The Times - UK (2022-05-23)

36 V3 Monday May 23 2022 | the times

Business

1

Rail unions have vowed to defy

new laws that would prevent

them carrying out “the biggest

rail strike in modern history”. The

proposed legislation would impose

minimum staff requirements on

railways, in effect forcing union

members to cross the picket line.

The RMT union will ballot its

40,000 members tomorrow on

strike action in a dispute over pay

and redundancies. Pages 2, 41

2

Britain is becoming a less

attractive place to invest and

the government should

respond by cancelling its planned

corporation tax increase,

according to a survey of influential

business leaders. The Centre for

Policy Studies interviewed more

than 100 company founders,

investors, chief executives and

entrepreneurs. Page 18

3

House prices have increased

by a “record-breaking”

£55,000 since the start of the

pandemic and are still rising, a

market survey shows. Rightmove

said that asking prices had jumped

by 2.1 per cent over the past month

— equivalent to a £7,400 increase

— to take the cost of the average

home to nearly £368,000. Page 22

4

An ambitious and radical

proposal to turn the Dover

Strait green and to allow only

fully electric ferries on the short-

sea Channel crossing will be put to

the government today. Page 35

5

Gambling operators that

breach social responsibility

and money laundering rules

are set to face significantly higher

penalties based on a proportion of

customer takings. Pages 35, 39

6

KPMG is set to be hit with

another penalty from the

accounting watchdog for

questionable auditing after reports

that it is to be fined up £4.5 million

over its work with Rolls-Royce

before 2017. Page 35

7

The Priory Group, Britain’s

biggest mental healthcare

chain, is facing spiralling

rental bills after its new private

equity owner agreed an

£800 million sale and leaseback

deal shortly before inflation took

off. Page 38

8

Britain misses out on

£143 billion in lost economic

output a year because of the

unwillingness of investors to

spend on critical areas of the

modern economy such as

software, research and patents,

according to a study by Jonathan

Haskel, the Bank of England rate-

setter, and Stian Westlake of the

Royal Statistical Society. Page 38

9

Building work on new offices

in London has slowed sharply

as developers hold off in the

hope that construction costs will

drop. In the six months to March,

work started on five new-build

office developments, according to

Deloitte’s latest London Office

Crane Survey — a third below the

previous half-year period. Page 41

10

The Duke of

Westminster’s property

company swung back to a

profit last year as the value of its

300-acre estate in the heart of

central London rebounded.

Grosvenor Group made a pre-tax

profit of £437.5 million. Page 41

Need to know

A reduction in the pay gap between top

chief executives and their employees

during the pandemic is expected to

rebound this year.

According to research by the High

Pay Centre for the first quarter of the

year, the average pay of a FTSE 350

chief executive was equivalent to that of

63 employees — almost double the 34:1

ratio of the year before.

Figures for the whole of last year

show that the pay ratio for FTSE 350

chief executives fell from 53:1 to 44:1.

For bosses of FTSE 100 companies,

there was a much smaller fall in the pay

ratio, which declined from 73:1 to 67:1.

The figures compare median chief

executive pay with median employee

pay, but if the comparison is between

median chief executive pay and

quartile employee pay the ratio falls

from 71:1 to 59:1.

A total of 28 companies, or 14 per cent

Robert Lea Industrial Editor

of the total, were found to have an

employee pay ratio of more than 100:1.

The analysis found that pay ratios

were widest in the retail industry, with

an average pay ratio of 117:1. Ratios were

lowest in media at 29:1 and financial

services at 30:1.

Luke Hildyard, director of the High

Pay Centre, a non-partisan think tank

that focuses on fairer pay, said: “Our

report indicates that companies and

their stakeholders showed some

sensitivity to the need to treat workers

fairly and reduce vast pay inequalities

during the pandemic.

“However, as the Covid 19 emer-

gency hopefully reduces, it would be a

shame if the spirit of solidarity it

generated fades away as well.”

Hildyard said that given the “dire

outlook for the UK economy”, how

existing resources was shared would

become increasingly important.

“Major employers have a key role to

play balancing their pay awards so that

high-middle and low earners are all

paid fairly and proportionately,” he

said.

Mubin Haq, chief executive of abrdn

Financial Fairness Trust, which

supported the research, said that the

big fall in pay ratios during the Covid

pandemic “shows change is possible”

and as inflation started to bite it was

“more important than ever that com-

panies did the right thing and pay was

distributed fairly”.

He added: “Going back to past

practice, where pay ratios increased

year-on-year, is one area where we do

not want to see a return to normal

following the pandemic.”

Frances O’Grady, general secretary

of the TUC, said: “Pay inequality has

gone much too far. Even for the best-

performing executives, pay can be out

of all proportion compared with hard-

working staff on the front line. It’s time

we had maximum pay ratios to bring

some fairness back.”

