the times | Tuesday April 5 2022 2GM 37
Business
Callum Jones
Elon Musk has become Twitter’s larg-
est shareholder after amassing a 9.2 per
cent stake in the social media platform.
Shares in Twitter rose by the most in
a single day since its 2013 stock market
debut after a filing revealed that the
world’s richest man had bought
73.5 million shares. His investment was
worth about $2.89 billion as of Friday.
“Oh hi lol,” tweeted Musk, a prolific
user of the website. He did not com-
ment further, but has recently ques-
tioned whether Twitter was adequately
supporting free speech and claimed he
was giving “serious thought” to devel-
oping a rival platform.
Investors appeared to welcome his
involvement in the company, which
had its best day of trading since Sep-
tember 2016 in New York, as its shares
closed up 27.1 per cent, or $10.66, at
$49.97; up 15.6 per cent on the year.
Twitter owns one of the world’s larg-
est social networks and makes most of
its money through advertising. Its mi-
croblogging service was first set up in
2006 and went public in November
- Jack Dorsey, the co-founder, de-
parted as chief executive in November.
The company, which has yet to com-
ment on Musk’s stake, had a market
value of more than $40 billion after yes-
terday’s rally. Many millions of tweets
are posted each day on its platform,
which has faced heightened political
scrutiny in recent years, particularly
after the decision to ban President
Trump. Users include political leaders,
executives, athletes and journalists.
Musk, 50, is chief executive of Tesla,
the electric carmaker, and SpaceX, the
space exploration business. He has a
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7,558.92 (+21.02)Mar 4 14 22 30 Mar 4 14 22 30 Mar 4 14 22 30 Mar 4 14 22 30 Mar 4 14 22 30 Mar 4 14 22 308,000
7,500
7,000
6,500Ashley Armstrong Retail EditorFamilies have been handing down
Marks & Spencer’s children’s clothes for
years but now the high street retailer is
investing in the fast-growing resale
market itself.
Marks has signed a partnership with
Dotte, a two-year-old resale online
platform that allows families to buy and
sell children’s clothes. The retailer will
offer families that use the service to sell
their outgrown Marks clothing a £5
voucher for their next £25 shop, in addi-
tion to the money from the sale. It is un-
derstood sellers typically make about
50 per cent of the retail price back.
The resale market, a relatively new
term for selling second-hand clothing,
is growing rapidly, fuelled by environ-
mental concerns about the volume of
waste caused by the fashion industry.
The resale sector is expected to grow
faster than the traditional retail market
in the next decade.
Dotte was founded in 2020 by Louise
Weiss and Samantha Valentine, two 35-
year-old mothers who set up the busi-
ness out of frustration at how quickly
their kids grew out of clothes and how
few options there were for buying or
selling second-hand items. There are 16
small clothing brands, such as The
Bright Company, on Dotte, meaning
Marks will be the biggest label.
Valentine said: “As any parent knows,
children just don’t stop growing. And all
those growth spurts make kidswear one
of the fastest areas of fashion, with 183
million items of kids’ clothing going to
landfill every year in the UK alone.”
Marks has invested in the site
through its start-up accelerator
Founder’s Factory as part of its ambi-
tions to support the circular economy
and become more sustainable. Last
year it moved into rental fashion in
collaboration with Hirestreet.
H&M and Decathlon have started
their own resale platforms while Vint-
ed, a second-hand clothing app, was
valued at more than $4.5 billion in a
fundraising last year and Etsy bought
Depop, a British second-hand fashion
resale business, for $1.6 billion.Britain is not set for a repeat of the 1970s
and war in Ukraine could lead to lower
inflation than previously expected, a
senior Bank of England official said.
Sir Jon Cunliffe, deputy governor for
financial stability, said there was a risk
the conflict could lead to inflation un-
dershooting the 2 per cent target.
Decisions made by the Bank about
interest rates and quantitative easing
No risk of 70s-style high inflation and interest rates, says Bank boss
Arthi Nachiappan will not do much about high global
energy prices or their subsequent im-
pact on the cost of living, Cunliffe said.
But in order to bring inflation down
to the 2 per cent target after the shocks
have passed, the rate setting committee
must make sure that higher interest
rates do not suppress demand long
after they are needed, he added.
“The risk on the other side is that we
amplify the impact of the squeeze on
incomes and, given the lags in mone-
tary policy, that our actions bear down
on the economy as the rate of growth in
imported prices subsides, taking infla-
tion well below our target at our policy
horizon,” he said. “All else equal, the in-
vasion of Ukraine will have made such
an undershoot more pronounced.”
In the 1970s there were several years
of high inflation before oil shocks
prompted a crisis, whereas there is not
yet a “psychology of persistently higher
inflation” today, according to Cunliffe.Cunliffe, Britain’s foremost diplo-
matic representative to the European
Union before joining the Bank, was
giving a speech at the European Eco-
nomics and Financial Centre yesterday.
His remarks help to explain why he
was the only member of the nine-
strong monetary policy committee to
vote to hold interest rates at 0.5 per cent
in its last meeting in mid-March. All
other members, including the gover-
nor, Andrew Bailey, voted to raise ratesfor a third time to reach pre-pandemic
levels at 0.75 per cent. Cunliffe voted to
raise rates at the previous two meetings
in February and December.
The cost of borrowing is still much
lower than before the financial crisis of
2008, when interest rates were steady
at around 5 per cent for several years.
Rates hit a high of 17 per cent in 1979.
Inflation is expected to hit a 40-year
high of 8.7 per cent in October, accord-
ing to the Bank’s latest forecasts.Tesla chief is social media site’s biggest investor
Musk takes
$2.9bn stake
in Twitter
personal fortune of almost $288 billion,
according to Forbes, after the extraor-
dinary rally of shares in Tesla, which is
now worth over $1 trillion.
He regularly updates his account,
one of the biggest on Twitter, with a
steady stream of views, jokes and an-
nouncements that has attracted more
than 80 million followers. Musk has al-
so become a figure of significant influ-
ence for many retail investors, who
closely monitor his comments online.
His first tweet yesterday received some
20,000 comments in barely an hour.
But some posts have landed him in
hot water. He continues to challenge
controls imposed by the Securities and
Exchange Commission, the US
markets watchdog, over his tweets
about Tesla. These were part of a 2018
deal after his claim on Twitter that he
had secured funding to take the com-
pany private. Musk stepped down as
Tesla’s chairman and both he and the
business were fined $20 million.
In a series of posts last month, Musk
signalled his interest in shaking up the
social media industry. He polled his fol-
lowers on whether they believed Twit-
ter “rigorously adheres” to the principle
of free speech — some 70 per cent of
2 million votes were cast against — and
suggested that failure to do so “funda-
mentally undermines” democracy.
“Is a new platform needed?” Musk
mused on March 26. Hours later, when
users asked whether he would consider
building a new platform, he replied:
“Am giving serious thought to this.”
Close observers of Musk and Tesla
suggested that the move was “just the
start” of his efforts to shake up social
media. Dan Ives, a technology analystMARKS AND SPENCERMarks goes into
resale — and
it’s not kidding
Marks & Spencer is moving into the second-hand market by signing up to a
Continued on page 40, col 1 partnership with Dotte, an online site where people sell used children’s clothes