United Kingdom

    SVG unveils 'white knight' talks with Goldman Sachs SVG Capital has confirmed it is in talks with several rival suitors including Goldman Sachs about a possible takeover, in a move that it hopes could fend off a hostile bid from the American investment house HarbourVest. The FTSE 250-listed private equity specialist, which rejected HarbourVest’s £1bn proposal last month, has been searching for a “white knight” bidder that could make a better offer. SVG said it has begun “detailed discussions” with Goldman Sachs alongside the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, while also speaking to another unnamed company that is seeking a partner to make a joint bid. A third party, also unnamed, “may be interested in considering an offer”, SVG said. The firm plans to update its share...

    Boris Johnson mistakenly called Africa a country instead of a continent as he spoke at the Tory conference today. The Foreign Secretary misspoke as he suggested to Conservative Party members that increases in life expectancy in African countries such as Ethiopia could largely be attributed to UK foreign aid spending. He said: For all its difficulties, life expectancy in Africa has risen astonishingly as that country has entered the global economic system. In 2000, the average Ethiopian lived to only 47 - it is now 64 and climbing; in Zambia the increase has been from 44 years to 60 years. Boris Johnson calls Africa a country in slip-up at Conservative conference "In 1990, 37% of the world's population lived in poverty that is now down to only 9.6% today. I think we, with o...

    Senior Tories have warned against a hard and harsh Brexit after Theresa May revealed Article 50 would be triggered by March next year. Commons Education Committee chair Neil Carmichael and former minister Anna Soubry both stressed the importance of the single market and warned a “hard Brexit” - with the UK outside the free trade zone - would damage the economy. Hours after the PM finally announced her timetable for exiting the EU, Carmichael told pro-Europe Tories the country must avoid a damaging Brexit “at all costs”. “We would be unwise to challenge the democratic view but we would be reckless if we did not challenge some of the consequences of a hard or harsh Brexit,” he told members of the Conservative Group for Europe. “Because we have got to understand that if it is...

    Britain looks set to leave the European Union by summer 2019 after triggering the formal process to pull out before the end of March next year, Theresa May has said. The Prime Minister said Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty will be triggered in the first three months of 2017, marking the start of the two-year process to enact Brexit. The process can be extended beyond two years if Britain and all other EU countries unanimously agree, but that prospect is seen as unlikely. She made the announcement after revealing plans for a "Great Repeal Bill" to transpose all EU law applying to the UK into domestic law, ready for the day the country leaves the union. Ahead of her speech on Brexit at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Mrs May told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show: "...

    Theresa May is to make a major speech on Brexit at the Tory conference in Birmingham Tory former Cabinet ministers have ramped up pressure on Theresa May by presenting her with a "Brexit Blueprint" to take the country out the EU in less than two years. The plan, which presses for a "take it or leave it" approach to Brussels, was circulated ahead of the Prime Minister making a speech on quitting the bloc at the Tory party conference on Sunday. Mrs May has previously said she would not rush to show "rapid progress" in Brexit negotiations, insisting the process should be "sober and considered". She has already stated that Article 50, the formal mechanism for Britain leaving the EU, will not be triggered this year. However, the so-called Route Map for Brexit, proposed by ex-mi...

    Poorest pensioners to lose hundreds of pounds a year in ‘new bedroom tax’ Thousands of poorer pensioners will be hit by a new “bedroom tax”, despite the Government’s promises to protect the elderly from the hugely controversial benefit cuts. They are poised to lose at least £300 a year because their homes will be deemed to be “underoccupied”, slashing their incomes or forcing them to move – away from family and friends, or to flats that are unsuitable for older people. In some cases, the financial pain will be greater – one housing association has identified pensioners in part of the North who are set to lose a staggering £1,700 a year. Over time, hundreds of thousands of pensioners will be affected by the little-noticed measure, which extends tough benefit restrictions in...

    The British Union Flag, also known as the Union Jack, is displayed on wall Turf wars by ministers seeking to control the Brexit negotiations are wasting valuable time and may cost the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds in additional civil servants, a report by the respected Institute for Government claims. In the first detailed examination of how Whitehall is being restructured to cope with the Brexit talks, the report says the cost is approaching £65m, largely due to the need to hire 500 extra civil servants. It adds that the triple departmental structure of splitting responsibility “risks creating fragmentation and incoherence. A lack of clarity about roles and responsibility of the new departments has caused distractions and delayed work on Brexit”. The report, called ...

    A former cabinet minister Nicky Morgan said the Prime Minister has the perfect chance at Conservative conference to set out a broad plan. Nicky Morgan has warned Theresa May she is allowing others to set the terms of Brexit and said the Prime Minister must be clearer on what she wants from any deal. Former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said that instead of leaving it to cabinet Brexiteers, Ms May should herself lead policy on the European Union and set out a broad plan as early as next week. It comes as former Chancellor Ken Clarke claimed that “nobody in the Government has the first idea” what to do about Brexit. Ms Morgan said: “There is a danger. At the moment, there has been a lack of a plan from our Government about the negotiating, the process, what’s going to hap...

    A former Royal Household official who accepted more than £100,000 in bribes to award contracts for work at royal residences including Buckingham Palace was today jailed for five years. Ronald Harper, of Sudbury, Suffolk, was deputy property manager responsible for maintaining the Queen's main London home, plus St James's Palace, Clarence House and Windsor Castle, from 1994 until his suspension in 2012. The 64-year-old grandfather accepted payments or gifts from the directors of companies who were then given large contracts for maintenance of the historic buildings paid for by the then Civil List, now called the Sovereign Grant. He was found guilty of two counts of conspiracy to make corrupt payments after two trials at Southwark Crown Court in June and August. The corrupt ...

    A report by The Boston Consulting Group after the EU vote warned that up to 80,000 jobs could be shifted out of London. The recruiters says US banks have begun hiring for roles in European cities other than London in the wake of the UK's vote to leave the EU. The executive recruitment firm said rival financial centres to the City within the bloc, Frankfurt and Paris, were seeing the bulk of the growth at London's expense. Stephane Rambosson, managing partner of DHR International, said some companies were using Brexit as a "handy excuse for getting on (with) the unpleasant task of moving jobs outside London." The findings suggest that the warnings of an exodus of jobs from the City in the event of a Leave vote are now becoming a reality. The report's publication coincided ...