Dominic Walsh

Pay gap ‘to return to pre-Covid days’

checks with a customer who lost

£37,000 in a six-week period during the

pandemic and giving a customer they

knew was an NHS worker earning

£1,400 a month a monthly deposit cap

of £1,300.

The commission’s warning comes as

the government prepares to publish the

conclusions of its review of the 2005

Gambling Act. The review, which is

separate to the new sanctions outlined

by the regulator’s chairman, is designed

to drive modernisation in Britain’s

£14 billion gambling industry, although

many companies fear it will result in

more Draconian rules on areas such as

affordability checks and advertising.

There are suggestions the review’s

conclusions, likely to be announced

next month, will reduce the maximum

bet on online games to between £2 and

£5 to create “parity” with the £2 limit

introduced on fixed-odds betting ter-

minals in high street bookmakers.

How we’ll improve gambling regulation,

Marcus Boyle, page 39

It happened with the Ford Escort, the

bestselling car of the 1980s and 1990s, of

which 4.1 million were sold in Britain. A

sixth generation of the model hit the

road in 1995, but by 1998 the American

manufacturer had decided to launch its

Ford Focus, an updated car in the same

segment of the market. By 2000, pro-

duction of the Escort was cut, the last

one rolled off the line at Halewood on

Merseyside and the model name, heavy

with cultural references for so many,

was abandoned.

It had happened before then, too.

The Ford Cortina was wildly successful

in the 1960s and 1970s, helping Ford to

become the bestselling car brand in

Britain for what would be nearly 50

years. Over a two-decade spell, 2.8 mil-

lion Cortinas were sold in Britain and,

despite the launch of a Mark V version

in 1979 when it was still the No 1 seller

in the UK, the model and name were

ditched in favour of the Ford Sierra.

The last Cortina left Dagenham in the

southeast in 1982.

Now it seems history is set to repeat

itself once again. Ford is declining to

comment publicly, but it is becoming

increasingly likely that the Ford Fiesta

— a model and a name redolent with

affordable motoring — is heading to

the same scrapyard.

In recent weeks Britain’s forecourts

have been complaining about the lack

of Fiestas being delivered to show-

rooms. “We are just not getting any,”

one leading dealer said, adding that as a

result of the global shortage of semi-

conductors, a key component, Ford had

been switching its shipments of micro-

chips to higher-profit margin, faster-

growing models such as the Puma and

the Kuga, as well to its Transit vans.

If a strangled worldwide semi-

for the Fiesta

assembly factory in Cologne in

Germany to go through a $1 billion re-

configuration to be the centre of the

company’s push to be a producer of

electric-only cars in Europe by the

2030s. Third has been the confirmation

of what will be the carmaker’s

initial four-model line-up of

battery cars for the European

market.

The two named models are

the critically acclaimed

£40,000 Mustang Mach-E and

a fully electric version of the

popular Puma. The other, un-

named pair are a “medium-sized” bat-

tery electric vehicle that would be in a

class that ranges from the larger Nissan

Leafs to the cheapest Tesla, the Model

3; and a “sports crossover”, which has

led to speculation of Ford shifting to the

New car registrations

Is the party over?

UK figures since 2005

2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020

1.4

1.6

1.8

2.0

2.2

2.4

2.6

2.8m

continued from page 35

Gambling regulator’s crackdown

The Ford plant in Cologne,

which makes the Fiesta, will

move towards only

producing electric cars

Fiesta may

be heading

for the end

of the road

conductor supply chain accelerates the

demise of the Fiesta, it would be the

end of one of the most stunning auto-

motive success stories the past 50 years,

with 16 million sales worldwide and

market leadership in Britain not only in

the hatchback class but against all-

comers.

Before a winding down in production

and a collapse in sales over the past 18

months, the Fiesta was Britain’s best-

selling car every year from 2009 to

2020. When domestic car sales were
      hitting modern peaks in 2014 and
      2015, it was selling more than
      130,000 units a year, accounting for
      one in every twenty cars leaving show-
      rooms. For context, only a handful of
      motoring brands across all their models
      capture more than 5 per cent of the UK
      market annually.
      The success of the Fiesta
      has been a feature since the
      Thatcher years and the de-
      cline of the homegrown
      carmakers. Its high water
      mark of sales was 1987,
      when Ford shifted more
      than 150,000 of them, a
      year in which it was beaten
      to the top spot only by the
      Ford Escort.
      The lack of present
      availability has led some in
      the automotive media to
      conclude that while not
      official, the Fiesta is effec-
      tively in run-off. That
      speculation has been
      fueled by three separate
      bits of news from Ford itself.
      Last month, after a disappearance
      from price lists, the company con-
      firmed that it had already decided to
      stop making the formerly popular and
      cheaper three-door version of the Fies-
      ta. The second is the decision by Ford

for the Fiesta

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