The £20bn public spending hole

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Business Agenda

A summary of the most important business news

By Graham Ruddick

1. The chancellor Rachel Reeves is due to give a speech to parliament at around 3 pm on Monday afternoon in which she will warn there is a £20bn gap in the public finances between committed spending and the amount of tax revenues likely to be raised. Politics is clearly at play here, but economists had warned before the election that any new government would have to reduce spending and/or raise taxes. Reeves is expected to announce cuts to rail and road projects and a new Office of Value for Money, which will focus on finding savings in the public sector. More from the BBC here.

2. The finance directors of the largest companies in the UK are feeling more confident about the prospects for their business and less concerned about external uncertainty, according to a new survey. Deloitte’s closely watched quarterly survey of finance directors found that their risk appetite was at the highest for four years and concerns about external uncertainty were at the lowest in more than eight years. Business confidence has risen for four quarters in a row. You can find the survey here.

3. The delivery business Evri is planning to hire 9,000 staff across the UK to meet demand for online orders. The announcement comes after the private equity firm Apollo agreed to a £2.7bn deal to buy Evri. More here.

4. We may be enjoying a summer of sport and some warm weather (this week at least), but beer sales have been disappointing across Europe, according to the latest quarterly results from Heineken, the second-largest brewer in the world. Shares in the Dutch company have fallen 8 per cent on the back of the figures. You can read the company’s statement here.

5. From the weekend papers, the Autonomy co-founder Mike Lynch gave his first interview to The Sunday Times after being found not guilty of fraud charges in the US. “If this had gone the wrong way, it would have been the end of life as I have known it in any sense,” he says. You can read the full interview here.

Business Question

Guess the company

• It was founded by a British billionaire in 1998
• It operates 194 sites across 29 countries
• It employs 26,000 people and generates annual revenues of $65bn (£50.5bn)
• It's made up of 36 individual businesses
• It's a global petrochemicals manufacturer but is more recently known for an "uncompromising" 4x4

The answer can be found at the bottom of the page.

Hiring tips for scaling businesses

By Dougal Shaw

We know that hiring is an issue that preoccupies the leaders of most small and medium-sized businesses as they try to scale in the UK. It can drain a leader’s most precious commodity, time. And, if you get it wrong, it can set a company back many years – or even derail it entirely.

Stuart McLachlan is co-founder and CEO of Anthesis, a consultancy firm that specialises in ESG issues. He left his role as director of a FTSE250 company to set it up in 2013. It has found success in guiding large companies as they act on sustainability and social responsibility. This is for the good of the planet, but also to meet the expectations of modern shareholders, as well as other stakeholders.