The number of EU citizens searching for work in Britain has fallen by 36% since Brexit, according to a study by the jobs site Indeed. This issue, combined with the impact of the pandemic, has led to staff shortages in some sectors.

How is the shortage of EU workers affecting your business? Would you like ministers to issue visas for more seasonal workers?

HMRC also said that following the changes to the rules, “an expected but noticeable decrease [in sales] has been observed”.

Until 30 June, the first £500,000 spent on a property was tax-free, which meant a saving for a buyer of up to £15,000. However, Sarah Coles, a personal finance analyst at the investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown, said the tax break had a “powerful psychological impact … which went way beyond the actual cash buyers could save”.

A £3.8bn stamp duty holiday was announced by Sunak in July 2020 to ward off a collapse in the housing market during the first Covid lockdown. It was due to end on 31 March this year but, a few weeks prior to that, it was extended to the end of June.

On 1 July the tax break was scaled back, with the threshold at which the tax on property purchases begins falling to £250,000. This so-called “nil rate band” will return to its pre-pandemic level of £125,000 on 1 October.

The stamp duty holiday has been credited...

Britain’s biggest retailers are warning their stock levels have fallen to the lowest since 1983 amid a sharp drop in imports and pandemic staff shortages across the economy.

The Confederation of British Industry’s monthly survey of big retail and wholesale firms found that stock levels in relation to expected sales fell in August, hitting a new record low for a fifth consecutive month.

Against a backdrop of increased business after the removal of most pandemic restrictions, retail sales grew at the fastest pace since December 2014 in August, while growth in wholesale orders hit the highest level since the lobby group began surveying retail industry trends in 1983.

Chinese Uber rival Didi Chuxing has reportedly suspended plans to launch in the UK and Europe, as the ride-hailing company faces pressure from authorities in its home market.

The company’s plans to launch in the UK and Europe have been pushed back at least 12 months, and staff working on the launch have been told they face possible redundancy, the Daily Telegraph first reported.

The ongoing regulatory crackdown on Chinese tech companies by the country’s government has complicated Didi’s plans to launch in Europe, which has its own strict data protection regulations, according to a source cited by Nikkei Asia.

Didi had secured licences to operate in Manchester, Salford and Sheffield as part of its UK plans.

A Didi spokesperson said: “We continue to explore additional new markets, liaising with relevant stakeholders in each and being thoughtful about when to introduce our services. As soon as we have news on additional new markets, we look forward...

Two companies linked to a UK power station capable of supplying up to 1m homes are to pay £6m after breaking market manipulation laws.

For more than a year, ESB Independent Generation Trading (ESBIGT) and Carrington Power pushed up energy costs for households by sending inaccurate data to the grid.

The energy regulator, Ofgem, said the two companies had admitted to inadvertently breaching rules when they reported how much energy they were able to supply to the grid.

The companies recognised that they had “inadvertently breached” European rules by giving “false or misleading signals”.

They have agreed to pay £6m into a fund managed by Ofgem that supports charities that help vulnerable energy customers. By doing so they avoided a formal enforcement investigation.

The Ofgem regulatory director, Cathryn Scott, said: “Data accuracy is essential for keeping the costs of running the electricity system as low as possible for consumers.

“This...

After jumping a cent yesterday, the pound has added to yesterday’s gains against the US dollar.

Sterling is up another 0.2 cents at $1.3740, rising away from last week’s one-month low.

The dollar has been easing back generally, as investors reassess the prospect of the Federal Reserve slowing the pace of its $120bn/month bond-buying stimulus.

The markets had been expecting Fed Chair Jerome Powell to pencil in a timeline for winding down the Fed’s bond-buying program in his speech at the Jackson Hole Symposium later this week (a gathering of top central bankers, policymakers and economists in a Wyoming ski resort).

But now, tapering may be slipping further off the horizon, as policymakers wonder how much damage the Delta variant is causing.

Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan, a hawkish policymaker, said last week he might reconsider his stance if the virus harms the economy.

This has knocked the US dollar index lower against other...

Thousands of homes could soon be warmed by the heat from giant electricity grid transformers for the first time as part of new plans to harness “waste heat” and cut carbon emissions from home heating.

Trials are due to begin on how to capture the heat generated by transmission network transformers, owned by National Grid, to provide home heating for households connected to district heating networks operated by SSE.

Currently, hot air is vented from the giant substations to help cool the transformers that help to control the electricity current running through National Grid’s high-voltage transmission lines.

However, if the trial succeeds, about 1,300 National Grid substations could soon act as neighbourhood “boilers”, piping water heated by the substations into nearby heating networks, and on into the thousands of homes that use SSE’s services.

“Electric power transformers generate huge amounts of heat as a byproduct when electricity flows through...

The pharmacy chain Boots will become the latest large retailer to make its products available through Deliveroo, as the takeaway delivery company aims to expand beyond restaurant orders.

Stores in London, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Nottingham will be among the 14 initially available in the trial as part of a pilot scheme launching on Tuesday.

The deal will mean customers will be able to order medicines and painkillers for milder ailments such as coughs, colds and hay fever for home delivery. Makeup, toiletries, baby products and snacks will also be among the 400 products initially available from US-owned Boots, which is Britain’s largest pharmacy chain.

If the Boots deal is rolled out nationwide it would add to Deliveroo’s growing business delivering groceries and other products beyond takeaway food orders.

Deliveroo was started by Will Shu, a London-based investment banker, when he spotted a gap in the market for takeaway deliveries. However, in...

A food delivery driver who was allegedly sacked by Chinese food delivery company Easi after trying to raise concerns about pay and worker safety, has had his case taken to the Fair Work Commission by the Transport Workers’ Union.

According to the Fair Work claim, Lawrence Du, 35, started working for Easi in Brisbane in early June, but was sacked in early August, he claims after making inquiries with other workers about work safety, wages and other conditions.

Du said when he added friends to the Chinese communications platform Easi uses to communicate with drivers, he was called a “fraud” and he said Easi said messages sent to others about safety were “a scam”.

“When I tried to talk to people about the pay and conditions at Easi, and I added some friends on their communication platform, I was told ‘We don’t feel like continuing the relationship any more with you’, and they just terminated me without a notice.”

A spokesperson for Easi said the...

Jarvis Astaire, who has died aged 97, is best remembered as the business brain behind the boxing alliance he formed with the mercurial matchmaker Mickey Duff, which dominated the sport in Britain for more than two decades before the emergence of Frank Warren in the 1980s. But he was also a film producer and financier, and bridled at any attempt to pigeonhole him as a boxing man. “Boxing has never accounted for more than 10% of my business activity,” he wrote in his 1999 autobiography, Encounters. “I have always resented it when people, and particularly the media, refer to me as the boxing promoter Jarvis Astaire.”

In the world of film, Astaire managed Dustin Hoffman for four of his peak years in Hollywood, during which he made films such as Lenny (1974), All the President’s Men (1976) and Marathon Man (1976). He was also the producer or backer of many other films and television programmes, and was credited with being the driving force behind the development of closed...

Finance ministers, central bank governors and political leaders are hard at work preparing for the 2021 G20 heads of state and government summit in Rome on 30-31 October. With the Covid-19 pandemic stretching well into its second year, the meeting will come at a time of heightened uncertainty about public health and the global economy. And though the mechanisms of international cooperation have been weakened by the pandemic and remain bruised by Donald Trump’s legacy, they are more important than ever.

“Cooperation” need not refer to international coordination of national monetary or fiscal policies. For the most part, countries on their own can move those levers in whatever direction is best for them. Instead, the G20 should focus on financial stability, trade and vaccination. This is in addition to other important areas, especially the existential issue of global climate change, which should and will receive a lot of attention.

