Good morning.
Senior Merseyside politicians have urged Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson to resign(£) following his arrest(£) on Friday. Anderson was released on police bail after “cooperating fully” with detectives for six hours.
Thousands of entrepreneurs(£) are calling on the chancellor to scrap plans to raise capital gains tax…
… As Jacob Rees-Mogg(£) warns the Rishi Sunak that raising taxes to pay the Covid bill will lose the government the next election.
The government has told hundreds of thousands of flat owners to take a second charge(£) on their properties to fix fire safety defects.
Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group(£) is making a last-ditch attempt to rescue Debenhams(£).
The Guardian, meanwhile, looks at some of the stranger uses developers are turning to for the nation’s glut of empty department stores. Crazy golf, anyone?
And The Sunday Times(£) takes a look at how the bromance between Philip Green and Mike Ashley turned sour…
… And at the leveraged deals(£) that are now coming back to bite heavily indebted retailers.
Lidl, Pets at Home and Whole Foods have said they, too, will pay back millions of pounds of business rates relief(£).
Primark(£) lost £430m in sales this autumn as the second lockdown shuttered shops.
Ann Summers(£) has become the latest retailer to agree a CVA to cut rents.
CVAs(£) have so far cost the Crown Estate(£) millions of pounds in lost rent.
The FT (£) dives deep into the crisis in retail, asking what new purpose can the UK’s town centres find?
Perhaps department stores could become data storage? A Canadian investment company wants to raise £300m on the LSE to buy up data centres(£).
Confidence(£) among UK business leaders has grown to its highest level since March, but only one in four feel upbeat about next year.
And the construction sector(£) has recorded its biggest rise in new orders in six years.
The FT (£) takes a closer look at Airbnb’s IPO.
Berkeley Group(£) has shrugged off fears that the pandemic will lead to an exodus to the shires by buying development sites in London.
And Fenton Whelan(£) has resumed sales at its £500m Park Modern scheme overlooking Kensington Palace Gardens.
Meanwhile, well-healed city-dwellers, looking to escape to the countryside, have pushed up rural rents(£).
But villagers in Co Durham are foaming at the mouth at the lord of the manor’s plans to build more homes near Raby Castle(£).
Tech has helped Milton Keynes go from new town to boom town, says the Sunday Times (£).
Meanwhile The FT (£) has a few ideas of what the office of 2021 should look like. Anything has to be better than another year at the kitchen table.
And finally, in these uncertain times it is good to have something dependable – a fixed certainty that seems to weather the roughest storms. Like the fact that Britannia Hotels are still the worst in Britain(£). Which? has named the unfortunate hotelier the UK’s worst chain for the eighth year in a row, attracting a 37% approval rating by customers, down even from last year’s 39%. Its “filthy hovels” were found to be smeared with enterococci bacteria and laced with previous guests’ hairs and stains. Britannia said it had spent £2m on Covid-19 precautions “but we accept there is more to do”. Like cleaning, perhaps?
