Business
JLR suppliers with ‘days of cash’ left, MP says
Sarah JulianBBC Radio WM and
Eleanor LawsonWest Midlands
ReutersSome businesses in the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) supply chain have just seven to 10 days of money left, an MP has told the BBC.
Ten companies within the supply chain voiced their concerns about their businesses, in the wake of the cyber attack at JLR, at a meeting with the government’s Business and Trade Committee on Thursday.
Labour MP for Tamworth Sarah Edwards, who is a member of the committee, said some of the companies had not been paid by JLR since the end of August.
“They’re very worried, they are concerned,” Ms Edwards said. “It’s imperative suppliers are paid very very quickly.”
JLR, which has plants in Solihull, Wolverhampton and Merseyside, employs about 30,000 people directly, with an additional 100,000 in the supply chain.
Ms Edwards said the 10 companies in attendance at Thursday’s meeting covered a “cross section” of first-line direct suppliers, covering the “whole eco-system” of the supply chain.
She expressed particular concerns about the smaller suppliers and their cashflow concerns.
“It’s very worrying and that’s because we’re nearly a month into this – some of those suppliers had not been paid,” she said.
“We heard from one supplier who had still not received payment from JLR since 29 August, so it’s really good to hear that the [JLR] invoicing system is coming back online.”
JLR said on Thursday that it had begun a “phased restart” of its operations with parts of its IT system back up and running.
Ms Edwards said some of the suggestions from the businesses were how to keep money within the supply chain and how the government might be able to support that.
“The feeling was [the need to] retain the work force and skills and having the immediate cash flow to keep these places open,” she said.
“We heard from one smaller supplier who’s already had to sell machinery, sell one of their trucks and go from two buildings down to one.
“Some people are at home already, they do not know whether they’ll be returning to work and when.”
The MP added that JLR needed “to be much clearer on the timeframe” for the return to production, as suppliers were unable to plan, meaning “they’re at a much higher risk of not being able to weather this.”
She said that some of the businesses thought that JLR “could have done more to communicate with them” and wanted clarity on the situation.
One idea the government is exploring is for it to buy the component parts built by the suppliers to keep them in business until JLR’s production lines are up and running, and then sell on those parts to JLR.
Ms Edwards said the businesses were pleased to hear it was an option being discussed but believed there would be “logistical challenges”.
“This is a ‘just in time’ operation, so storing those parts, making sure they’re not damaged, making sure that quality control is intact would be difficult,” she said.
“One of the thoughts [from the suppliers] therefore was that you could buy forward, so you’d essentially place the orders knowing you were going to start production but pay now. That’s an option they thought was more likely.”
Addressing the role of the government in supporting the supply chain, the MP said: “This is JLR and their issue, it shouldn’t really lie with the taxpayer, but it may be the taxpayer needs to step in temporarily.”
The Conservative Party said it would back a targeted emergency loan scheme for UK firms after the cyber attack affecting JLR.
The Tories have also called on the government to look into new cyber insurance measures.
“JLR’s supply chain is significant in the West Midlands and nationally,” said shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith.
Business
Noel Tata’s son Neville, Bhaskar Bhat inducted by Tata Trusts to board of Sir Dorabji Tata Trust: Report – The Times of India
Neville Tata has been appointed by Tata Trusts to the board of Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (SDTT). Neville Tata is the son of Tata Trusts chairman Noel Tata. Group veteran Bhaskar Bhat has also been inducted.This appointment strengthens Noel Tata’s position whilst elevating Neville, aged 32, to one of the most significant roles within the Tata organisation, positioning him for a substantial future career in the family enterprise, according to an ET report.During Tuesday’s meeting, the trustees amended Venu Srinivasan’s position from lifetime to a three-year term, adhering to new Maharashtra government regulations that limit lifetime trustee appointments, directly affecting Tata Trusts’ established governance structure.
Who are Neville Tata and Bhaskar Bhat?
Following his graduation from Bayes Business School, Neville commenced his career at Trent in 2016 in the packaged foods and beverages division. Subsequently, he took charge of Zudio, a value fashion retailer that has emerged as one of India’s rapidly expanding clothing retail chains.Neville currently serves on the boards of JRD Tata Trust, Tata Social Welfare Trust and RD Tata Trust. Sources indicate he might join Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT), another significant trust that, alongside SDTT, controls over 51% of shares in Tata Sons, the group’s primary holding entity.Bhat, aged 71, graduated from IIT Madras and IIM Ahmedabad, and started his professional journey in 1978 at Godrej & Boyce as a management trainee, before transitioning to the Tata Watch Project, which subsequently evolved into Titan.Throughout his tenure as managing director from 2002 to 2019, spanning 17 years, he guided Titan’s diversification from watches into multiple segments including eyewear, jewellery, fragrances, accessories and sarees. Under his leadership, the company’s market value grew to approximately $13 billion, positioning it as the second-largest listed company in the Tata Group at that time.
A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Property Play newsletter with Diana Olick. Property Play covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, from individuals to venture capitalists, private equity funds, family offices, institutional investors and large public companies. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
Billionaire Barry Sternlicht, chairman and CEO of Starwood Capital Group, is a legendary, legacy real estate investor. Brendan Wallace is an entrepreneur who co-founded Fifth Wall, a venture capital firm investing in property technology and decarbonizing real estate. The pair first met in the gym. Now, Wallace can say Sternlicht is a mentor – as well as a Fifth Wall investor – and Sternlicht jokes that Wallace is his trainer.
