Cooling UK labour market ‘questions need’ for Bank of England rate hikes; grocery inflation slows to two-year low – business live
Posted on Tuesday August 18, 2026

Youth unemployment down to 16.2% but remains at high level; Brent crude climbs above $91 a barrel as US-Iran ceasefire ends

The retail billionaire Mike Ashley has given the latest indication that his summer shopping spree may be far from over, after he increased his stake in luxury giant Hugo Boss to nearly half.

Ashley’s Frasers Group, which last week bought Harvey Nichols department stores for a reported £40m, increased its shareholding in the German fashion house to 48%, falling just short of taking full control.

In June, the British billionaire made a nearly €2bn (£1.73bn) takeover offer for the luxury group, but its board rejected Frasers’ bid as “inadequate” and urged shareholders not to accept Ashley’s offer.

The new, higher stake comes after 17.6% of shareholders accepted Ashley’s offer of €38 per share. That bid reflected only a 4% premium to Hugo Boss’s shares when it was tabled.

Despite this, Axel Rudolph, an analyst at investing platform IG, said it was “another major step towards gaining control” of the German company. Ashley’s new shareholding puts Frasers “firmly in the driving seat as it looks to increase its influence,” he added.

Ashley bought Harvey Nichols out of administration last week after the upmarket chain, which has 13 stores and 1,200 employees, warned it could run out of money if it did not find new funding. He also launched a bid to snap up the Australian footwear business Accent Group earlier this summer.

A 0.2% rise in UK foodservice inflation for July is the “calm before a potential storm”, experts in the sector have said as they brace for price hikes due to poor harvests.

July’s marginal 0.2% increase feels like the calm before a potential storm. With UK drought conditions actively threatening domestic vegetable yields, and global grain markets reacting to renewed geopolitical stress in the Black Sea, operators cannot afford to be complacent. The transition from summer to autumn will be a critical period for supply availability, making proactive, data-led procurement absolutely essential.

Broadly flat prices in July disguise significant volatility in the foodservice supply chain, and buyers face a very uncertain autumn and winter. While high temperatures can work to the advantage of many hospitality businesses in sales terms, extreme climate issues are likely to have seismic impacts on their operations in the years to come. Mitigating inflation is an urgent priority for venues seeking to retain guests and protect margins.

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Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley tightens hold on Hugo Boss
Posted on Tuesday August 18, 2026

Frasers Group increases stake in German fashion house to 48%, after buying Harvey Nichols chain last week

• Business live – latest updates

The retail billionaire Mike Ashley has given the latest indication that his summer shopping spree may be far from over, after he increased his stake in the luxury giant Hugo Boss to nearly half.

Ashley’s Frasers Group, which last week bought Harvey Nichols department stores for a reported £40m, increased its shareholding in the German fashion house to 48%, falling short of taking full control.

In June, the British billionaire made a nearly €2bn (£1.73bn) takeover offer for the luxury group, but its board rejected Frasers’ bid as “inadequate” and urged shareholders not to accept Ashley’s offer.

The new, higher stake is a result of 17.6% of shareholders accepting Ashley’s offer, which amounted to €38 a share. That bid reflected only a 4% premium to Hugo Boss’s shares when it was tabled.
Axel Rudolph, an analyst at the investing platform IG, said it was “another major step towards gaining control” of Hugo Boss. Ashley’s new shareholding puts Frasers “firmly in the driving seat as it looks to increase its influence”, he added.

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Oil prices jump after US-Iran ceasefire expires and Trump threatens Oman
Posted on Tuesday August 18, 2026

Brent crude rises above $90 a barrel for the first time since 30 July after US president tells Tehran to surrender

• Business live – latest updates

Oil prices have risen again after the two-month window to negotiate a peace deal in the US-Israel war on Iran expired on Monday with no end to the conflict in sight.

Iran said on Monday that it would take a more aggressive stance if talks with the US failed, while Donald Trump demanded Tehran “put up the white flag of surrender” in an interview with Fox News.

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Wetherspoons pubs ban playing music or taking calls on phone speakers
Posted on Tuesday August 18, 2026

Chain tells customers to ‘pipe down’ and use earphones instead, calling its venues ‘an oasis of tranquillity’

The pub chain Wetherspoons has banned customers from playing music or taking calls on speaker after growing complaints about the noise.

