Harvey Nichols is joining the secondhand resale trend this month via a partnership with the specialist service Reflaunt.

Customers will be able to resell luxury handbags, fashion, accessories and watches, earning up to 80% back of the original price, when the items are resold via a Reflaunt-run space on the upmarket department store’s website.

Items can be dropped off in Harvey Nichols branches in London, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Edinburgh or Leeds, while Reflaunt’s concierge service will pick up the goods up from London addresses. From September, shoppers outside the UK will be able to use the service with complimentary shipping.

Manju Malhotra, the chief executive of Harvey Nichols, said the partnership would offer customers “a circular model of consumption and ensure luxury fashion items are given the longer lifespan that they deserve”.

The luxury resale market is growing rapidly as consumers try to be more environmentally conscious...

Civil servants who continue to work from home are not at risk of having their pay cut, the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, has said.

Kwarteng also said he thought flexible working, enabling people to carry on doing their jobs partly from home, was “here to stay”.

The suggestion that government officials who refuse to return to the office should face a pay cut was made by an unnamed cabinet minister quoted in the Daily Mail on Monday. The minister, who wants to see more workers back at their desks, argued that penalising those staying at home would be justified because they were benefiting for not having to pay for travel.

The Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba has fired a manager accused of rape, as its chief executive condemned the “ugly forced drinking culture” affecting the company.

An unidentified employee had accused her manager and a client of sexual assault during a work trip to eastern China, according to media reports. She was allegedly made to drink and later violated. Police are investigating.

On Monday, Alibaba’s chief executive, Daniel Zhang, issued an internal memo to staff – seen by AFP – condemning the attack and his own company’s initial handling of the complaint.

He said internal investigations found the accused had confessed to “intimate acts” with the woman while she was inebriated, violating company policy.

“He will be fired and never be rehired,” Zhang said, adding the issue was now with the police. A company representative confirmed the accused had been sacked.

The client in the case accused of sexual assault has also been fired by...

Like a tedious household repair job, fixing the accounting for Britain’s largest and most important companies is always put off until it’s too late – and then bodged anyway, with often calamitous results.

As Covid-era government support for some of the country’s most precariously positioned companies winds down, accounting for their finances remains trapped in this unhealthy pattern. Reforms promised after the 2018 collapse of Carillion, after years of mis-accounting and at a cost to taxpayers of £150m, remain some way off. Those that are proposed by business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng fail to address deep-seated structural flaws.

The need for decent accounting could hardly be more critical. A recent study by none other than the “big four” accountancy firm EY found that the pandemic had led to a doubling in the number of listed companies issuing three profit warnings in just 12 months. A third were using government-backed Covid support loans and half were...

Deliveroo has hit its highest share price since it floated on the stock market in March after it disclosed that the German rival service Delivery Hero had taken a 5% stake.

Shares in the London-listed food delivery company rose by as much as 10% to 360p in early trading on Monday after it announced the news.

Deliveroo has had a trying few months as a listed company, ever since its shares slumped by more than a quarter on the firm’s stock market debut, when they were priced at 390p.

Equity analysts at the broker Jefferies said it was “hard to say with conviction at this point what Delivery Hero’s intention is” with its Deliveroo stake.

Berlin-based Delivery Hero was founded in 2011 and has been listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange since 2017, where it currently has a market value of almost €33bn (£28bn), more than four times higher than that of Deliveroo. Delivery Hero operates in more than 50 countries, across Europe, central and South America,...

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

The takeover battle for Vectura, the UK inhaler company, between a private equity company and a cigarette maker has escalated after Philip Morris hiked its offer for the company.

PMI, the owner of Marlboro cigarettes, has lifted its bid for Vectura to just over £1bn, just a couple of days after its previous bid was trumped by Carlyle, the US private equity group.

Carlyle’s bid had been accepted by Vectura’s board... following criticism from medical experts alarmed about the prospect of a major tobacco company owning a firm which makes medicines and devices to help with breathing problems.

PMI insists that it is committed to a long term transformation of its business to go ‘beyond Nicotine’, rather than being focused on “short term gains and efficiency” (a pop at the much-criticised private equity...

Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba has announced that it is cooperating with a police investigation into sexual assault allegations aired by a company employee.

A statement on Sunday by the company said it had also had suspended “relevant parties suspected of violating our policies and values,” asserting that it had a “zero-tolerance policy against sexual misconduct.”

An unidentified female employee made the allegations against Alibaba in a lengthy internal posting quoted by Chinese media, which AFP is unable to verify.

She accused her manager and a client of sexual assault during a work trip to the city of Jinan in Shandong province, according to media reports.

A hashtag for the allegation was among the top-viewed items on Chinese social media platform Weibo on Sunday.

Sexual misconduct has garnered increasing attention in China especially since the country’s own #MeToo movement was sparked by Chinese feminists in 2018.

In one of the...

A letter to Boris Johnson sent a fortnight ago by James Ramsbotham called on the prime minister to save the north-east from the “damage being done to our economy” by Brexit and urged him to give it his “most urgent and personal attention”. Two weeks later, it remains unanswered.

Ramsbotham is the chief executive of the North East England Chamber of Commerce and speaks for thousands of businesses caught by the red tape and extra costs of complying with EU rules. In a recent survey, 38% of members said sales to Europe had fallen since January.

“This is not teething problems,” he says. “Our ports face the EU and our region has the highest proportion of any exporting to the EU. It is vital that more barriers come down.”

Surveys by the chamber show that three-quarters of its members wanted to stay in the single market when asked about their personal views.

The same proportion reported they had been financially harmed by leaving the EU.

“Many...

The British airline Virgin Atlantic is considering raising funds on the London Stock Exchange in an attempt to shore up its balance sheet.

The listing, which is expected to be announced in the autumn, is likely to see the billionaire Sir Richard Branson relinquish overall control of the business. His Virgin Group currently owns 51% of the airline with the US-based Delta Air Lines owning the rest.

Like most airlines around the world, the firm has been hammered by the Covid-19 pandemic. In April it reported a £659m pretax loss for 2020 after passenger numbers dropped by 80%.

The group also cut costs, shedding 41% of its workforce and retiring some older aircraft early.

That came after a £1.2bn rescue deal last summer, including £170m in loans from the Davidson Kempner hedge fund, to keep the business going after months without scheduled flights.

Branson, who founded the airline in 1984, injected £200m of his own money, raised through selling...

Halifax has fired the latest salvo in the price war between mortgage lenders with the launch of a two-year fixed-rate deal priced at 0.83%.

The announcement of the ultra-low rate, which is available via mortgage brokers to those wishing to take out a loan worth up to 60% of the value of their home, comes amid a flurry of rate cutting by some of the UK’s biggest lenders.

Last month, HSBC and TSB both announced two-year mortgages at 0.94% and Nationwide building society became the first to offer a five-year deal below 1%.

Halifax’s mortgage, which comes with a fee of £1,499, joins a rising number of sub-1% deals for borrowers with large deposits.

Rhys Schofield, managing director at broker Peak Mortgages and Protection, said: “Where the UK’s largest mortgage lender goes, others will surely follow.”

But he cautioned: “These headline grabbers often come with significant setup fees and Halifax are about the only high street lender still charging...

The former chancellor Philip Hammond has been accused by Labour of breaking the ministerial code, after reportedly writing to the Treasury to advocate for a bank he is a paid adviser for.

The former MP, who is now a Conservative peer, became the latest figure embroiled in questions over lobbying, following a government-commissioned review which found the rules regarding access and influence of politicians and senior civil servants “worked well”.

Since leaving the Commons, Lord Hammond has taken on several roles, including as a non-executive director of OakNorth International bank.

In an email sent during the first few months of the Covid crisis, the Sunday Telegraph said Hammond contacted Charles Roxburgh – the Treasury’s second most senior civil servant – to tell him of a “toolkit” OakNorth had developed to assess possible borrowers.

An attachment to the message contained OakNorth’s pitch, and Hammond asked Roxburgh to “pass it on to anyone else...

