Your commercial news round-up: Liz Truss, Deliveroo and Klarna, rail strikes, Meta, Amazon, HSBC

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After just 44 days in office, Prime Minister Liz Truss has resigned. In a statement made outside 10 Downing Street, she stated: "I recognise, though, given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party." As well as keeping on top of this resignation and the consequences of the mini-budget, today’s commercial round-up looks at Deliveroo’s deal with Klarna, more rail strikes, Meta’s latest sale, Amazon’s latest venture and HSBC’s net-zero blunder.

• Deliveroo’s ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) scheme with Klarna has reached boiling point. The partnership will allow customers to spread the cost of a takeaway across instalments. However, the scheme has come under widespread criticism from many across the food delivery sector and beyond. Although Klarna doesn’t charge interest or late fees for delayed payments, the scheme has been controversial and sparked criticism. Klarna UK’s head, Alex Marsh, has defended the move, stating: “If you’re on a tight budget and decide to put on a treat for the family, why should your only option be a high-interest credit card?”. Despite this, personal finance experts have maintained that BNPL payments put customers at “serious risk of debt”.
   
• The Rail workers’ Union, Railway, Maritime and Transport (RMT) has announced that there will be more strikes in November. The proposed strike dates are currently Thursday 3 November, Saturday 5 November and Monday 7 November and are the latest strike dates in the 2022 calendar. The strikes come as the RMT said that the previous agreement that Network Rail would commit to an improved offer of pay and work had been “reneged” by the company. It continued, arguing that the strikes are taking place as the rail company "attempted to impose drastic changes in working practices".
   
• Meta, the overhead of social media giants Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has been ordered to sell gif platform Giphy. The New York-based platform is currently the largest provider of animated images, or gifs, to social networks globally. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) stated on Tuesday that the platforms purchase of Giphy would “limit choice for UK social media users and reduce innovation in UK display advertising”. The CMA first approached this issue in November 2021 but was forced to reconsider its conclusion at a Competition Appeal Tribunal in July this year. The deal was worth around $315 million.
   
• Amazon is due to launch a UK insurance comparison site. The move is an attempt to challenge the existing ‘big four’ price comparison sites, Moneysupermarket, Go Compare, Comparethemarket and Confused.com. These four each have more than 1,000 insurers signed up for customers to make deal comparisons. At the time of launch, Amazon Insurance Store will assist customers in searching for home insurance products from just three providers to begin with. Jonathan Feifs, Amazon’s general manager of European payment products, has said: “This initial launch is just the beginning, certainly, there are opportunities to improve other insurance shopping experiences as well.”
   
• HSBC has been criticised by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over “misleading” net-zero adverts. The posters, positioned on bus stops in London and Bristol in October last year, showed images of waves and trees coupled with the phrase, "Climate change doesn't do borders". Small print then detailed that the banks plan to provide up to £880 billion to support its clients’ commitment to net zero, as well as helping to plant two million trees in the UK. The ASA has now banned the advertisements, concluding that they “omitted material information and were therefore misleading".

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

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