered core components of an occupational health approach, not optional extras.

Above all, the policy must remain adaptable. Fertility experiences are highly individual, and a rigid model, the kind British HR departments have historically loved, will not survive contact with the variety of clinical pathways now in play.

The businesses that grasp this will retain experienced women in their thirties, forties and fifties, the very demographic most likely to be promoted out of, and lost to, less enlightened employers. Those that don’t will continue to wonder why their best people quietly disappear. In 2026, that is no longer a wellbeing question. It is a competitive one.

Read more:
Why IVF and miscarriage still aren’t properly supported at work

The owner of Facebook and Instagram has taken the UK’s media regulator to the high court, opening a fresh front in the increasingly fractious relationship between Silicon Valley and Britain’s online safety regime.

Meta has filed for a judicial review of Ofcom’s methodology for setting fees and penalties under the Online Safety Act, arguing that pegging charges to a company’s qualifying worldwide revenue (QWR) is disproportionate and out of step with the geographic scope of the regulator’s remit. A hearing has been scheduled for 13 and 14 October.

The stakes are considerable. Under the Act, Ofcom can levy fines of up to 10 per cent of QWR or £18m, whichever is higher. Given that Meta reported global revenues of roughly $201bn last year, the regulator could in theory issue a penalty of around $20bn, a sum that would dwarf the largest fines in UK corporate history. The fee regime introduced last September applies the same QWR principle to annual tariffs, capturing companies whose user-generated content, search or adult-content services in the UK generate more than £250m a year.

Meta contends that liability should be determined by activity within the jurisdiction doing the regulating. “We and others in the tech industry believe its decisions on the methodology to calculate fees and potential fines are disproportionate,” a company spokesperson said. “We believe fees and penalties should be based on the services being regulated in the countries they’re being regulated in. This would still allow Ofcom to impose the largest fines in UK corporate history.”

Court documents filed on Meta’s behalf by Monica Carss-Frisk KC describe Ofcom’s approach as “troubling”, warning that it would result in a handful of large platforms shouldering the bulk of the regulator’s costs even though the Act covers a much broader sweep of internet services. The barrister noted that QWR is not pegged to revenue generated by any particular service in the UK; rather, once a service is offered to British users, the entirety of its global turnover is counted.

Ofcom, for its part, is preparing to dig in. The regulator said its fees and fines framework reflected “a plain reading of the law” and pledged to “robustly defend our reasoning and decisions”.

Meta is not alone in pushing back. The US online forum 4chan has refused to pay penalties imposed under the Act, and Ofcom is facing separate litigation from the operators of both 4chan and Kiwi Farms. The regime has also drawn criticism from Donald Trump’s White House, which has signalled growing impatience with European digital rules that it sees as targeting American firms.

The financial significance of the new system for Ofcom itself is hard to overstate. Once the preserve of broadcasters and telecoms operators paying for spectrum and licence fees, the regulator now expects the bulk of its £233m budget for the year to come from online safety tariffs, which are forecast to bring in £164m. That marks one of the most substantial shifts in Ofcom’s funding base in its two-decade history.

For SME founders watching from the sidelines, the case is more than a transatlantic skirmish between Big Tech and a British quango. The threshold of £250m in qualifying turnover means most smaller platforms sit outside the fee net, but the principles being tested in October, how revenue is attributed across borders, and how proportionality is measured for global digital businesses, will shape the regulatory environment for any UK-based scale-up that one day finds itself trading internationally on the back of user-generated content. The judgment, when it comes, will be read closely well beyond Menlo Park.

Read more:
Meta launches high court challenge against Ofcom over online safety act fines

The owner of British Airways has warned that the war in Iran will saddle the group with a €2 billion fuel bill shock this year, taking the gloss off a bullish set of first-quarter numbers and forcing the City to rein in its profit expectations.

International Airlines Group (IAG), the FTSE 100 carrier that also owns Iberia, Vueling and Aer Lingus, told shareholders that surging jet fuel prices triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas flows, would push its annual fuel costs to about €9 billion, up from €7 billion in 2025.

