Burberry’s turnaround chief plans £40m cuts and ‘scarf bar’ rollout

Burberry has unveiled a £40m cost-cutting programme as its new chief executive pledged to “stabilise the business” with a turnaround plan aimed at reviving the fortunes of the ailing British luxury fashion brand.Joshua Schulman, the former Coach boss who replaced his ousted predecessor, Jonathan Akeroyd, in July, said the company was “acting with urgency” after straying too far from its roots of “timeless core collections” and outerwear, including trench coats and scarves with its distinctive Burberry check.The new boss said he had used his first 90 days in post to start a cost-cutting programme aimed at trimming £40m from its cost base each year, about £25m of which will be pushed through during the 2025 financial year.Burberry managers refused to confirm how many jobs could be lost as a result, saying only that they had been “streamlining” office-based teams, including at head office.Schulman also unveiled an outerwear campaign, It’s Always Burberry Weather, involving the rollout of “scarf bars”, starting with its 57th Street flagship store in New York

Leading British actors call on chancellor to boost green investment in pensions

Leading British actors including Mark Rylance, Olivia Colman, and Benedict Cumberbatch have called on the chancellor to increase investment in clean energy by reforming pensions.Members of the performing arts union Equity have written an open letter to Rachel Reeves before her Mansion House speech on Thursday asking her to make “smart, strategic reforms” that could unlock £1.2tn from the pensions sector for growing clean energy and infrastructure in the UK.Other notable signatories include Stephen Fry, Jodie Whittaker, Paapa Essiedu, Alex Lawther, Freddie Fox, Ritu Arya, Will Attenborough, Leila Mimmack and Tom Burke.The letter celebrates Equity moving its £130m pension scheme to a fund with extensive fossil fuel exclusions

Steady Australian unemployment rate makes near-term interest cut unlikely

Australia’s unemployment rate held steady last month as employers kept hiring at almost the pace of a swelling population.The jobless rate in October was 4.1% for a third consecutive month, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Thursday. The result was in line with economists’ forecasts and matched a similar outcome for September.The economy added 9,700 full-time jobs and 6,200 part-time roles, making a net change of 15,900 positions

Reeves to announce ‘megafunds’ shake-up of local government pension scheme

Rachel Reeves will announce plans to merge local government retirement schemes into “megafunds” as she tries to revive long-running efforts to overhaul the public pension system.She will tell an audience of City leaders and chief executives on Thursday that she will introduce a pensions bill next year aimed at pooling assets from the 86 separate local government pension schemes (LGPS) in England and Wales into eight funds, worth about £50bn, by 2030.Grouped together, the LGPS represents one of the world’s largest defined-benefit schemes, with 6.5 million members and £360bn in assets.The decision is meant to mirror similar setups in Australia and Canada, where public-sector pension schemes have been consolidated into larger funds that are managed in-house by professional investors

Thames Water should explain its murky logic on fundraising

Congratulations to Thames Water: it is not going bust early in the new year. Probably. The necessary three-quarters of A-class bondholders have backed a proposal for the company, already drowning in £15bn of debt, to borrow another £3bn at the nose-bleed rate of 9.75% plus a hefty serving of fees on top. And, critically, the numbers are looking good to get permission from bondholders to access £400m of cash reserves

Owner of Aberdeen, Southampton and Glasgow airports sold in £1.53bn deal

The owner of Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton airports is being sold in a deal worth more than £1.5bn.The Spanish construction company Ferrovial and its partner Macquarie have agreed to offload the AGS Airports joint venture to AviAlliance, a German-headquartered airport operator.As part of the deal, which is expected to complete early next year, AviAlliance will pay £900m for the business and take on £653m in debt.Ferrovial and Macquarie’s 50/50 AGS joint venture was established in 2014 after their £1