The British government faces a €2bn (£1.7bn) fine for negligence that allowed criminal gangs to flood European black markets with illegal Chinese goods, EU anti-fraud investigators have said.
The European anti-fraud office (Olaf) has recommended the UK pay €1.98bn into the EU budget to compensate for lost customs duties, as a result of British customs officials failing to crack down on criminal gangs using fake invoices and making false claims about the value of clothes and shoes imported from China.
Olaf said the fraud was ongoing and pointed out the cost to national exchequers was even greater. France, Germany, Spain and Italy are estimated to have lost a combined €3.2bn from 2013-16 in VAT revenues, as a result of British failures in handling imports at its ports.
Slower staff …
British businesses are hiring permanent staff at the fastest rate in a year and starting salaries have risen by the most in 11 months, according to a survey by recruiters.
Figures from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation suggest that the robust picture of the labour market shown in official data for the end of 2016 continued into the first part of 2017.
Demand for staff last month grew at the fastest rate in 18 months, and permanent employees were hired at the fastest pace in a year, although spending on temporary staff rose more slowly.
ARM-less …
Japan's SoftBank is to place a roughly US$8bn stake in chip designer ARM Holdings it bought last year, into an investment fund it has created with Saudi Arabia, the Financial Times reported.
SoftBank, run by founder Masayoshi Son, bought ARM, Britain's most valuable technology company, for US$32bn last year.
The FT cited two people close to the situation as saying SoftBank would place 25% of ARM into the fund. It said the fund was also seeking to secure the backing of Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi state-backed investment group, which wanted the fund to own a portion of ARM.
Undersold Apple ...
The squeaky-clean image of John Lewis image has been tarnished after the Advertising Standards Authority criticised its move to pull an Apple Watch promotion from its website.
The department store disappointed a customer over its Black Friday sales event when it advertised Apple Watches on sale for £249, a price-match offer which was part of the retailer's promise to be "never knowingly undersold".
However, when the customer tried to buy the watch, she found it was out of stock, and when she tried to order it again the next day, it was at full price again with the offer having expired.
Sporting chance …
The new boss of Adidas AG has increased sales and profit targets for the German sportswear firm, and pledged to keep investing heavily in the key US market and do more to boost e-commerce sales.
The more ambitious targets will maintain a squeeze on US rivals Nike Inc (NYSE:NKE) and Under Armour Inc (NYSE:UAA), which have both been losing sales to the German brand in their home market, where Adidas's retro Superstar was the top-selling shoe of 2016.