Business

The government will spend an extra £1bn to insulate the least energy-efficient homes in the UK, the business secretary has announced.

Grant Shapps said the new Eco+ scheme was aimed at middle earners who do not benefit from any other government support to upgrade homes.

Labour criticised it as a “reheated announcement with no new resources” and as “far too little too late”.

Hundreds of thousands of households could receive loft and cavity wall insulation under the scheme, which will run for three years from spring.

A fifth of the funding will be targeted at the most vulnerable households.

Shapps told media: “This money is for people who have not been able to benefit from the previous schemes and will help hundreds of thousands of homes.”

A new £18m public information campaign will also offer advice on how to reduce energy use in the home.

Guidance to be published on the help for households website said reducing boiler flow temperatures from 75C to 60C and turning down radiators in empty rooms could save a typical household £160 a year.

Mr Shapps said: “One of the tips, by the way, is something I’ve actually been able to use at home, which is called the boiler flow rate. And it’s actually on your boiler where you can turn the temperature down, which is often set too high at 75 degrees, for example, 60 degrees. This is not your thermostat. This is in the boiler itself. And it can potentially save you a lot of money.

“So it’s actually simple tips like that which we will be announcing and there’s an £18m campaign to back that as well. So lots of practical help physically improving people’s homes and also tips to make sure that people are able to save themselves money by being more efficient in the homes.”

A previous attempt to introduce such a campaign was blocked by Liz Truss’s administration over concerns it was too “nanny state”.

The government has set an ambition of reducing energy use by 15% by 2030 as it battles spiking energy prices caused by Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

But shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband said: “This reheated announcement with no new resources is far too little too late and will help only a tiny fraction of the millions of people facing a cost-of-living emergency this winter.

“Labour’s warm homes plan would insulate up to two million homes a year, saving pensioners and families up to £1,000 off their energy bills.

“Rishi Sunak wants to crawl towards warmer homes and cheaper bills for our country. Labour will sprint for it – because that’s what the bills crisis demands.”

Greenpeace UK energy campaigner Georgia Whitaker warned the funding was not nearly enough, as seven million homes are suffering fuel poverty and 19 million homes in England and Wales are badly insulated.

“This is a drop in the ocean compared to what people actually need to stay warm and well this winter and in the winters to come,” she said.

“At least £6bn is needed by the end of this Parliament for a nationwide insulation programme that will not only help reduce our emissions but will also reduce the terrible levels of fuel poverty in the UK.

“The sooner the government realises this and actually gets going the sooner we’ll have more affordable bills, more energy security and a more stable climate.”

Read more:
Government launches £1bn scheme to insulate middle-income homes

Ineos, the chemicals company owned by the billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe, has held exploratory talks with Rolls-Royce on nuclear technology that could eventually be chosen to provide zero-carbon energy to the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland.

A deal between Ineos, one of the UK’s biggest privately owned companies, and FTSE 100 engineer Rolls-Royce could help Ineos with the tricky task of decarbonising the giant refinery, while also providing Rolls-Royce with an early customer for a new technology it hopes will transform its prospects.

Rolls-Royce’s main business is building and maintaining jet engines for commercial aeroplanes, as well as power systems for boats and land vehicles. However, it is one of a handful of companies around the world hoping to use the expertise gained from building nuclear reactors for the UK’s submarine fleet for use on land.

Ineos, which produces fuel and the chemicals used in plastics, is planning to use hydrogen to power the Grangemouth plant, which employs about 2,000 people across nearly 700 hectares (1,700 acres) of land. However, creating zero-carbon hydrogen from water requires large amounts of electricity, and it is considering options to source that power.

Ratcliffe is regularly counted among the UK’s richest people, although he moved to low-tax Monaco in 2020. He has used the £6bn fortune built up from Ineos to pursue various other interests, including a delayed attempt to build a rugged off-road vehicle, and purchases of several sports clubs. He has previously tried to buy Chelsea football club, and is seen as a possible bidder for Manchester United after its owners put it up for sale this month.

The talks between Ineos and Rolls-Royce were still at an early stage, said one person with knowledge of the situation. Another person said that discussions had centred on understanding the technology, and that no commercial negotiations have taken place. The Sunday Telegraph first reported the contacts.