A multinational call centre used by dozens of leading UK companies has been criticised for what unions have called the intrusive monitoring of home-working staff and their families, as well as asking workers to hand over biometric and medical data..

Unions say Teleperformance, which also answers calls for a series of UK government departments, is “pushing workers’ boundaries” over long-term home working amid coronavirus, and accuse the company of having unfairly targeted several staff who objected.

While the claims do not directly affect the company’s 10,000 UK staff, some of the criticism centres on countries in which English-speaking staff answer calls to UK customers, such as Greece and Albania.

The French-based company, which employs about 380,000 people in 34 countries, says it fully complies with all local and international laws, and that feedback from staff shows overwhelmingly positive responses.

But one staff member who dealt with British...

A South Korean cosmetics company is making a major push into Britain, and claims that those who sign up to be a sales representatives can earn thousands in commission each week, and bonuses of up to £720,000.

Founded in 2009, Atomy has become one of the world’s biggest “multilevel marketing” (MLM) companies – where individuals make money by selling items and getting people to sign up – and claims to have 15 million members globally.

After launching in the US, Canada, Australia and other territories, it has set its sights on the UK and Europe, and says tens of thousands of people have already signed up.

It is the latest in a line of direct-sales beauty companies likely to particularly attract women who may be struggling financially and looking for new ways of earning cash – a trend that has been accelerated by the pandemic.

The company’s launch videos and promotional material emphasise the large sums it says can potentially be earned as a...

When the Bank of England announced on Thursday that it had left interest rates on hold at just 0.1%, it made a prediction about inflation. The rate of price rises would increase in the near-term it said “and is projected to rise temporarily” to 4% in the winter.

This would put it at its highest rate for 10 years, and would be double the level the Bank is tasked with targeting. After that, it forecast inflation running at 3.3% in a year’s time, 2.1% in two years and falling back to 1.9% by the summer of 2024.

After a turbulent 18 months running an online retail business during the pandemic, Julie Jones is now facing a new challenge.

One of her eight employees has decided not to get vaccinated against Covid-19. The company, based in the north-west of England, works in a small office space, and having one unvaccinated team member is causing health and financial concerns for Jones (not her real name) and her other staff.

“It’s a difficult situation. I’m between a rock and a hard place. I would really rather she was jabbed, but I feel it is personal choice,” Julie said.

Fifteen years ago, when the UK government was finalising the legislation that shaped the modern gambling industry, moral panic about planned “supercasinos” meant the idea was ultimately consigned to the scrapheap. Plans for up to 40 were whittled down to eight, then again to just one in Manchester, before Gordon Brown caved in to media pressure – shrewdly harnessed by the Tories – and abandoned the idea altogether.

The flurry of gambling company results due out this week will show how the spotlight shone in the wrong place. Smartphones hit the market at roughly the same time as the 2005 Gambling Act came into force. We now live in a society where everyone has a 24-hour casino in their pocket.

Entain, owner of Ladbrokes; Flutter, which owns Paddy Power; and Gamesys, the firm behind Virgin Games and other brands, all have financial results out over the next few days. Investors will be watching to see whether a pick-up in online casino play during the pandemic,...

The department store beauty hall is facing a fight for survival: the pandemic has accelerated the shift to buying cosmetics, skincare and other pampering products online, and a growing number of sales are now via a smartphone rather than over the counter.

Manicured sales assistants, testing pots and makeovers are being replaced by powerful influencers and digital beauty halls that can switch up the products on offer at the tweak of an algorithm.

Where once established brands such as L’Oréal, Clarins and Mac dominated the market, they now face heavy competition from a plethora of upstarts, which can quickly rise and fall on waves of social media interest.

Retailers have been accused of doing too little to warn customers about recalled cat food that has been linked to the deaths of potentially thousands of pets, prompting concern that some remains on sale in shops.

As more details emerged of the scandal, cat owners spoke of their distress at watching their pets suffer and die.

Several owners shared evidence that suggested branches of Sainsbury’s continued stocking the recalled food even after investigators raised concerns that it might be the source of an outbreak of pancytopenia, a disease that is often fatal in cats.

