Autoglass repair, Autoglass replace?
The business news that matters
Hello everyone and welcome to the latest edition of Off to Lunch…
The former chief executive of the company behind Autoglass has emerged as a big donor to the Labour party ahead of the next general election. Gary Lubner donated £500,000 to Labour in the first three months of this year and could give the party more than £5 million before the general election next year, according to a story in the Financial Times.
Lubner was the chief executive of Belron Group, the parent company of Autoglass, which repairs car windscreens. He was succeeded as chief executive in March by Carlos Brito, the former boss of AB InBev, the beer maker.
Belron employs 29,000 people across 37 countries, including the UK. The company’s accounts are going to get more attention than usual in the UK over the next few days, I would suggest. Belron is controlled by D'Ieteren, a Belgian car and car parts group. You can find the statement about Lubner’s departure here. D'Ieteren said in the statement: “Dear Gary, as we say in French – Bravo et Merci.”
Lubner was born in South Africa. In an interview with FT, Lubner said he credited Labour leader Keir Starmer with getting rid of anti-Semites in the party and said of the Conservative government: “In the long list of Tory failures in the last 13 years, Brexit is top of the list.” Full story here
Lubner is the latest donor from the business world to emerge for Labour or the Conservatives ahead of the election. Last month it was revealed that Egyptian-born billionaire Mohamed Mansour had given £5 million to the Conservative party. Mansour, who is also the party’s senior treasurer, said Rishi Sunak “understands how growth is generated in the modern economy”. His donation was the biggest for the party in over 20 years. He wrote for The Daily Telegraph about the donation here. Meanwhile, Lord David Sainsbury revealed he was giving £2 million to Labour in February. The long-time Labour supported told The Observer: “I believe that Keir Starmer has the leadership skills and ability to deal with the economic difficulties we currently face.” Full story here.
There are going to be more stories like this between now and the next general election as both parties look to raise funds and show they have the backing of the business world to manage the economy credibly.
Labour have been on a well-publicised charm offensive with business leaders, hosting regular meetings and breakfast gatherings. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has been widely praised by the business leaders I have spoken to, although there is still a sense that Labour and Starmer are not giving much away about what they actually plan to do.
One business leader who publicly supported Labour’s policies was John Allan, the now former president of the CBI and chairman of Tesco and Barratt. He said last October that Labour had “actionable and attractive” ideas and there was “only one team on the field” when it came to a growth plan for the UK economy. However, given the scandal surrounding the CBI and Allan’s departure from Tesco and Barratt, Labour may not be so keen to promote his support now.
It will be interesting to see if Labour and the Conservatives try to get business leaders to sign a letter supporting their party ahead of the election. This was a prominent tactic in the 2010 general election but has faded away in subsequent years as both parties sought to distance themselves from the business community. However, following the chaos around Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget last year and the continuing uncertainty around the economy, it could once again be a way to demonstrate your economic and pro-business credentials.
Just to highlight that economic issues are centre-stage, The Daily Mail and The Times have front-page stories today about the pressure on homeowners amid rising interest payments on mortgages. Reeves has tweeted out the front-page of The Mail with these comments…
Other stories that matter…
1. Sticking with business and politics, the CBI faces a crucial vote on its future tomorrow. Members of the business lobby group will vote on whether they support its plans for the future. It is effectively a referendum on whether the CBI should survive or not. The CBI is not being particularly transparent on who will actually vote and the suspicion is that the organisation will win thanks to the support of smaller trade bodies carrying a large block of votes. Nonetheless, there have been a couple of significant developments ahead of the vote.