The former prime minister Boris Johnson aimed to put nuclear energy at the heart of the UK’s energy strategy in April as he responded to the chaos on global energy markets prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As well as building several large reactors capable of generating gigawatts of power, he also gave his approval to efforts to build megawatt-scale small modular reactors (SMRs).

Warren East, Rolls-Royce’s outgoing chief executive, has said that the SMR revenues could end up being many times larger than its current business, as global demand for zero-carbon energy increases during the transition away from fossil fuels. However, the company still has a host of regulatory and political and financial problems to overcome, as well as proving that it can actually build the reactors in a factory at a cost to make them viable.

However, Rolls-Royce is working to find locations for reactors. In September, it signed a memorandum of understanding with the Czech nuclear engineering firm Škoda JS to look at sites in the Czech Republic and other parts of central Europe.

Rolls-Royce this month said it was prioritising four sites of old nuclear reactors in the UK to install the new SMRs. They were Trawsfynydd and Wylfa in north Wales, a site near Sellafield in Cumbria, and Oldbury in Gloucestershire.

East will hand over the reins of the company to the ex-BP executive Tufan Erginbilgic in January, although the SMR effort is being headed internally by Tom Samson, who last week told a parliamentary committee that the company wanted to begin formal funding talks with the UK government.

Read more:
Ineos in talks with Rolls-Royce on mini-nuclear power plant technology

Business leaders have warned that rail services across the north of England could “collapse into utter chaos” unless the government pushes urgently for a resolution to months of disruption.

Rail services are already recording historic levels of cancellations, and the imminent introduction of a new timetable could lead to a “crisis”, the Northern Powerhouse Partnership (NPP), which represents industry in the north of England, has warned in a letter to the UK transport secretary, Mark Harper.

The call for urgent government intervention in the privately run rail services was led by the NPP’s vice-chairs, the former Siemens UK chief executive Jürgen Maier and Jim O’Neill, the former chief economist at investment bank Goldman Sachs, who is among the possible bidders for Manchester United football club. The lobby group is chaired by the former chancellor George Osborne to push for economic development in the north of England.

Maier said the disruption was costing travellers and companies dearly in lost time and business, with corporate events and associated businesses such as hotels and restaurants particularly affected.

“We’re saying: government, you really need to put pressure on and make sure you resolve this issue and get business going again before we have a miserable Christmas,” Maier told BBC radio on Monday.

The rail companies’ current reliance on employees working overtime to run services was just not sustainable, he said. “The whole timetable is going to fall to pieces, and there’s going to be even more cancellations, and people won’t be able to rely on these important services.

“We are not able to continue as we are. If we do not get approval for a rest day working agreement to be negotiated this week it will be too late.”

The proportion of cancelled services in Great Britain has more than doubled since 2015, rising to one in 26 of all train journeys being disrupted in the year to 15 October, according to an analysis this month by the Observer of figures from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR). Services have also been disrupted by a wave of strikes, with more due to take place over Christmas unless unions can reach agreements with the government.

The NPP said there were already more cancellations across the north of England on TransPennine Express than after the May 2018 crisis, when the introduction of a new timetable led to the cancellation of thousands of trains over weeks of disruption. That has raised concerns about an even worse impact this time around, when a new timetable with increased services comes in on 11 December.

“When the new timetable comes in, as soon as it is attempted to deliver it in full, the system will collapse into utter chaos,” said a statement by the vice-chairs.

The NPP highlighted in particular services run by Transpennine Express and the Avanti West Coast main line, both of which are majority-owned by First Group, an £800m company listed on the London Stock Exchange. The Avanti disruption has meant that services between London and Manchester are running only once an hour compared with the usual three times an hour. First Group was approached for comment.

In a statement to the BBC, which first reported on the NPP’s letter, Transpennine said: “We are sorry to anyone who has been affected by this ongoing disruption. This has been caused by high levels of train crew sickness, an intensive crew training programme (which includes a training backlog as a direct result of Covid), and infrastructure issues outside of our control.”

Read more:
North of England rail faces ‘utter chaos’, warns business group

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Female-led Pact Launches £30m Seed Fund with Focus on Inclusion, Well-being, and Climate

Why is the huge betting demand for QATAR? The main reason is that in November 2022 Qatar hosts the first Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region FIFA World Cup.

With Doha as its capital city, Qatar is one of the Arab world’s most progressive states. Sport has played an important role in the development of Qatar’s identity as seen by nations around the world over the last several decades.