Despite the warning, Luis Gallego, chief executive, struck a defiant note, insisting the group was “uniquely positioned” to ride out the turbulence. Crucially, IAG said it had no plans to mothball routes, having locked in supplies through its long-standing self-supply arrangements at its main hubs.

“We currently see no issues with fuel availability in our main markets, particularly as we benefit from the strength of our supply chain, stocks and particularly our self-supply arrangements at our key hubs,” Mr Gallego said. “We are confident in fuel availability through the summer.”

The reassurance will be welcomed by holidaymakers and the City alike, which had feared a repeat of the operational chaos that plagued European carriers during previous oil shocks. Mr Gallego pointed to the group’s “leading positions across diverse markets, strong brands, structurally high margins and strong balance sheet” as a buffer against the geopolitical squall.

In a clear signal of confidence, IAG confirmed it would press ahead with its €1.5 billion share buyback, a programme it green-lit only the day before American and Israeli forces launched strikes on Iran in late February. The conflict has since dominated a third of the airline’s first trading quarter.

The numbers, in fact, suggest the group went into the conflict with the wind at its back. Revenues edged up almost 2 per cent to €7.1 billion in the three months to the end of March, while pre-tax profits leapt 77 per cent to €351 million, driven largely by punchy demand for premium-economy, business and first-class seats on the all-important transatlantic corridor. North Atlantic flying accounts for roughly half of IAG’s capacity, and well-heeled travellers turning left as they board are a disproportionate driver of its margins.

IAG said it had hedged about 70 per cent of its fuel needs for the rest of the year, having either forward-bought kerosene or taken out financial instruments to cap its exposure to spot prices. That insulation, the group conceded, will not last indefinitely.

“Whilst the first quarter was relatively unaffected by the Middle East conflict we expect it to have a more substantial impact throughout the rest of the year as the increase in the fuel cost starts to manifest itself,” the company said.

The upshot: profits in 2026 will fall short of the figure pencilled in at the start of the year. IAG booked operating profits of more than €5 billion in 2025, and analysts had been forecasting earnings growth of up to 10 per cent this year before the Iran flare-up sent oil markets spinning.

The Middle East is not the only soft patch on the route map. IAG flagged that demand into the eastern Mediterranean had, predictably, weakened, while the European short-haul market, where British Airways and Vueling go toe-to-toe with Ryanair and easyJet, “remains competitive”. Aer Lingus, meanwhile, continues to feel the heat from American carriers piling capacity onto the lucrative Ireland-United States corridor.

For SME suppliers across the British and Irish aviation supply chain, from in-flight caterers to ground handlers and MRO specialists, the message is mixed. Capacity is holding up, premium demand is robust, and IAG’s commercial machine is plainly still firing. But with the airline’s own profit ambitions clipped by geopolitics, the pressure on margins will inevitably cascade down the food chain over the coming quarters.

For investors, the read-across is familiar: IAG remains one of the more resilient operators in European aviation, but the Iran war has reminded the market that even the best-run airlines fly at the mercy of the oil price.

Read more:
IAG braces for €2bn fuel bill shock as Iran conflict tests British Airways owner

British food and drink businesses are bracing for a fresh wave of cost pressure after global food commodity prices climbed for the third consecutive month, with fallout from the conflict in Iran emerging as a significant driver of the latest increase.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported that its closely watched Food Price Index (FFPI) rose by 1.6 per cent in April, building on gains recorded in February and March. The benchmark, which tracks a basket of internationally traded food commodities, now points to a sustained inflationary squeeze that will inevitably work its way through to wholesale markets, hospitality menus and supermarket shelves over the coming months.

For the UK’s small and medium-sized food producers, manufacturers and independent retailers, the figures will make grim reading. Margins across the sector have already been pared back to the bone by three years of input-cost turbulence, and many SME operators have warned that there is little headroom left to absorb further increases without passing them on to consumers.

