How lucrative is the living in the world of private equity? Prepare for a glimpse inside the machine because Bridgepoint, one such buyout firm, is taking the rare step of listing its shares in London. Back-of-the-envelope arithmetic suggests some large individual fortunes will be revealed.

Bridgepoint, with €27bn under management, is expected to be valued at roughly £2bn, though it’s unclear if that is before or after it has raised the £300m it is seeking to fund expansion. Even at £1.7bn, though, the numbers will be big because only 20% of the firm is currently owned by an outside investor, Dyal Capital. The rest is owned by the staff, and one can assume the 170 “investment professionals” will own the bulk of that. So call the average shareholding £8m among that large crew. Not bad.

In practice, the partnership won’t be equal. The 43 investment partners and the executive chairman, William Jackson, will have the lion’s share, as the prospectus will confirm...

Government officials emailed the British Business Bank eight times for updates on Greensill Capital’s Covid loan requests, MPs have been told, raising further questions about the failed finance firm’s influence across Whitehall.

The Bank’s head of operations told the parliamentary scrutiny committee on Tuesday that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) had asked for multiple “progress” updates on Greensill’s application to the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme.

The supply chain finance firm – which counted David Cameron as an adviser and shareholder – was hoping to lend hundreds of thousands of pounds to its customers through the programme, which came with an 80% government guarantee that meant it would only have to cover 20% of the losses if borrowers failed to repay their debts.

Greensill reportedly handed £400m of those loans to one of its largest borrowers, the Liberty Steel owner GFG Alliance, in a...

The chairman and chief executive of global public relations and advisory firm Teneo has resigned after reports of drunken misconduct at a star-studded fundraising concert promoted by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to raise money to supply coronavirus vaccines to developing countries.

Declan Kelly resigned from his Teneo positions “effective immediately” on Tuesday, days after he was accused of touching a number of women and men inappropriately and without their consent at the concert, which featured appearances by the Foo Fighters, Selena Gomez and Jennifer Lopez.

Kelly, an Irish former journalist turned public relations guru, said in a statement: “I made an inadvertent, public and embarrassing mistake for which I took full responsibility and apologised to those directly affected, as well as [to] my colleagues and clients.”

He claimed to have become victim of a smear campaign against Teneo, which bills itself as an adviser to chief executives and senior...

Flying cars will be a reality in cities around the globe by the end of this decade, according to a leading car manufacturer, and will help to reduce congestion and cut vehicle emissions.

Michael Cole, the chief executive of the European operations of South Korean carmarker Hyundai, said the firm had made some “very significant investments” in urban air mobility, adding: “We believe it really is part of the future”.

Cole conceded: “There’s some time before we can really get this off the ground.

“We think that by the latter part of this decade certainly, urban air mobility will offer great opportunity to free up congestion in cities, to help with emissions, whether that’s intra-city mobility in the air or whether it’s even between cities.”

He told a conference of industry group Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders: “It’s part of our future solution of offering innovative, smart mobility solutions.”

ITV will not be overly concerned about the lacklustre launch of Love Island as the show tends to benefit from a significant uplift from catch-up viewing and streaming, which are not captured in the initial live overnight figures. The show still gave ITV2 its biggest audience of the year so far in terms of viewing on the night.

With Euro 2020 running for the next two weeks ITV would expect to see a higher proportion of catch-up viewing than normal as football fans put live sport first, with Love Island due to run through the summer.

ITV will be pleased at being able to squeeze extra ad breaks into the clashes as France/Switzerland went to penalties and Spain/Croatia was resolved in extra time. The broadcaster has said that Euro 2020 and Love Island will make the most ad revenues for June and July in the broadcaster’s history.

While online dating apps may have refined their technologies over recent years, some of the more annoying features still exist. Whether it’s swiping through endless profiles, chats that go nowhere, receiving explicit, unwanted photos or incompatible matches, the experience can be frustrating for users looking for a relationship.

However, a number of female tech entrepreneurs have been attempting to change that. Following on the heels of Whitney Wolfe Herd, whose app Bumble only allows women to initiate the first contact (and which was valued at $13bn – £10bn – when it floated earlier this year), there are others trying to build more female-friendly platforms. Clementine Lalande, 37, launched Pickable in 2018 for women who wanted more discretion and disliked too much online exposure. Women don’t need to upload a photo or give their name, so they can browse men’s profiles anonymously.