This has been demonstrated by its investment in Paris St. Germain, several football club sponsorship deals to market Qatar Airways, and hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. With such a focus on sports, residents of Qatar could be forgiven for having an interest in sports betting. PSG, after all, is owned by Qatar Sports Investments, which has several official sports betting partners.

FIFA WORLD CUP 2022

Qatar uses football to boost its international standing, which aids in its own protection in the event of regional conflict. This is the primary reason for the high level of betting demands in Qatar.

In November, billions of individuals will tune into the FIFA World Cup — and not only for football. The current year’s version is being facilitated by the country of Qatar, whenever the game’s most celebrated contest first will occur in the Center East so this will take the huge betting demand towards Qatar.

The World Cup is generally held in the summer. As a result, sportsbooks have precedent for how to plan and market for the world’s largest sporting event. However, due to the contentious decision to host the World Cup in Qatar this year, the event will take place during the winter. The decision was made due to the high temperatures in Qatar during the summer months. This will have an effect on both players and fans.

Because of the consequences of a Winter World Cup, bettors have become very familiar with the scheduling of the football season for decades. When the World Cup comes around every four years, there is also a lot of hype, but this year will be a little different because games from Europe’s top leagues will be played until a week before the tournament starts.

The time of year also presents new challenges, as the final takes place only a week before Christmas, a time when bettors are likely to be more cautious with their money. The Premier League also begins only one week after the tournament concludes, providing sportsbooks with a unique opportunity to capitalize on customers who joined a sportsbook as a result of the World Cup.

Betting demands in 2022

By certain records, it is a victory that this little Bay promontory with a populace of 2.9 million and an expanse of land the size of Jamaica could prepare the work and innovation expected to put on one of the world’s most watched and gone to occasions.

By different records, it is a misfortune, in light of 10 years of reports that Qatar’s chiefs paid off FIFA authorities to get facilitating freedoms, that Qatar’s carrying out accomplices denied traveler laborers of their basic liberties, and that Qatar’s circumstances might imperil the wellbeing and security of players and observers.

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Huge betting demand is coming towards Qatar!

Hybrid work is an increasingly popular model that is being adopted by companies around the globe. Some of the world’s largest organizations have already gone hybrid, benefiting from happier, more productive employees and cost savings.

Research from Gartner reveals that by 2030, 48% of employees will work remotely, compared to 30% before the COVID-19 pandemic. So, as the adoption of this model rapidly increases, what trends will follow? Let’s explore some of the hybrid work trends we will likely see in 2023. The demographic makeup of the workforce is changing, along with their expectations. Millennials and Gen-Z make up ‘approximately 38% of the global workforce, and this percentage will rise to about 58% by 2030’ (PWC).

These two generations prioritize work-life balance and personal well-being in the workplace more than previous generations, as stated in a recent report by McKinsey. The same report also explains that ‘Wellness-related employee benefits are becoming more mainstream.’ Of all the wellness benefits employers provide, flexible scheduling is the most used (82% of respondents said they used this benefit). This shift in expectations is one of the many reasons hybrid models are becoming popular.

More surprisingly, these flexible benefits are more important than a pay raise for many candidates. As reported by Forbes, while financial benefits are still a top priority, health and wellness are the top concern. The study found that ‘six in ten employees say well-being Benefits will be a top priority when applying for their next job.’

Rent and Energy Crises Increasing Need for Cost Savings

With rent and energy prices rising, so is the need for offices to save costs. In large cities worldwide, property prices are spiking, leaving many businesses questioning whether they can afford their current space. In Germany, for example, each sqm costs 25€. While in larger US cities, like New York and San Francisco, costs are 5 to 6 times greater.

For context, let’s circle back to the 1000sqm office space in Germany. Assuming that each employee would need 8sqm and that each sqm costs 25€, property costs (leasing, rent & management) add up to an approximate average of €30,000:

€24,000 for leasing costs and
€6,000 for ancillary costs.

Additionally, there are ancillary costs which include energy, maintenance, and facility management. The World Economic Forum reports a 600% increase in European gas price as of 2021, and the number is likely to rise, catalyzed by the conflict in Ukraine.