Vegetable oils led the latest surge, rising by 5.9 per cent in April alone. Prices of palm, soya, sunflower and rapeseed oils all moved sharply higher, with palm oil notching up a fifth straight monthly gain. The FAO pointed to growing demand from the biofuel sector, propped up by policy incentives in several producing nations and a firmer crude oil price, alongside concerns over weaker output in Southeast Asia in the months ahead. Independent bakers, fish-and-chip operators and food manufacturers reliant on bulk vegetable oil supply are likely to feel the pinch first.

Cereal prices rose by 0.8 per cent, with drought in parts of the United States and forecasts of below-average rainfall in Australia tightening the outlook. The geopolitical picture has compounded matters. The FAO singled out the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic shipping lane that handles a substantial share of the world’s energy and fertiliser trade, as a key factor pushing up fertiliser costs. Farmers are now expected to scale back wheat plantings in 2026 in favour of crops requiring less fertiliser, a shift that threatens to lock in higher grain prices well beyond this year’s harvest.

Meat prices climbed by 1.2 per cent, with bovine meat reaching a new record high, an unwelcome development for the UK’s restaurant trade and butchers’ shops, which have already weathered relentless beef price inflation over the past 18 months.

There were two bright spots in the data. Dairy prices slipped by 1.1 per cent on the back of softer butter and cheese quotations, helped by plentiful milk supplies across the European Union. Sugar prices plunged by 4.7 per cent, the most striking move in either direction, as ample supplies in the current season, stronger production prospects in China and Thailand, and a favourable start to Brazil’s harvest in its southern growing regions weighed on the market.

For SME owners, the signal is mixed but the direction of travel is clear. With three months of consecutive rises now on the board, and with Middle East tensions showing no sign of easing, the assumption inside boardrooms across British food and drink will be that costs are heading north for the remainder of the year. Forward-buying, contract renegotiation and a hard look at menu engineering and product reformulation are likely to climb back up the agenda.

Concerns are also mounting that fresh shortages could emerge in parts of Africa later in the year, a development that would carry implications for global aid budgets and for the UK’s own development spending priorities.

The FAO’s data is one of the most reliable early-warning systems for shifts in global food affordability. After a period in which businesses had begun to hope the worst of the post-pandemic, post-Ukraine cost shock was behind them, April’s reading is a pointed reminder that the era of cheap food may not be returning any time soon.

Read more:
Food prices climb for third month in a row as Iran tensions squeeze global supply chains

American Express has thrown its weight behind the small business AI skills race, unveiling two training and education programmes designed to drag owner-managers and their staff out of the experimentation phase and into measurable productivity gains.

Announced this week, the initiatives have been built in partnership with the global non-profit Generation and US-based Scholarship America. The first, AI Upskilling for Small Business, is a free training programme delivered by Generation that is open to small firms anywhere in the world and taught in English and Spanish. The second, Smart Futures for Small Business Scholarships, is a US-only pot funded by the American Express Foundation that will hand eligible employees up to $1,000 (around £790) to spend on AI certification courses run by accredited vendors or educational institutions.

The move lands at a moment when boardroom enthusiasm for generative AI has yet to translate into shop-floor competence. Multiple recent surveys of UK and US small firms suggest that while curiosity is near universal, the share of owner-managers using AI tools in any structured way remains stubbornly low, with confidence and training cited as the principal blockers.

Jennifer Skyler, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at American Express, said the company wanted to bridge precisely that gap. “AI can be a powerful tool for small businesses when it’s used in practical, everyday ways,” she said. “These initiatives were designed to help small businesses move from Gen AI exploration to practical application, equipping them to drive productivity and help unlock new opportunities for growth.”

The Generation curriculum, refined through a series of pilots, is split into three self-guided tracks pitched at different roles and levels of AI familiarity. An AI Generalist track offers a foundational primer alongside short, applied “Mini Missions” covering everyday tasks. A Digital Marketing track focuses on using AI for content production, campaign optimisation and customer insight. A Digital Customer Success track concentrates on speeding up enquiry handling and personalising the customer experience.

