Closing summary
Britain’s biggest pawnbroker H&T has been snapped up by a US firm in a £297m deal that takes yet another company off the London stock exchange.
The pawnbroking chain said it had agreed to sell itself to Texas-based FirstCash for 650p a share plus a final dividend of 11p a share.
Founded in 1897 as Harvey & Thompson, H&T runs 285 shops across England, Scotland and Wales. The deal will create the largest publicly traded pawn business in the US, Latin America and the UK, the two companies said, and allow FirstCash to expand into the UK.
Economists at Goldman Sachs have raised their economic growth forecasts for the UK and the eurozone following the US-China trade deal and the “meaningful” easing in global financial conditions over the last month, a day after upgrading its outlook for the US and China.
UK and European shares have drifted lower, while crude oil prices have also fallen slightly, and the pound is flat versus the dollar.
China has warned the UK over its new trade deal with the US, accusing Britain of aligning with the US in a move that could compel British companies to exclude Chinese products from their supply chains.
The UK-US trade deal, signed last week, offers Britain limited relief from US tariffs on car and steel exports, but only if it complies with strict American security requirements. These conditions include scrutinising supply chains and ownership structures – a move widely interpreted as targeting Chinese involvement.
Beijing argues the agreement violates the principle that international agreements should not target third countries, noting this is a “basic principle”.
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Thank you for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow. Enjoy the sunshine! – JK
I recently went to look at the £2.5bn regeneration of the area behind York railway station and talked to the developers, council leaders and local campaigners.
On an area the size of 63 football pitches next to York’s Victorian railway station, work is under way on the UK’s biggest city centre regeneration scheme, which will expand the area by a third.
The £2.5bn project, called York Central, aims to transform a vast 45-hectare (111-acre) site – once a major railway manufacturing hub with iron foundries, signalling workshops and wagon stables, now mostly a drab car park – into housing and offices.
In the works are 3,000 homes beside a large park, a 200-bed hotel, a hub for business start-ups with a focus on rail, agricultural and media tech and biotechnology, and an expansion of the National Railway Museum. The scheme promises to create an estimated 6,500 new jobs, including 1,500 during construction.
It also includes a major new building for a government ministry. The tenant has yet to be confirmed, but the Guardian understands it will be the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and an official announcement is expected in summer.
York is one of Defra’s four main hubs, alongside Bristol, London and Newcastle, and 854 civil servants will move from the current office on the other side of town into the new six-storey, 195,000 sq ft government building, which can house up to 2,600.
The state-of-the-art structure, which will have solar panels, air source heat pumps and a green roof, is due to be completed by 2028.