Research by JLL reveals that there has been a 50% increase in electricity and a 150% increase in gas, leading to an overall 20% increase in ancillary costs. Although property and ancillary costs are rising, organizations can save up to 30% on office costs with a well-structured hybrid work model. Therefore, we will also see greater innovation in hybrid work technology, which will be explored in depth later. These workplace management tools, like deskbird, will help save costs and improve efficiency.

For example, a hybrid multi-national company with 8,000 employees gathered occupancy data revealing low occupancy across their facilities. In response, they closed 4 out of their 5 sites only on Fridays, saving 90,000€ per month.

Prioritizing Employee Well-Being

Wellness has been a buzzword recently, with workplace trends following suit. Investing in employees has a significant impact–improving satisfaction and retention, and decreasing absenteeism. There is no doubt that work-life balance improves in a hybrid environment. Still, other aspects, such as social and career satisfaction, are rarely discussed.

Hybrid work trends will improve additional facets of employee life. In discussing career well-being, for example, upskilling is key–for both new employees and upper management. This means providing the necessary training for each individual to grow in their career. In the hybrid context, upper management will benefit from growing their leadership abilities. As explained by an HSM Advisory report on upskilling managers, leaders need to improve human-centric skills, performance-focused leadership skills, and enabling hybrid skills.

Taking Recruitment Global

Due to labor shortages, hybrid work will benefit the global hiring landscape, providing a wider pool of potential candidates. The Washington Post reports that there are ‘more than 11 million job openings and only 6 million unemployed workers.’ Companies might expand their recruitment processes to a global scale without requiring employees to work from a specific location.

Distributed work, or employees who work from various places and in different time zones, is a growing trend in the world of hybrid work. It takes remote work a step further by not only allowing employees to work remotely but also to be anywhere in the world.

Research from the Harvard Business Review reveals that ‘a third of 100 CEOs from around the world said talent recruitment and retention was their biggest challenge.’ Distributed work will help overcome this challenge by expanding recruiting on a global scale to find the best candidates for each role. It will also improve diversity by hiring people with different backgrounds and perspectives. Additionally, as we see a trend toward the nomad lifestyle, businesses that follow a distributed model will be attractive to many individuals who want to travel while they work.

Innovation in Workplace Management Tools

With more companies transitioning to hybrid work comes the need for efficient ways to manage this new model. Hybrid workplace management tools have stepped up to the plate, providing innovative solutions to everyday office problems.

For example, deskbird allows each employee to schedule which days they will be in the office and which desk they would like to book for that time. Additionally, teams can book meeting rooms for collaboration without speaking to an office manager. It allows companies to efficiently and cost-effectively manage space and employee schedules! Along with deskbird, innovation in the hybrid work management space will likely boom. From platforms to make communication between remote employees synchronous to project management.

Hybrid work trends for 2023 reflect the needs of employees in a ‘post-pandemic’ world. Social interaction and community building are a priority. There is an increased focus on well-being. And the opportunity to create global teams is greater than ever. Additionally, as the cost of energy and living increases, hybrid models help organizations run more cost-efficient offices. But, as with any transition, the right tools, experimentation, and an open mind are crucial.

Is your business considering going hybrid? Try deskbird’s hybrid workplace solution to manage your hybrid office!

Annabel Benjamin – deskbird

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Hybrid Work Trends 2023

Charities linked to Baroness Mone and her husband are distancing themselves from the couple after they were accused of secretly receiving £29 million by lobbying for a PPE company.

ActionAid has said it will no longer accept any donations from the Barrowman Foundation which was founded by Mone’s husband, the financier Doug Barrowman, and lists her as a trustee. ActionAid is an international agency that aims to tackle poverty and injustice around the world.

The Prince’s Trust and the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity also said they had no plans to receive any future support from Barrowman or Mone. Other charities have said the affiliations on the couple’s websites are out of date.

The Charity Commission had already opened a compliance case into the Barrowman Foundation over alleged unsecured loans before the latest accusations.

The foundation lists ActionAid as a partner on their website. However, the charity said: “The last donation we received from the Barrowman Foundation was in 2021 and we will not be accepting any further donations.” The spokesman added that they would chase up the removal of the ActionAid logo from the Barrowman Foundation website as it was no longer accurate.

The Prince’s Trust also features on the Barrowman Foundation website as a partner. A spokesman for the trust said: “We have not received any funds from Mr Barrowman since February 2019 and have no plans to accept any further donations.”