Across all three, participants are taught to draft customer communications, support marketing campaigns, summarise and organise information, and convert raw research into commercial insight, while keeping a human eye on the output.

Bonni Theriault, Chief Partnerships Officer at Generation, said the structure was deliberately practical. “Generation programs support participants to practice and master the skills that make the biggest difference to them in their day-to-day work,” she said. “We are delighted to partner with American Express to offer small business owners a chance to hone their AI skills and see real benefits in their work.”

For Katy Kinch, owner of US-based Buttermilk Bakeshop and an early participant, the value lay in punching above her weight. “One of the biggest program takeaways for me was realising how powerful AI can be when used the right way, because it allowed me to do things that typically require a full team,” she said. “I was able to analyse customer feedback, identify trends and track retention patterns from my living room, which gave me insights I wouldn’t normally have access to as a small business owner.”

The Smart Futures element, administered by Scholarship America, is structured as an employer-nomination scheme. Owners can put a team member forward for funding to pursue AI courses or certificate programmes of their choice. Mike Nylund, President and CEO of Scholarship America, framed it as workforce insurance against rapid technology change. “AI tools give small businesses a world of opportunity, and education and training ensure that their workforce is ready to meet the moment,” he said.

For British small business owners watching from the other side of the Atlantic, the cash element is off the table, but the Generation training is not. The curriculum is open globally and free at the point of use, putting it within reach of any UK firm prepared to commit a few hours of staff time. With the Government continuing to push productivity as the central economic challenge facing the country, and with AI repeatedly identified as the most plausible lever for small firms to pull, programmes that lower the barrier to competent adoption are likely to attract growing interest.

Generation is running multiple cohorts throughout the year, with registration open via its website. Applications close on 10 June 2026.

Read more:
American Express opens free AI training to small firms as adoption gap widens

Britain’s high street is sounding the alarm. The country, retailers warn, is drifting towards a generation locked out of work, with the Chancellor’s tax and wage decisions accused of choking off the very entry-level jobs that young people rely on to begin their careers.

In a sharply worded intervention, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) has urged Rachel Reeves to halt what it describes as a relentless climb in the cost of employing people. The trade body estimates that the combined effect of higher employer National Insurance contributions and a steeper minimum wage added roughly £6.5bn to retailers’ wage bills in the last financial year alone, a sum that, on the BRC’s reading, is now translating directly into hiring freezes, reduced rotas and shrinking opportunities at the bottom of the ladder.

Helen Dickinson, the BRC’s chief executive, did not mince her words, accusing ministers of allowing an upward spiral in employment costs and red tape that is pushing young workers out of the labour market. Opportunities, she said, are vanishing in real time as businesses absorb a level of cost inflation many smaller operators simply cannot pass on to shoppers.

The political backdrop is unforgiving. Polling for the BRC by Opinium suggests that 49 per cent of the public believes Labour must do more to help unemployed young people, a finding that lands awkwardly for a government already battling questions over its handling of the wider economy. In March, ministers extended a scheme offering taxpayer-funded subsidies to firms hiring under-25s who have been claiming benefits for more than six months. Retailers, however, regard the measure as well-intentioned but undersized given the scale of the problem now bearing down on the sector.

The numbers tell their own story. Office for National Statistics data shows that more than nine million people aged 16 to 64 were economically inactive between December and February, neither in work nor looking for it, an inactivity rate of 21 per cent. Vacancies have fallen by 18 per cent since Labour took office in July 2024, the equivalent of around 156,000 jobs disappearing from the economy. The pain has been concentrated in precisely those industries, retail, hospitality and leisure, that have traditionally given school leavers and students their first taste of the world of work.

For Britain’s under-25s, the squeeze is acute. The unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds reached 15.8 per cent in the three months to February, more than three times the overall jobless rate of 4.9 per cent. Behind that figure sits a generation of would-be Saturday-job applicants, gap-year workers and graduate hopefuls finding doors quietly closed before they have had a chance to knock.

