Your commercial news round-up: inflation, BP, Kilimanjaro, FC Barcelona, Tesco

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This week saw a peak rise in inflation in the UK, adding pressure on Rishi Sunak’s new government over the cost-of-living crisis. Today, the Bank of England is expected to announce its highest rate rise in decades. This week’s round-up also touches on further economic news, trademark battles, the environment and, of course, football!

• This morning (Thursday 3 November), the UK braces itself for what is set to be the highest interest rate hike in decades. According to BBC News, analysts are predicting rates to rise from 2.25% to 3% (an increase of 0.75 percentage points), making it the highest hike since 1989. This comes after interest rates began rising almost a year ago. The rates have since been rising in an effort to curb inflation, which has caused the cost of everyday goods and services to rise. Consumer price inflation now sits at a 40-year high of 10.7%, a figure that’s only just been revealed by Sky News.
   
• Meanwhile, oil and gas giant BP has announced quarterly profits of £7.1 billion. The company has credited this result to "exceptional gas marketing and trading result" because of price increases triggered by Russia's war in Ukraine. The jump in profits has resulted in growing demands for a higher windfall tax to be implemented by the government, with Friends of the Earth energy campaigner, Sana Yusuf, describing the case for a bigger windfall tax as "overwhelming". Having previously been introduced by Rishi Sunak in May 2022, when he was chancellor, the initial aim of the tax was "to help fund the cost-of-living support for eight million people"; however, "profits at BP are damning evidence" of the government's failure "to levy a proper windfall tax".
   
• Glaciers across the globe will be unavoidably lost by 2050, according to a UNESCO report. The United Nations (UN), alongside UNESCO, have stated that one-third of UN World Heritage sites will melt within three decades. Mount Kilimanjaro, the sixth tallest mountain in the world, will lose its final glaciers due to rising global temperatures. The report identified 18,600 glaciers across 50 UN World Heritage sites at risk, which makes up around 10% of the earth’s glacierised area. Tales Carvalho Resende, a UNESCO project officer and report author, said: “We hope we might be wrong, but this is the hard science. Glaciers are one of the valuable indicators of climate change, because they're visible. This is something we can really see happening."
   
• In sporting news, Spanish football giant, FC Barcelona, is close to agreeing a sponsorship deal with cryptocurrency company Nexo. While neither party has officially confirmed the partnership, reports suggest that the club will want to finalise the deal before the World Cup in Qatar this month. Previous sleeve sponsor Beko paid around €19 million per year, which also included branding on the club’s training kit.
   
• Tesco has won an appeal over trademarks against Lidl, which is to be considered in High Court early next year. The ‘Clubcard Prices’ logo, a yellow circle on a blue background, was alleged to be too similar to Lidl’s logo in a claim made by the budget supermarket last year. Tesco has since filed a counterclaim against Lidl for applying for trademarks for a yellow circle against a blue background in “bad faith”. A lower court dismissed Tesco’s case in June, but the Court of Appeal in London ruled this week that the argument should be included in the trial early next year.
   

Check the News every Thursday for this weekly commercial news round-up. 

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