Over the course of 2020, most...

Growth is slowing and price pressures are mounting. Consumers are anxious and an important commodity is in short supply. That was the state of the UK in the mid-1970s, when a single word was used to describe a combination of recession and a rising cost of living: stagflation.

And, in a much milder form, it is the malaise that is afflicting the economy today. The shortage is of computer chips rather than crude oil but the latest snapshot from IHS Markit/Cips suggests businesses face supply and demand constraints.

To be sure, an incurable optimist could put a decent gloss on the latest purchasing managers’ index. The economy is growing at a relatively healthy pace, firms are taking on more staff, and there are some signs that price pressures are abating.

Two sources confirmed that talks on refinancing GFG’s European operations, first reported by the Financial Times, were continuing. One person said GFG was in the middle of several conversations over refinancing.

White Oak is led by Andre Hakkak, a former investment banker and asset manager who co-founded the company in 2007 along with a former executive at KKR, a large US private equity firm.

White Oak specialises in asset-backed lending that would have typically been carried out by banks in the past. Private finance firms typically charge much higher interest than banks to compensate for higher risk.

Both GFG and White Oak declined to comment.

PayPal is to allow users in the UK to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies through the payment platform for the first time.

The firm said it would allow customers to choose from four types of cryptocurrency – bitcoin, rthereum, litecoin and bitcoin cash – and that the service would be available via the PayPal app and its website.

A crypto tab will be added to the platform, showing real-time currency prices as well as offering educational content to help answer common questions and learn more about cryptocurrencies, including the potential risks, PayPal said.

While the CEO of Nabisco’s parent company is paid nearly $17m a year, plants are closing, jobs outsourced to Mexico, and older workers are unable to retire on weakened pension benefits

Stephen Hester, the former boss of Royal Bank of Scotland, will become the chairman of easyJet at the end of the year.

Hester, who most recently served as chief executive of the insurer RSA from 2014 until May, will join the easyJet board as a non-executive director next month.

He will take over as chair of the airline on 1 December, succeeding John Barton, who will step down after almost nine years in the role.

Hester has more than 35 years of experience across a range of business sectors, including at the property firm British Land and the Swiss bank Credit Suisse.

However, he is best known for leading the bailed-out bank RBS – now rebranded as NatWest – after being parachuted in to the job during the 2008 banking crisis, when the lender teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.

Hester ran the part-nationalised bank for about five years, a role he described as “bruising and difficult”, until he was forced out with a payoff of at least £1.6m in...

Ian Botham, the former England cricketer and crossbench peer, has been appointed a UK trade ambassador to Australia, the government has announced.

He is one of 10 parliamentarians given a new role as a trade envoy, taking the total number of MPs and peers performing unpaid trade ambassador roles to 36.

In a tweet welcoming the appointment, the international trade secretary, Liz Truss, said Botham would “bat for business down under” and help firms seize the opportunities created by the free trade deal with Australia agreed in outline earlier this summer.

Botham is popular with Boris Johnson and his ministers because of his strong support for Brexit and he was given a peerage in the honours list last summer. He is regarded as one of England’s greatest ever cricketers and is well known in Australia, not least because he is credited with almost single-handedly defeating its team in the 1981 Ashes tour

Truss said the 10 new trade envoys would help to...

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the world economy, the financial markets, the eurozone and business.

Is the post-pandemic growth rebound running out of steam this month, as the Delta variant hits economies around the world?

New economic data from Australia and Japan this morning show that activity slowed in August, ahead of a healthcheck on companies in the UK, the eurozone and the US.

In Australia, private sector output is shrinking at a faster rate this month as the recent lockdowns introduced in parts of the country bite.

A ‘flash’ survey of purchasing managers across the country show that the service sector contracted more sharply, as the pandemic continued to dampen demand and output. Some firms were forced to cut staff, as cases hit record levels.

This pulled the IHS Markit Flash Australia Composite Output Index down to a 15-month low of 43.5 in August, from 45.2 in July [any reading...