Adding to the anxiety is the rapid arrival of artificial intelligence on the office floor. A survey by the Institute for Student Employers found that nearly nine in ten employers expect AI to reshape entry-level hiring, with almost a third anticipating significant changes to the way they recruit junior staff. Tourism and the legal profession are among the sectors expected to feel the impact first, raising the prospect of a double squeeze: rising employment costs at one end, technology displacing graduate roles at the other.

The Government has pushed back. Peter Kyle, the Business Secretary, argues that the Budget steadied the economy and pointed to 332,000 more people in work than a year ago. Ministers maintain that lifting the minimum wage was the right call for households still wrestling with the cost of living. For SME owners watching their wage bills climb and their till receipts soften, it is a defence that increasingly fails to land.

The deeper risk, as Dickinson’s warning makes clear, is structural. Once a cohort of young people misses that critical first rung, the part-time shop floor shift, the warehouse weekend, the graduate scheme, the economic and social cost of bringing them back can stretch over decades. For Britain’s SMEs, the question now is not whether the Chancellor will hear the message, but whether she will act before the damage hardens into something much harder to undo.

Read more:
Retailers warn Reeves is creating a ‘jobless generation’ as hiring costs spiral

British farmers are already nursing input cost rises of up to 70 per cent, and the worst of the squeeze on the world’s food bill is still to come.

That is the blunt assessment from the boss of the Grosvenor Group, the 349-year-old property and farming empire controlled by the Duke of Westminster, who has warned that fertiliser shortages caused by the war in Iran will have a “dramatic” effect on global food prices next year.

Mark Preston, executive trustee of Grosvenor, told Business Matters that fertiliser prices were “already quite expensive” before the conflict, but had since climbed by between 50 and 70 per cent since hostilities began in late February. The trigger, he said, was the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow shipping artery through which a substantial share of the world’s fertiliser and the liquefied natural gas needed to make it must pass. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps indicated on Wednesday that the strait could shortly reopen, but with roughly 1,600 vessels still stranded, the damage to supply chains is already done.

For UK arable farmers, the immediate growing season has largely been insulated. Most fertiliser earmarked for this year’s crops was bought and applied before prices ran away. The problem, Preston explained, is the planting cycle that follows. “Farmers are not buying that fertiliser, they’re sitting on their hands and hoping things will improve, which they probably won’t,” he said. The likely response, he added, will be a swing from winter cropping towards spring cropping, giving growers a little more breathing room, but at the cost of yield, planning certainty and, ultimately, the price on the supermarket shelf.

Grosvenor itself is unusually well placed to weather the storm. The group’s flagship Eaton estate in Cheshire, the Duke’s traditional family seat since the 1400s, runs a large dairy and arable operation that supplies millions of litres of milk to customers including Tesco and Müller, and leans heavily on cow dung rather than bagged nitrogen. Its other rural holdings span Lancashire and Scotland, complementing the Mayfair and Belgravia estates that anchor the group’s central London portfolio.

The wider picture is considerably more alarming. “It’s going to be a very, very dramatic problem for the world, not just the UK in terms of food, just because so much fertiliser comes through those straits,” Preston said. He argued the food security risk now eclipses the energy story that has dominated headlines: “The concern is at least as much, if not more, around food and fertiliser than it is around oil, because there are alternative sources of oil. There aren’t very many alternative sources of nitrogen, for the production of fertiliser.”

His warning echoes that of Yara International, the world’s largest fertiliser producer, whose chief executive cautioned last week that the conflict could push some of Africa’s poorest communities into outright food shortages. Domestic sentiment is already turning: research by Opinium this week found that 80 per cent of Britons are anxious about grocery prices, with retailers continuing to pass cost rises through to the till.