In 2015, along with a friend, Lalande also helped create the “slow dating”...

Overseas business leaders will no longer need to quarantine when arriving in England if their trip is likely to be of significant economic benefit to the UK, the government has announced.

Company executives wishing to travel to England to make a “financial investment in a UK-based business” or for “establishing a new business within the UK” will be exempt but they will need written permission first.

The Department for Business said: “This exemption is designed to enable activity that creates and preserves UK jobs and investment, while taking steps to ensure public health risks are minimised.”

But the government added that business leaders will not qualify for an exemption if the activities can be carried out remotely via telephone or email, or by another person.

“Significant economic benefit” is considered to be having a greater than 50% chance of creating or preserving at least 500 UK-based jobs, or creating a new UK business within two years,...

A series of “gigafactories” producing electric car batteries must be built in the UK to secure the future of the country’s automotive industry, according to a new report by the sector’s trade body.

The government should announce a “binding target” of 60 gigawatt hours (60GWh) of battery annual production capacity to be in place by 2030, the study commissioned by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said.

This is one of a number of policy proposals put forward by the SMMT, which it said could create 40,000 new, well-paid and high-skilled UK auto industry jobs and boost economic prospects in the north-east and West Midlands, as part a successful transition to a zero-emissions future combined with “ambitious global trading terms”.

When the sociologist Michael Young coined the idea of a meritocracy in 1958, he imagined a dystopian future where those who had succeeded on the basis of their inherited advantages would instead congratulate themselves on having done so as a result of their skills and capabilities. In Young’s satirical essay, the elite believed their success was down to individual merit, while a disenfranchised underclass were considered deserving of their social position. Young’s term is now frequently used with a straight face by those who understand neither its original negative connotations, nor what a travesty it is to suggest that merit is the primary factor determining a person’s life chances today.

For a long time, I told myself that my achievements were the product of the meritocracy I was born into, where hard work was both a necessity and a sufficient condition of success. I grew up in Grimsby, and like many entrepreneurial origin stories, mine began at school. To supplement my...

“This is only going to end one way. Given the economic backdrop and with government support schemes ending in a few months, this insane level of growth is long overdue a correction.

In some rural hotspots houses are selling for 40% over the asking price. The UK housing market has a rocket attached that is burning low on fuel and once this perfect storm passes, we are headed for a serious shock to the system.”

For 10 years, Jonathan has been available on email. He receives messages as early as 6am and as late as midnight, and steadily for a 12-hour stretch every day. And right from when he first became a lawyer, the clear expectation was that he would do his best to read them as soon as they came in.

“When you get these emails on your phone, as we all do now, the pressure externally and internally to do something is huge,” Jonathan, 41, from north-west England, says.

Grimacing, he remembers checking his inbox while on holiday with his partner, which led to a blazing row in the middle of a tourist spot. “I was told: ‘What can you do about it here?’ I said: ‘I can’t do anything about it – but I need to know, I need to see if there’s anything for me to reply to.’”

We were already struggling to maintain boundaries around work before the pandemic; for many of us, its migration into the home has been the final blow. Those of us who work remotely are now working...

Norway’s state oil company Equinor will triple its UK hydrogen output, after setting out plans to build the world’s biggest hydrogen production plant with carbon capture and storage technology near Hull.

Equinor plans to produce clean-burning “blue hydrogen” to supply the Keadby gas power plant in Lincolnshire, owned by energy company SSE, making it the world’s first full-scale power plant to burn pure hydrogen to generate electricity.

Anders Opedal, the chief executive of Equinor, said on Monday that the company plans to produce another 1,200MW of blue hydrogen in the Humber area to help supply the Keadby hydrogen power plant.

He said that without hydrogen and carbon capture technology there was “no viable path to net zero and realising the Paris goals”.

Earlier this year Equinor and SSE set out plans to produce enough hydrogen to supply the Saltend Chemicals Park and Saltend Power Station. The 600MW project will extract hydrogen from traditional...

Marco Gobbetti was hired by Burberry to solve one boardroom crisis – the uncomfortable reign as chief executive of Christopher Bailey, who was clearly better suited to being the creative boss. By skipping off early, though, he’s caused another. Burberry doesn’t have a succession plan, as far as one can tell, which is not ideal when the UK’s leading fashion house is persistently talked about as a takeover candidate.

