Brexit negotiations, Facebook, Nando's, Frasers Group: your commercial news round-up

Top up your commercial awareness with our weekly round-ups of interesting news from the business and legal worlds. As the UK’s Brexit transition period draws to a close, it’s important to stay updated with news surrounding trade talks and consider the effects of the outcome (whatever that might be) on law firms as businesses and their clients.

• Prime Minister Boris Johnson and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have agreed that a Brexit deal must be secured by Sunday 13 December or the UK will leave the EU with no deal. Contingency plans have been published today by the EU in the event of Brexit trade talks falling through with the UK. The European Commission has put forward these contingency measures to ensure “basic reciprocal air and road connectivity between the EU and the UK, as well as allowing for the possibility of reciprocal fishing access by EU and UK vessels to each other’s waters”.

President and CEO of Toyota Motor Europe Dr Johan van Zyl has said that a no-deal Brexit could have a “very, very negative” impact on the firm’s UK plants, creating a “very negative investment environment”. The future of Toyota’s two UK plants cannot be decided until trade talks have been finalised, van Zyl said. Describing the effect of Brexit and the pandemic as a “double whammy,” van Zyl warned that the recovery for Toyota’s European business could be made more difficult with a no-deal Brexit.

Meanwhile, a post-Brexit rollover trade deal with Norway and Iceland has been signed by the UK, which “secures continuity for businesses trading with Norway and Iceland”. The deal guarantees tariff-free goods trade on 95% of goods trade with Norway and more than 90% with Iceland.

Tariffs against the US over subsidies with aerospace companies will be dropped in the UK from 1 January, following the end of the Brexit transition period, and in a bid to negotiate a post-Brexit trade deal with Washington.

The EU Commission has indicated that current covid-19 restrictions mean that non-essential travel from the UK to the EU will be banned from 1 January 2021, with a small group of countries that have low coronavirus rates exempt from the restrictions.

• Facebook is being sued by US federal regulators and more than 45 state prosecutors after it was accused of buying up competitors to “eliminate threats to monopoly”. The social media giant could be forced to sell Instagram and WhatsApp as a result of the lawsuits. Commenting on the accusations, Facebook said: "Antitrust laws exist to protect consumers and promote innovation, not to punish successful businesses”.

• Reports that Nando's is in debt crisis talks after spending £20 million to “covid-proof” its UK restaurants have been denied by the South African restaurant chain. Its restaurants have reopened across the UK, excluding the Gatwick airport branch, after the chain’s parent company raised £100 million from shareholders in September.

• Frasers Group, owned by Mike Ashley, has expressed interest in buying Arcadia brands, including Topshop. Speaking to the BBC, the retail group’s Chief Financial Officer Chris Wootton said that the company does “tend to look at almost everything on the High Street”, before adding that it is still in talks about buying Debenhams. Despite reporting a 7% fall in sales while forced store closures came into place during the coronavirus lockdown period, Frasers Group’s pre-tax profits were £106 million, a rise on 2019’s figures of £90 million. Julie Palmer, partner at financial consultants Begbies Traynor, said of the talks between Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group and the administrators of Debenhams “that investors will be mindful of the huge task before him to turn around the ailing business should the transaction succeed."

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