Supermarket giant Tesco PLC (LON:TSCO) has pulled more than half of Heineken’s beer and cider range after the brewer tried to increase prices on the products following the Brexit vote, according to The Grocer.
Britain’s biggest retailer has scrapped 31 of the Dutch company’s brands and is now stocking only 22 of the 53 it was selling at the start of the year.
Amstel, Sol, Tiger and Kingfisher beer have all disappeared from its shelves. The brewer announced in January that it plans to increase prices by an average of 6p per pint.
Mini move …
German carmaker BMW has hinted it may move production of the iconic Mini from England to continental Europe as a result of the UK’s decision to leave the EU.
BMW’s chief executive Harald Krueger said in a statement on Tuesday that the car manufacturer was considering “different scenarios” to deal with any potential economic fallout from Brexit.
Krueger said “the UK remains an important location for us. Much will depend on how Brexit is ultimately negotiated.”
Goldman going …
Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) will start moving hundreds of staff out of London before a Brexit deal is struck, the US bank’s European boss confirmed this week.
Richard Gnodde, chief executive of Goldman Sachs International, told CNBC on Tuesday
that the decision to relocate workers was part of the bank’s contingency plan for the UK leaving the EU.
Gnodde said the bank, which employs 6,000 staff in the capital, would take extra office space in Frankfurt and Paris.
Flying away …
EU officials have warned UK-based airlines that they will have to relocate their headquarters to the EU or sell shares to EU nationals if they want to avoid seeing routes within continental Europe axed after Brexit.
According to the Guardian, representatives from easyJet PLC (LON:EZJ), Ryanair PLC (LON:RYA), and the TUI Group PLC (LON:TUI) received the warning following a meeting with an EU Brexit taskforce last week.
To operate intra-European routes an airline must have a significant base on EU territory and a majority of their capital shares must be EU-owned. That means that some airlines would have to sell off shares after Brexit to maintain the rights to fly between cities like Berlin and Rome.
Branson Brexit …
Virgin Atlantic airways owner Richard Branson on Thursday called for a second referendum on whether the UK should leave the EU “based on real facts", saying the first vote was done on a "complete false premise".
In an interview with CNBC, the billionaire said that Brexit is "one of the saddest things" to happen to Britain and to Europe.
Branson said: “If a hard Brexit happens it would be pretty devastating and it would be the biggest sort of shot in the foot that the British people have ever done to themselves … (I) hope that sense will prevail and that when all the facts are known and are on the table, I would hope that a second referendum could take place based on real facts and not on the facts that people were given.”
Corruption issues …
Brexit could damage the UK’s efforts to tackle corruption and give multinationals leverage over the British government in bribery cases, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned this week.
Business pressure to weaken bribery laws and an inability by the UK government to focus on non-Brexit issues are both risks associated with leaving the European Union, according to a new report by the think-tank
While acknowledging the UK’s “solid progress” in pursuing recent bribery investigations, the OECD report warned that the proportion of cases relative to the country’s importance in global finance was low.