You could see Burberry’s discomfort in its effort to describe Gobbetti’s time as “nearly” five years with the company. It depends on how you count it. He became chief executive almost exactly four years ago after a six-month warm-up tour of Asia. More relevantly, he launched his five-year plan in November 2017, so, even if he stays until the end of this year, he will have overseen only four years of a five-year overhaul, which is not quite a full lap of the catwalk.

One assumes Gobbetti’s wish to be closer to his family in Italy is genuine because...

The settlement, announced on Monday by North Carolina attorney general Josh Stein, is the first reached by the company with a state government. A trial was set to start in July.

The deal also includes restrictions on sales of products that appeal to minors and requires Juul to produce yearly reports demonstrating its compliance.

Stein told a news conference he began investigating Juul after “hearing from friends about the devastation that this product had visited on kids’ lives – addiction, depression, bad grades, switching schools, medical treatment and more.”

“Juul sparked and spread a disease, the disease of nicotine addiction. They did it to teenagers across North Carolina and this country simply to make money,” Stein said. “Their greed is not only reprehensible, it is unlawful.”

Documents obtained by North Carolina during its investigations will be made available to the public in July 2022. The money from the settlement will be used to...

The insurer Hiscox has agreed a settlement with a group of about 400 companies over business interruption losses suffered as a result of lockdowns during the Covid-19 crisis.

Thousands of businesses tried to make claims with insurance companies at the start of the pandemic in 2020 but many refused to pay out.

However, a test case at the supreme court in January this year found that six major insurers, including Hiscox, should make payments totalling about £1.2bn.

The number of new solar farms planned for the east of England has more than doubled in recent months as farmers decide to swap crops for clean energy.

New solar farm applications for sites across Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Essex in the last five months have climbed to 840 megawatts, or the same as 2m household solar panels.

The departure of Marco Gobbetti as chief executive of Burberry raises the key question of whether Riccardo Tisci, whom Gobbetti appointed creative director soon after he joined, will remain at the luxury fashion brand.

A desire to be closer to his family in Italy was given as the reason behind Gobbetti’s decision to quit Burberry, and Tisci too is thought to have found it difficult to be away from family in Italy for prolonged periods during the pandemic. The designer was a fashion student in London in his teens and has a deep affection for British culture and subculture, but the pull of his homeland remains strong. Italy has many deep-pocketed luxury brands and a shortage of exciting design talent, so opportunities are likely to present themselves.

Marco Gobbetti has quit as chief executive of the luxury fashion brand Burberry after nearly five years in the role.

The British fashion brand said Gobbetti – who was charged with turning around the businesses when he took the reins in 2017 – was leaving to take a job in Italy that would allow him to be closer to his family. Luxury Italian group Salvatore Ferragamo, famous for making shoes worn by Hollywood starts such as Audrey Hepburn, announced on Monday it had appointed Gobbetti as its new chief executive.

Shares fell nearly 8% in early trading, making Burberry the biggest faller on the FTSE 100.

Burberry chairman Gerry Murphy credited the outgoing chief executive with leading the transformation of the brand and business.

Murphy said: “The board and I are naturally disappointed by Marco’s decision but we understand and fully respect his desire to return to Italy after nearly 20 years abroad. With the execution of our strategy on track and our...

South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa yesterday said all gatherings, indoors and outdoors, would be banned for 14 days, along with the sale of alcohol, dining in restaurants and travel to or from the worst-hit areas of the country. An extended curfew is also being imposed, and schools shut early for holidays.

Ramaphosa warned:

The UK has been accused of allowing a fleet of mainly EU “fly-shooting” fishing boats “unfettered access” to the Channel, without a proper assessment of the impact on fish populations, the seabed or the livelihoods of small-scale fishers.

Organisations representing small-scale fishers on both sides of the Channel have warned that the fleet is having a “devastating” effect on their catches. They are calling for a review of the vessels’ UK licences until an impact assessment has been carried out.

Fly-shooter fishing boats, sometimes called Danish or Scottish seiners, tow lead-weighted ropes along the seabed at either end of a net that encircles and captures entire shoals of fish.

The strength of the UK jobs market and rates of pay has been overstated, according to new research, just as the government prepares to cut back its wage support scheme for furloughed workers this week.

There is a risk of “dangerous complacency”, the Resolution Foundation warned, as people are still working fewer hours than they were before the pandemic and headline pay growth is overstated.