The company announced it had introduced the ban across its 792 pubs, saying sounds from smartphones and tablet computers had become an “increasing problem in recent years”.

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Democracy v the machine: the birth of the digital age and the warnings that were ignored
Posted on Tuesday August 18, 2026

Many hoped that the march of technology would usher in an egalitarian utopia – but some foresaw the threat it would pose to liberal society. Why did nobody listen?

One of the stranger things about this dizzying, headlong moment in time is that it doesn’t have much of a past. Everything is about the future of this, the future of that: the future of work, the future of humanity, the future of the planet. It’s as if everyone is screaming (some ecstatically, most terror-stricken): robots are taking over the world! Meanwhile, you can’t put down your phone, unplug, delete your AI apps, tell Zoom to piss off; it feels as if you are racing toward something, and can’t stop, or look back, or think straight.

But of course this weird moment in history does have a past. It comes from somewhere. It wasn’t inevitable. Things could have turned out differently. They still can. And if you look back, one thing you’ll see is that a lot of people saw this all coming. They foresaw our present when it was still the future. They thought it might turn out fabulously, a computer utopia. And they worried it might turn out disastrously. Above all, they issued warning after warning about the rise of what I call the artificial state, the replacement of the liberal democratic nation-state, the consent of the governed, with the rule of people by machines. They warned of a future in which democratic deliberation would be replaced by prediction by calculation, the public sphere would be supplanted by data-driven commerce, and drones would take the place of the demos. Why didn’t anyone listen?

The new underworld is made up of innocent and well-intentioned people who work with slide rules and calculating machines and computers which can retain an almost infinite number of bits of information as well as sort, categorise, and reproduce this information at the press of a button. Most of these people are highly educated, many of them are PhDs, and none that I have met have malignant political designs on the American public. They may, however, radically reconstruct the American political system, build a new politics, and even modify revered and venerable American institutions – facts of which they are blissfully innocent.

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US states take on Meta in pivotal trial over child social media addiction claims
Posted on Tuesday August 18, 2026

State attorneys general allege that tech company intentionally designed addictive products that harm young people

More than half of the states in the US have joined together in an unprecedented lawsuit against Meta that goes to trial on Tuesday, accusing the parent company of Instagram and Facebook of deliberately designing addictive products that lured in young people and caused them harm.

The jury trial is taking place in federal court in Oakland, California, and is expected to last between six and eight weeks. The jury is expected to hear from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri and employee turned whistleblower Arturo Béjar.

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Interviewing José Mourinho: ego, charisma, talent and his ‘rucksack of pain’
Posted on Tuesday August 18, 2026

Director Joe Pearlman says he expected Real Madrid manager to ‘try to manipulate us’ in making of Netflix series

Even in the hyperreal world of football, there are few characters more compelling, more polarising, or more everything than José Mourinho, the best and worst of public him on full display in a new three-part Netflix series. “It reminded me how good he was,” says Joe Pearlman, who directed Mourinho, and the actual Mourinho is, believe it or not, keen to communicate the same. As he puts it in the show: “I look, you look, I see more than you.”

Making documentaries, though, is often about taking people to the places they’re most skilled at avoiding. “I knew the interviews were going to be very intense,” says Pearlman, “and he was going to try and control the narrative and manipulate us. Everything bad is everyone else’s fault and everything he’s done is validated by winning. Because that’s all that’s important.”

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Fifa chief sacked after criticism of Infantino’s World Cup sell-off plan
Posted on Monday August 17, 2026

• Kevin Lamour said Fifa administration was ‘deceived’

• Chief operating officer knew he could lose his job

The Fifa chief operating officer, Kevin Lamour, has been sacked after openly criticising Gianni Infantino’s ill-fated plan to sell parts of the World Cup to private investors.

In a significant development at the pinnacle of world football’s deeply troubled governing body, Lamour has departed less than two years after joining from a previous role at Uefa. He had come out strongly against Infantino’s FFE scheme after it was revealed, saying Fifa’s administration had been “deceived” and that the president “believes he embodies Fifa when he is supposed to be at its service”.

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