Anthony Lyman, from Northampton, said his heart sank when he learned that his annual energy bill would climb by more than £150 a year after the regulator’s decision to lift the energy price cap.

The 35-year-old is autistic, lives in a one-bed flat and shares custody of his two children. He was forced out of work by long-term sickness shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

“This is the wrong news at the wrong time,” he said. “We’re already living on the breadline, and need help to keep food in our cupboards, so to suddenly hear that energy prices will go up by this much has taken things to a very high anxiety level. My heart sank to be honest.”

The winter energy crisis has reignited calls for more to be done to help protect the most vulnerable in society from unaffordable energy costs, including a social energy tariff set below the level of the regulator’s energy price cap.

Lyman pays roughly £40 a month on electricity, and between £30 and...

US private equity firm Carlyle has made an improved £958m takeover offer for British inhaler maker Vectura, trumping an earlier bid from tobacco company Philip Morris International that had alarmed medical experts. Carlyle said on Friday it would offer 155p a share for Vectura, higher than its previous offer of 136p in May and outbidding a 150p offer from Marlboro cigarettes maker Philip Morris International (PMI) last month.

Vectura bosses recommended that shareholders vote in favour of the improved Carlyle offer, and withdrew its previous advice that they approve the PMI offer.

Doctors, health charities and politicians had raised serious concerns about prospect of a big tobacco company taking over a firm that makes products that treat conditions caused by smoking.

“The Vectura directors note the reported uncertainties relating to the impact on Vectura’s wider stakeholders arising as a result of the possibility of the company being owned by PMI,”...

The boss of Capita, one of the UK’s largest employers, has credited its policy of allowing workers to work from home for its low levels of absences because of Covid self-isolation app alerts.

Jon Lewis, the chief executive of the outsourcing firm, said on Friday that a large number of his staff want to continue working from home, either permanently or part-time, in the future.

The vast majority of Capita’s 43,000 UK employees are still working from home, despite the removal of nearly all restrictions on gatherings in England and the dropping of the government’s guidance to work from home where possible.

Non-farm payrolls increased by 943,000 jobs last month after rising 938,000 in June, the labor department said in its closely watched employment report on Friday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast payrolls increasing by 870,000 jobs.

Job gains were, however, flattered by shifts in seasonal employment at schools caused by Covid-19. Estimates ranged from as low as 350,000 to as high 1.6 million.

The unemployment rate fell to 5.4% from 5.9% in June.

“Labor market conditions appear to be healthy at the start of third quarter as labor-intensive service businesses continue to hire given strong pent-up demand,” said Sam Bullard, a senior economist at Wells Fargo in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Prior to the pandemic, education employment normally declined by about 1 million jobs in July as schools closed, but this year many students are in summer school catching up after disruptions caused by the coronavirus. This likely threw off the model or...

The US-backed bidder for Morrisons has raised its offer for the supermarket group by £400m to £6.7bn in an attempt to fend off a rival suitor and win over reluctant shareholders.

Fortress, the owner of Majestic Wine which is owned by the Japanese investment giant SoftBank, said on Friday that it was raising its bid to 270p a share plus a further 2p a share special dividend as it was “committed to becoming the new owner of Morrisons”.

The raised offer for the UK’s fourth-largest supermarket comes as rival bidder Clayton, Dubilier & Rice faces a deadline for a renewed offer on Monday at 5pm.

It also follows comments from Morrisons’ biggest shareholder, Silchester International Investors, which owns a 15% stake in the UK’s fourth largest supermarket chain, that it was “not inclined to support” the Fortress group’s initial 254p a share bid.

The fund manager said Morrisons’ board, which recommended the Fortress offer last month, should “allow more...

Britain’s biggest mortgage lender has predicted a cooling in Britain’s house price boom after reporting a fall in the annual rate of property inflation.

The Halifax said prices rose by 0.4% in July, the first month since buyers in England and Northern Ireland had to contend with a less generous stamp duty holiday.

However, the bank said prices had been rising more sharply a year ago, so the annual rate of increase came down from 8.7% to 7.4% – its lowest level since March.