Mone, from Dennistoun, Glasgow, has been vocal in her support of the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity and has donated to the hospital since her mother received treatment for breast cancer there in 2020. After her wedding to Doug Barrowman in 2021, Mone vowed to give her wedding dress and shoes to the charity for auction but decided to make a £10,000 cash donation to the cancer hospital instead.

Yesterday a spokesman for the cancer charity said: “We have been grateful to receive support from Baroness Michelle Mone in the past. We are not in conversation with her regarding future support.”

On Mone’s personal website, she lists Breast Cancer Care as a key charity partnership where she claims to be a “long-term supporter”.

However, the charity, which has since become Breast Cancer Now, no longer has a partnership with Mone. The website, which uses the charity’s old name and logo, is out of date. Breast Cancer Now declined to comment.

Mone’s website also suggests she still holds an active role with the Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust but she resigned from their board of directors in 2012, according to Companies House.

Glasgow-born Barrowman, 57, is a qualified chartered accountant and worked for private equity fund 3i before setting up his own corporate finance firm.

In 1999, he founded Aston Ventures, a private investment vehicle which specialised in turning around “old economy” businesses. In 2008 he moved to the Isle of Man and founded the Knox Group, which included Aston Ventures.

The Barrowman Foundation supports charities that work with vulnerable young people. In 2019 Barrowman unveiled the plaque at the opening of the Prince’s Trust Doug Barrowman Centre in Ancoats, Manchester.

Mone and her family benefited from £29 million in profits originally derived from a PPE deal secured after she had lobbied ministers, The Guardian reported. Labour forced the government to come to the Commons to address the allegations yesterday.

Mone told her Twitter followers, “Don’t believe everything you read” and she and Barrowman have been distancing themselves from PPE Medpro, the company at the heart of the allegations.

Read more:
Charities seek to distance themselves from Michelle Mone after PPE claims

You might be able to get toothpaste back in the tube, but not people. Flexible working is here to stay in the UK – as you can see from the fact that weekday ridership on public transport stays stubbornly beneath pre-pandemic levels.

Charlotte Boffey, UK Head of Services at Employment Hero looks at a survey of UK knowledge workers which found that while there had been a general “return to the office”, many workers were not returning full-time. A fifth were still working fully remote, and 42% were working in both the office and remotely – more than the 36% of people who had returned to the office full-time.

And a clear preference emerged too: 88% wanted to work at home at least one day a week. But this overwhelming preference for flexibility was not evenly distributed: Young people and non-managerial professionals were far more likely to prefer flexible working than senior executives and employers. 33% of 25-34 year-olds said they would likely quit if forced back into the office full-time, for example.

Despite all this – and the very tight labour market – some senior executives are still quite keen to see their teams come back full time, or at least more of the time. 43% of respondents who had returned to the office full time or part time since the pandemic said they had done so because their employer told them too, with just 19% saying they preferred working from the office.

If you’re one of those senior people pushing for a return, I have two bits of advice.

The first is to take a step back and reconsider how badly you want this. What is making you anxious about employees working from home? If you feel they aren’t being productive or you can’t keep tabs on them, it is unlikely that a forced return to the office will magically make them more productive. Getting an exact read on your culture through an anonymous survey could be a good first step to work out if your issues with remote working are really to do with remote working, or whether there are wider issues plaguing your workforce.

You should also consider the huge range of people who you are shutting out of working from your company by insisting on in-office working – a lot of amazing people around the region and the world could want to work for your company, but can’t move to where-ever you are based. And there’s a solid chance that some of your younger bright stars will just quit.

The second piece of advice, if you do still want to go through with it, is to consider making the office as attractive as possible. It can’t be all stick and no carrot. Our survey showed us some of the biggest reasons remote workers wanted to stay remote, asking what they did not miss about the office. 39% cited “the commute” as one of the top three things they didn’t miss, 20% cited waking up early, 19% cited the extra expense of food and transport involved with coming in, and 17% cited people interrupting them at their desk.

These problems are partially addressable. Offering to pay for an employee’s commute could make them seriously reconsider how often they want to come in, as could a slightly later start time, which makes most commutes much more bearable. A good coffee machine and a solid pantry of healthy snacks could also change the equation -although employers should also not forget the basics, such as a microwave and kitchen full of clean utensils.