The British Chambers of Commerce announced this morning that it is setting up a Business Council to “design and drive the future of the British economy”. BP, Drax, Heathrow and IHG Hotels & Resorts have signed up as the first founding partners. These founding partners will be “uniquely placed to shape the BCC’s policy and influencing”, the BCC says. The BCC oversees a collection of 79 local chambers of commerce and this new council will be “part of the organisation’s new national offer to businesses”. Baroness Martha Lane Fox, president of the BCC, set-out how the BCC could succeed the CBI in a column last month. She pointed out that the organisation already has around 100,000 members, adding:
This amazing reach allows us to understand deeply how businesses are feeling and what issues different areas of the country are facing. We run quarterly trade and confidence surveys that inform our policy work and our partners. The chambers do enormous work in their regions but they also support each other. One of my favourite data points is around trade. Only 10 per cent of UK businesses trade overseas but over 60 per cent of chamber members do. That’s network effects in action.
You can read that piece in full here. The BCC’s statement on the new council is here
Meanwhile, Siemens and Microsoft are among the companies who have signed a letter backing the CBI and calling for other businesses to support it. These two companies have close links to the CBI. Jurgen Maier, the former UK chief executive of Siemens, was previously a member of the CBI president’s committee while Clare Barclay, the chief executive of Microsoft UK, is a non-executive director of the CBI. Sky News first reported on the letter here
For more on the CBI check-out our Sunday press review here. This was sent to paying Off to Lunch members yesterday.
2. I’ve been keeping track of what is happening to old Debenhams shops across the UK because they were such a large part of town and city centres. Debenhams collapsed in 2021, with more than 150 shops closing when the retailer was wound down and in the previous couple of years. Many local authorities are still debating what to do with the shops and many have been broken up into smaller properties. Look at Coventry - new plans have just been submitted for a new bowling alley and indoor adventure golf course in the old Debenhams in the city centre. More details from the Coventry Telegraph here
3. Is this a useful role for artificial intelligence in the media? Artifact, the news curation app built by the co-founders of Instagram, is using AI to rewrite click-bait headlines into what the article is actually about. Piece here. Thanks to the Semafor Media newsletter for pointing this out.
4. The US job numbers defied expectations last week, raising the prospect of more interest rate rises by the Federal Reserve. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics said that 339,000 new jobs were created in May, well ahead of the 190,000 that was forecast by economists, and up from 253,000 in April. At the same time, however, unemployment rose from 3.4 per cent to 3.7 per cent and a rise in wages cooled. This all matters because of what it says about the health of the US economy and the impact on financial markets, with the dollar strengthening on the back of the data.
The figures have created some debate about how unemployment can go up at the same time as the number of new jobs increase, and why the figures have continually beaten forecasts, defying the sombre mood around the economy more generally. For an excellent explainer on why there is a discrepancy (and the Twitter rows about the data) check-out the Noahpinion Substack here. It’s mainly about people saying there were no longer self-employed. For a look at why the jobs numbers continue to be so strong, the always excellent John Authers at Bloomberg has written his column about it this morning. He says that we need to stop fitting simple narratives about the shape of the economy to every bit of economic data. It’s more complex than that. Piece here.
5. Lastly, some optimism from New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who wants to remind us that despite there being plenty of doom and gloom around, the human race is making dramatic progress in many areas. The focus of his piece is the improvement in survival rates for children and mothers in Sierra Leone. Deaths in pregnancy and childbirth have fallen by 74 per cent since 2000. The risk of children dying before they become adults is half what it was. Full piece here
And finally…
A slightly left-field end to Off to Lunch today, but it is worth your time. Royal Antwerp won the football league title in Belgium for the first time since 1957 in extraordinary circumstances yesterday. Former Tottenham defender Toby Alderweireld scored in the 94th minute to equalise against Genk, meaning Antwerp took the title over Genk. This prompted wild celebrations among the players and fans. The video is below. Enjoy…
Meanwhile for those looking for a book to read, Tom Rowley, who runs the Backstory bookshop in Balham, south London - and is always a good source of recommendations - says that In Memoriam by Alice Winn is the best book he has read all year. It’s a novel about two young men who fall in love but find themselves fighting in the trenches during the First World War. More details here
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Best
Graham