Your commercial news round-up: house prices, TikTok, Visa, Lego, Mercedes

Reading time: three minutes

Déjà vu. I think it’s safe to say we all felt an element of déjà vu watching Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s press conference yesterday. Last night he announced several new restrictions, some of which will come into place as early as Friday 10 December, to curb the spread of the covid-19 variant Omnicron. How will these new restrictions impact the world in which law firms’ clients and law firms themselves operate? These are questions you should be considering as we head into the New Year.

Looking for some other news stories to get your commercial awareness going? Read our short round-up below.

• UK house prices increased 3.4% in the three months to 30 November – the fastest pace in 15 years, according to mortgage lender Halifax. While the average UK house price hit a record high of £272,992, the rate of growth is unlikely to continue into 2022 with household budgets “only likely to come under greater pressure in the coming months”. The uncertainty surrounding the Omnicron variant is likely to add extra pressure to the market; Danni Hewson, a financial analyst at AJ Bell, explained that “there is no doubt that the kind of price rises that we’ve seen over the last 18 months are unsustainable”.

• Video sharing platform TikTok hosted its first live shopping and entertainment event on Wednesday 8 December, with the second event due to go live today. The event will enable its users to purchase products directly on the platform. TikTok’s general manager for the UK and EU described it as a “really significant moment”, adding that  “E-commerce is a big opportunity for TikTok and it’s something we’re investing in significantly.” The two-day event, hosted by TV presenter Rylan Clarke-Neal, will feature influencers, music and a quiz to attract users to make purchasers.

• Payment processor Visa is set to launch a new cryptocurrency consulting and advisory service to support its clients, marking its latest move into the crypto industry. It will offer advice on everything from rolling out crypto features to exploring non-fungible tokens. This follows the $3.5 billion that the company processed in digital currency transactions via its crypto-linked card schemes from the beginning of October 2020 to end of September 2021, according to Nikola Plecas, Visa’s European crypto lead. Separate from this, the credit card giant is also under pressure from Amazon, which has decided to stop accepting Visa credit cards for payments in the UK from January 2021.

• Lego Group has announced plans to invest more than £760 million into building a new carbon-neutral factory in Vietnam to support long-term growth and keep up with increasing demand for its products in Asia. This expansion will make it the second Lego factory in Asia, with one already operating in China. The timetable for the project will hopefully see construction begin in 2022, with production due to start in 2024 – around 4,000 jobs are expected to be developed from the project over the next 15 years. The Danish company has plans to include solar panels on its roof and on a nearby farm. Carsten Rasmussen, Lego’s chief operations officer said: “We are very grateful for the support of the Vietnamese government in helping us achieve our ambition to build our first carbon-neutral factory.”

• The Mercedes Formula One team has terminated its sponsorship deal with Kingspan, a building materials company that developed some of the insulation that was used in Grenfell Tower. The deal, which was revealed just last week, saw Kingspan’s logo feature on Mercedes’ cars at the Saudi Arabian GP. The F1 team was met with criticism following the deal, with Grenfell United describing it as a “truly shocking” relationship. Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team principal and co-owner has since apologised and the partnership has been ended. 

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