The pre-pandemic office is not going to come back in full. But that doesn’t mean we’re all staying at home forever either. When venturing out into this new normal, humility will help – the way you did things in the past may not be as true and trusted as before.

Read more:
Getting young people back into the office will require carrots as well as sticks

Jeremy Clarkson has said that Britons “do not pay enough for their food”, while recounting an experience when he was battered by heavy rain as he tried to help pigs mate.

The broadcaster, 62, bought an Oxfordshire farm in 2008 and began managing the land when a tenant farmer retired in 2019. His efforts have been documented in the TV series Clarkson’s Farm, which shows his difficulties in running the farm and the effects of the pandemic on the industry.

The series has acquired a cult following, with thousands of fans flocking to visit the farm, affectionately renamed Diddly Squat in reference to its tiny profits, to buy milk, rapeseed oil, chutneys and jams.

Appearing on The News Agents podcast, Clarkson told the hosts Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel that he believed food prices should be double what they are. “People simply don’t pay enough for their food. The one thing a government will never say, ‘Oh you’ve got to pay more for food, you don’t pay enough’.

“[Prices] should be double what they are. It’s soul-destroying, the amount of work. I mean I was out last week in honestly sideways rain, really heavy, hard rain, trying to get a pig’s penis into the back of another pig while Lisa, my girlfriend, was trying to give another sow the impression she was being mated by rubbing her back,” he said. “Then somebody’s going to go, ‘How much for your bacon?! Why are you charging so much?’ Because it costs a fortune to do it.”

He added: “It was a very, very funny day but really hard work and then Lisa and I had to build all their pens so you’re out at night because it goes dark so early. You’re out at night hammering fence posts and then stretching the barbed wire along and fixing the electric fences just so that somebody can stand in Tesco and go ‘have you seen the price of these pork chops?!’”

According to Office for National Statistics data, grocery costs have risen by almost 15 per cent on average over the past year, with some items going up by much more. Research by the consumer group Which? showed that some branded items such as Dolmio had doubled in some stores.

Last month, Clarkson was ordered to shut his farm’s café and restaurant after council officials said he “ignored” warnings that he was in breach of planning regulations.

The presenter opened the restaurant in an old lambing barn in July after West Oxfordshire district council rejected his plans for a bistro. At the restaurant’s opening, he told The Times that he had found a “cunning little loophole” that allowed him to change the barn’s use without planning permission.

He was then ordered to remove all tables and chairs because the restaurant was “incompatible” with its location within the Cotswolds area of outstanding natural beauty.

There were also complaints of heavy traffic and damage to grass verges as fans queued to visit the farm.

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Jeremy Clarkson: Brits “do not pay enough for their food”

Atom Bank has pushed back its flotation by at least two years after tapping backers for another £30 million, giving it a post-deal valuation of £460 million.

The fast-growing, Durham-based online lender is now aiming for a “liquidity event” in 2024 or 2025, having previously pencilled in 2022 or 2023. A liquidity event could be an initial public offering on the stock market or a trade sale.

Mark Mullen, 54, its chief executive, said stock market conditions had soured. “I’m not hearing anyone in the market talk up the prospect of a listing next year,” he said, adding that there were now many more questions about the UK economic outlook after recent political upheaval.

Atom, one of the first digital-only challengers to win a banking licence, has been a poster child for the financial technology sector. Launched in 2016, it has 165,000 registered customers, £4.7 billion in deposits and a £2.9 billion loan book. It was a pioneer in new workplace practices, being one of the first significant employers to move its 470 employees to a four-day week with no loss of pay.

The capital-raising was at the same price per share as one in February 2022 that raised £75 million. Atom’s two biggest shareholders — BBVA, the Spanish banking group, and Toscafund, the private equity firm — each raised their stakes. Schroder UK Public Private Trust, the renamed vehicle of the collapsed Woodford empire, which owned 11 per cent, did not take part.

Mullen said Atom was in good shape, with only 0.1 per cent of its £1.9 billion domestic mortgage book in arrears. Just 11 corporate borrowers in the £1 billion loanbook were in arrears, he said.

Atom had been “trundling along at break-even level” for several quarters now, Mullen added. “We want to put a bit more growth into it.”

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Atom Bank suspends flotation after raising £30m from investors