Grosvenor’s wider results illustrate just how mixed the trading climate has become for diversified British groups. Underlying profits fell 18 per cent to £70.5m last year, dragged down by its North American operations, although the UK property arm proved a notable bright spot, running at 97 per cent occupancy. The group’s largest scheme to date, the redevelopment of South Molton Street near Oxford Street — taking in offices, shops, a hotel and 33 homes, is on course for completion next year. In the North West, work has begun on the first phase of an ambition to deliver 700 social homes; 69 have been built near Chester and Ellesmere Port, with a further 120 due this year.

Hugh Grosvenor, the 35-year-old duke and one of Britain’s wealthiest individuals with an estimated fortune of £9.56bn, received dividends paid to family trusts that crept up from £52.4m in 2024 to £53.7m. The group’s total tax bill more than doubled to £248m, of which £200m was paid in the UK, reflecting buoyant property disposals that lifted personal taxes on income and gains by £61m and corporate income tax by £71.9m.

The company has also been doubling down on flexible workspace, a segment it believes is becoming structurally embedded rather than a post-pandemic fad. James Raynor, chief executive of Grosvenor’s property arm, said roughly 23 per cent of the group’s London offices were now flex space, with occupancy “well over 90 per cent”. Last week, the company broke ground on its first directly managed flexible workspace outside the capital, in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, a vote of confidence in the regional office market and in the appetite of SMEs for short-form, fully serviced space.

For owners of small and medium-sized businesses, particularly those in food manufacturing, hospitality and agriculture, Preston’s warning lands as a clear signal to lock in supplier contracts, hedge where possible and review pricing strategy ahead of what looks set to be a difficult 2027.

Read more:
Fertiliser shortages set to send global food prices soaring, warns Grosvenor chief

Modella Capital, the private equity owner of the rebranded WHSmith high street chain TGJones, is to shutter up to 150 of its 480 shops in a sweeping restructuring exercise that places hundreds of retail jobs in jeopardy.

The closures, confirmed to the BBC, mark the latest blow to a high street already battered by stubbornly weak footfall, mounting cost pressures and a string of high-profile collapses. They come barely a year after Modella swept up WHSmith’s loss-making bricks-and-mortar arm in a £40m deal struck in March 2025, with the WHSmith name itself excluded from the transaction and retained by the listed group, which has pivoted to its more lucrative travel concessions in airports and railway stations.

A Modella spokesperson said the decision had “not been taken lightly”, citing what it described as exceptionally tough trading. “While we continue to believe in the strength of the core business, TGJones has experienced highly challenging trading conditions over the past year, along with many other brick-and-mortar retailers,” they said.

The firm laid the blame squarely at the door of three culprits: the “forced” rebrand from the trusted, 233-year-old WHSmith fascia, which it said had dented brand recognition almost overnight; rising operating costs “as a direct result of government policy”, a thinly veiled reference to the increase in employer National Insurance contributions and the higher national living wage that have hammered labour-intensive retailers; and unspecified “geopolitical events”.

The restructuring plan, the spokesperson added, is “designed to protect the substantial core of the store estate and create a stronger, more sustainable business that can continue to serve customers for years to come”.

Modella has not yet specified how the cuts will be apportioned across its workforce, but conceded the plan “may result in the closure of some stores and the loss of some roles”. The owner said it would attempt to preserve “as many jobs as possible” and acknowledged the toll on staff, adding: “We recognise the impact this uncertainty will have on colleagues, their families and the communities we serve.”

The TGJones retrenchment lands less than a month after Modella’s stewardship of another high street stalwart ended in collapse. Claire’s, the teenage jewellery and accessories chain, ceased trading in the UK and Ireland in April, closing all 154 standalone stores and making 1,300 staff redundant. Modella had bought the British arm of the chain out of administration only last September, before placing it back into insolvency proceedings after what it called an “alarmingly” weak Christmas. The firm also owns Hobbycraft, the arts-and-crafts retailer, raising fresh questions in the City over the durability of its high street portfolio.

For the SME owners and independent traders that share Britain’s high streets with TGJones, the planned closures are a sobering reminder that scale offers no immunity. The combination of post-Budget cost increases, persistent shifts to online spending and the loss of anchor retailers continues to thin out town centres at pace, with knock-on consequences for footfall and the smaller businesses that depend on it.