Way back in 1955, my parents both took out life insurance policies with the Prudential. In 1993 they were told by the company that the policies were “paid-up”, meaning they no longer had to pay any premiums, but the policies would remain active until their death.Sadly my father passed away aged 93 in May this year. However, my attempt to claim the £7,250 due to my mother has been turned down. The Prudential is insisting that it must see the original policy document or proof of my father’s occupation or address – from 1955.My mother, aged 86 and currently recovering from surgery to deal with pancreatic cancer, cannot recall where exactly they were living when they bought the policy, as with many young couples at that time they moved regularly, often renting rooms or staying with relatives. Somewhere along the way, the policy document was lost.

My mother, who is also insured and is a customer of the Pru, is the beneficiary, but the company won’t budge. It has been regularly...

Female directors at the UK’s biggest companies are still being paid a fraction of the amount their male counterparts receive, new research shows, underlining the pay gap that still exists between men and women in Britain’s boardrooms.

The average pay for FTSE 100 female directors stands at just £237,000 which is only slightly more than a quarter of the £875,900 paid to their male counterparts, according to research by New Street Consulting Group.

With female directors paid 73% less, the figures show the gender pay gap at blue-chip companies is far worse than the overall population, with women paid 15.5% less than men in the broader jobs market, based on official data.

The large pay gap at board level is mainly due to the majority of female directors at FTSE 100 companies holding non-executive jobs which attract lower salaries than executive ones.

The number of female directors at FTSE 100 firms has increased sharply in the last five years, said...

The New South Wales clubs lobby says it is facing an “oppressive” and “inflammatory” campaign by pokies whistleblower Troy Stolz and has asked for a court to restrain him from disparaging it further.

Last month, Guardian Australia revealed that ClubsNSW, the sector’s powerful peak body, was seeking a federal court order to stop Stolz making public statements, including to media outlets, about its motives or conduct while it sues him for allegedly breaching its confidence.

Stolz, a former ClubsNSW anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing manager, last year spoke out publicly about the sector’s alleged failure to stop money laundering through its pokies.

His former employer says Stolz did so in breach of his confidentiality obligations.

Stolz has more recently spoken out about the federal court case brought against him by ClubsNSW, including to Guardian Australia and other media outlets, and in tweets, retweets and via a GoFundMe page...

Opting for hydrogen that is made using fossil fuels rather than renewable electricity could create up to 8m tonnes of carbon emissions every year by 2050, according to an analysis of government data.

The figures show that the use of fossil-fuel hydrogen, or “blue hydrogen”, would create the same carbon emissions each year that more than a million petrol cars would produce, compared with using zero-carbon “green hydrogen”.

Ministers plan to use both blue and green hydrogen to replace fossil gas in factories, refineries and heating, but new figures show that an over-reliance on blue hydrogen would still lead to millions of tonnes of carbon emissions entering the atmosphere every year.

Blue hydrogen is extracted from fossil gas in a process that requires carbon capture technology to trap emissions – but this method still fails to capture between 5% and 15% of the CO2. Carbon emissions are also released when the fossil gas is extracted from oil and gas...

However, this year’s record commitment, which includes the unprecedented move of tearing up Channel 4’s regular schedule to air 17.5 hours of the Paralympics each day, could well mark a coverage high point as the broadcaster faces privatisation.

The channel’s ability to offer such vast coverage, which includes transforming the More4 channel into the “home of team sports” and offering 14 live streams on a dedicated Paralympic website, is because it doesn’t need to make a profit from the Olympics.

Channel 4 was established by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1982 as an editorially independent broadcaster to provide a culturally challenging alternative to BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. It is publicly owned but commercially funded, about 90% of income is derived from TV advertising, and as such is not required to turn a profit or pay dividends to shareholders.

“The way that Channel 4 was set up gives it the ability to do things unlikely to be achieved by any other...