Together they gave CNBC Property Play a rare glimpse into how old-school commercial real estate investing is pivoting to a new tech-driven world order and how that new world order still relies on lessons learned in the past.
Here are some of the highlights from the conversation, edited for clarity and length:
On CRE investing
Sternlicht: We endured a 500 basis point, fairly rapid increase in rates, and most people who were invested had to pay some price for that, whether the yields on property went up or they weren’t properly hedged. Your costs went up, your expenses, and they drained a lot of cash flow from assets that might have gone into fixing the assets up. That’s behind us now, and there’s no doubt that interest rates are going down. … In May of next year, Jerome [Powell] will be out [as Federal Reserve Chairman], and nobody’s getting that job without agreeing to lower rates.
I think they should lower rates. I think inflation that we’re seeing is tariff related. It will continue. It’ll get worse, probably, in the fourth quarter, when the new inventories hit the shelves and the tariffs can no longer be ignored.
Wallace: The rate increases that Barry was mentioning, those impacted prop tech definitionally, because all tech companies, all loss-making businesses, rerated all at the same time. And at the same time, the demand from commercial real estate stopped.
I would say an overlay on top of it was also that a big part of where real estate companies were investing in the last four years was around decarbonization efforts, so trying to conform to new carbon neutrality laws … and anticipating this kind of wave of decarbonization. And I feel like with [President Donald] Trump‘s election, it kind of felt like they got a hall pass, certainly for four years.
On AI and data centers
Sternlicht: We’ve probably got $20 billion dedicated to [the data center] space. I think it’s a different issue than you think. Most of us don’t build until we get a hyperscaler lease. So we get the lease from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle. What we’re watching now is the credit worthiness of the tenant, and particularly Oracle, because Oracle is doing all these deals back-ended to [ChatGPT], and Chat is a startup that doesn’t make money and requires hundreds of billions of dollars to grow to the scale they want to be.
There’s no question AI is going to change the entire world and do it much faster than anything we’ve ever seen before, much faster than the internet, certainly faster than the Industrial Revolution. That is terrifying to me. I mean, I’m not so complacent. I look at … how we spend money, and what I can do with AI agents that I do with humans today, and it’s terrifying for the people. I think we have to let people go, right? Jobs of 15 people can be done with a chatbot that costs me $36 a month.
Wallace: I was trying to trace all these pretty Byzantine and somewhat incestuous commitments that are happening between the large tech companies, between the digital infrastructure providers, and it’s actually very hard to trace who’s going to ultimately pay for it all, but ultimately it has to be paid for in the economy.
The way to just acid test whether it makes sense is if you looked at the amount of AI compute that will be required to fill all the data centers that are in production or have been announced to go into production, and then you assume that the tech companies have to make some profit on top of that to justify it, which they’re not today, but let’s assume they have to. Take any margin you want, assume that’s the revenue that’s then therefore flowing to large language models and AI. What percent of U.S. GDP would that be today if you ran that math? My fear is that it might be like 120% of U.S. GDP.
On their next bets
Sternlicht: We’re heavily investing in Europe, actually. Not here. They’ve done the stimulus package. They have low rates. They don’t have, really, inflation. They don’t have tariffs. It’s amazing, having returned from Europe and the Middle East, I can buy everything cheaper in Europe than I can here now.
Wallace: New York City. People overestimate the durability of these political vibe shifts. Within two years of electing Trump, we elected [Zohran] Mamdani to run New York, and I just think these things move dialectically. Over the long term, New York is going to be super valuable. So if I were a betting person, I didn’t have to make a return in the next four years, I would bet on New York.
Grocery price inflation has slowed in some good news for consumers as retailers ramp up festive deals ahead of Christmas, figures show.
Supermarket prices were still 4.7% higher than a year ago in October, but this was down from September’s 5.2%, according to market research firm Worldpanel by Numerator, formerly Kantar.
Spending on deals climbed by 9.4% to just under 30% of all grocery purchases, while spending on full-priced goods rose by just 1.8%.
Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Worldpanel, said: “Christmas ads are hitting our screens and the race to the big day is on in the supermarket sector.
“Retailers are very alive to the financial struggles that some households are facing, not least ahead of this year’s Budget.
“They’re eager to show how they’re offering shoppers value for money, putting the emphasis on price cuts rather than multibuy offers.”
Despite tightening belts, Worldpanel is predicting a new sales record for retailer premium lines this year, suggesting it has the potential to hit more than £1 billion in December.
Mr McKevitt said: “It’s important to remember that shoppers often look for great value and quality, not just the cheapest product.
“At Christmas especially people want to treat themselves and throughout the cost-of-living crisis we’ve seen them turning to retailers’ premium own label lines to do that in a way that’s more affordable.”
Online remains the fastest growing part of the grocery market and spending on home delivery rose by 11% over the month.
On average, households who use online grocery now buy three shops a month.
Ocado posted a new record share for the 12 weeks to November 2, hitting 2.1%, as it remained the fastest-growing grocer for the third month in a row.
Tesco and Lidl both added half a percentage point of share to their market positions, with Lidl boosting sales by 10.8% over the 12 weeks to take its share to 8.2% and Tesco now accounting for 28.2% of the market with a sales increase of 5.9%.
Sainsbury’s achieved growth of 5.2% to gain market share of 15.7%.
Noel Tata’s son Neville, Bhaskar Bhat inducted by Tata Trusts to board of Sir Dorabji Tata Trust: Report – The Times of India
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