Whether Modella’s pared-back TGJones estate can find a sustainable footing without the WHSmith name above the door, and without the cross-subsidy once provided by stationery, books and Post Office concessions, will be the defining test of its turnaround thesis.

Read more:
TGJones owner Modella Capital to shut up to 150 former WHSmith high street shops

Retirement is meant to be the reward for a lifetime of corporate slog: long lunches, a forgiving handicap and the freedom to ignore a Monday morning inbox. For a small but growing band of senior British executives, however, the gilded sunset has proved rather less golden than the brochure suggested.

Bored, restless and quietly itching for a problem to solve, they have done what their younger colleagues might find unthinkable. They have gone back to work, and, more often than not, they are doing it for free.

The Sapient Foundation, set up last year, is the brainchild of Brendan Logan, a 72-year-old serial entrepreneur with three decades in telecommunications and four start-ups to his name. The trigger was a conversation with his old friend Larry Quinn, 69, who had reluctantly agreed to advise a local golf club on its governance, despite, as Logan tells it, having no interest whatsoever in the game. The reason? He had, in his own words, “nothing else to do”.

Quinn, who has co-founded and exited eight businesses, was clearly wasted on bunker disputes. Logan rounded up two more retirees of equal vintage: Eden Phillips, 61, formerly a software engineering manager at BT, and Mary Whatman, 62, a transformation specialist whose CV includes Bell Canada and Nortel. The Sapient Foundation was born.

In the year since, the quartet has worked with just over a dozen companies stretched across the UK and beyond. The model is unusual. Sapient looks at a client’s balance sheet, decides what the business can realistically afford, and charges accordingly. In several cases there is no upfront fee at all; instead, founders are asked to make a donation to one of the charities Sapient supports, but only once their company is generating revenue.

That arrangement suited DocComs, a London-based start-up developing an encrypted messaging platform for doctors. Co-founder Roseanna Jaggard, who runs the business with her husband Matt, had considered the various free online services on offer to founders, but found them generic. Sapient, by contrast, has been working with the team on an investment strategy tailored to the company’s clinical niche.

In its inaugural year, the foundation donated a four-figure sum to the Solidarity Teacher Training College, part of the Solidarity with South Sudan charity. Logan says other educational causes will follow.

The retirees are unapologetically picky about whom they help. Projects must genuinely interest them, and venture capital firms hoping to use the foundation as a back door to discounted consulting have been politely shown the door. Logan says one or two have “tried to pull a fast one”.

The recurring themes among Sapient’s clients are the trio that haunt almost every British SME: funding, technology and governance. Logan and his colleagues have used their address books to introduce founders to investors and capital sources they would never otherwise have reached.

One beneficiary is Oraczen, an agentic artificial intelligence company with offices in London and Texas. Co-founder Raghu Prasad credits Sapient with steering the business away from chasing broad AI opportunities and towards a more practical commercial wedge in contracts, procurement, supplier management and spend leakage. The intervention, Prasad says, helped the team “sharpen our focus very quickly” as they plan an expansion across the UK and Europe.

“In a traditional setting, advice of this depth and quality from senior telecom and enterprise experts would likely have cost us ten to twenty times more,” Prasad adds. “As an early-stage AI company building for enterprises across Europe and the UK, that level of access and strategic guidance would have been difficult to justify financially.”

The foundation operates under what Logan calls the “no heavy lifting” rule. Phillips, who spends a few hours a day on Sapient projects, still has time to tend his allotment, take guitar lessons and volunteer for Citizens Advice. The point, Logan insists, is that the work must remain enjoyable, the charities well funded and the queue of grateful founders steadily growing.

Britain’s SMEs have long complained about the cost and accessibility of senior strategic advice. It turns out the answer may have been sitting on the patio all along, quietly bored and reaching for the secateurs.

Read more:
The retired executives swapping the golf course for the boardroom – and charging next to nothing