UK recession, NatWest, Just Eat, Dr Martens, Toshiba, Twitter, SRA: your commercial news round-up

As the UK has officially entered into a technical recession for the first time in 11 years, following the economy’s biggest decline on record between April and June, it is vital that you remain up to date with the impact this will have on the business and legal worlds.

• Lockdown measures enforced as a result of coronavirus meant the economy shrank 20.4% compared with the first three months of 2020. Speaking to the BBC, Rishi Sunak said that the government was "grappling with something that is unprecedented" and that it was "a very difficult and uncertain time".

• Recent official figures have also shown the largest drop in employment in more than a decade. The Office for National Statistics revealed that the number of people in work between April and June fell by 220,000. These figures exclude those on furlough, zero-hour contracts not getting shifts or those on temporary unpaid leave.

• A survey revealed that one in three UK employers expect to make staff redundant between July and September, according to the BBC. Major retail and commercial bank NatWest has asked staff to volunteer to leave their jobs, offering a “comprehensive” package in return. While the bank vowed that there will be no compulsory redundancies, it has announced plans to make around 550 people redundant and close one of its London offices. A spokesperson said: "We have taken the decision to invite applications for voluntary redundancy and will support those colleagues who apply with a comprehensive support package.

"There will be no compulsory redundancy as a result of this announcement."

Department store Debenhams is set to cut a further 2,500 jobs, meaning a third of its workforce will have lost their jobs in 2020 as it continues to weather the pandemic’s impact.  

• Meanwhile, food delivery giant Just Eat plans to create “thousands” of UK-based jobs. Chief executive Jitse Groen revealed the firm’s plans to invest in Britain, following a surge in revenue of 44% in the first half of 2020 as business increased during lockdown.  

• Dr Martens’ “resilience in trading and financial strength” has meant that the British shoe brand has repaid the funds from the government’s Job Retention Scheme, following the forced closure of its stores worldwide during lockdowns.

• Toshiba has moved away from making PCs and laptops after selling its final stake in Dynabook, a personal computer manufacturer. Sharp Corporation has now bought the final shares from Toshiba, having previously purchased 80% of its personal computing business in 2018 for £27 million. CSS Insight Analyst Marina Koytcheva said that while there has been a surge in demand for laptops as a result of the pandemic, the personal computer market has been declining for years: "Only those who have managed to sustain scale and price (like Lenovo), or have a premium brand (like Apple) have succeeded in the unforgiving PC market, where volumes have been falling for years.”

• Twitter has expressed an interest in buying TikTok’s US operations, according to recent reports. Questions have been raised about whether Twitter can afford to buy the video-sharing platform from ByteDance. TikTok has also been in talks with Microsoft to sell its US operations. Microsoft’s market capitalisation is at $1.6 trillion and Twitter’s is at $29 billion. Experts have suggested that a deal between TikTok and Twitter could face less regulatory scrutiny than a deal with Microsoft.

• The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has shut down Kingly Solicitors Limited after the national firm ignored one or more of the terms of its licence. Kingly Solicitors (previously RH Legal), which has 16 offices across the UK, including Bristol, London, York and Leighton Buzzard, began to acquire firms across the UK in 2016, according to the Law Gazette.

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