Your commercial news round-up: TikTok, nature and economy, Suez Canal, Cardiff City Football Club

This week’s commercial news round-up takes a look at the possible impact of the potential TikTok ban in the US, considers the importance of nature on the economy, reports Suez Canal traffic statistics and provides an update to the Cardiff City Football Club saga, following the death of Argentinian striker Emiliano Sala in 2019.

• If TikTok is banned in the US, it could have “potentially devastating” consequences on some UK businesses, according to founder of Perl Cosmetics in London, Isobel Perl. This comes after US President Joe Biden signed into a law a bill that gives ByteDance nine months to sell its stake in TikTok, or it’ll be banned in the US. Perl, who uses TikTok “to drive sales to our website”, said it’s “quite a unique way of reaching customers” and “of all the social media apps it drives the most traffic”. Speaking to BBC World Service’s Marketplace programme, Kyle Frank, who founded Franks Remedies, explained that during some months 60 to 70% of the company’s monthly sales come from the US and cites TikTok as a useful way for the brand to reach US customers. Frank said: "We haven't really had to spend any money on ads or marketing to get those customers and connect with them." Around 1.5 million UK businesses use the app, according to TikTok. The social media giant has said it’ll challenge the potential ban in court, arguing that a ban could “devastate seven million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion (£19.4 billion) to the US economy annually”.
   
• A recent Green Finance Institute report found that additional breakdown in the UK’s natural environment could result in a 12% loss of gross domestic product (GDP) by the 2030s, compared with the 5% loss off the value of GDP during the 2008 financial crisis and the 11% cost during the pandemic in 2020. Environment Minister Richard Benyon said the report highlighted how nature “underpins the health of our economy and it is under threat from a global natural crisis”.
   
• Data from the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) has found that shipping traffic through the Suez Canal has fallen by 66% during the first week of April after attacks on cargo ships forced diversions. The data from the ONS covered the period from mid-December 2023 to the start of April 2024. As some ships reroute, resulting in longer journeys and delays, concerns have been raised around rising costs to insurance, fuel and wages. Following reports that several companies have experienced a hit due to higher costs, the Bank of England is one of the institutions now monitoring the situation.
   
• Earlier this week, Cardiff City Football Club filed a complaint at the Nantes Commercial Court in France, following the death of striker Emiliano Sala in a plane crash in 2019. The club has claimed losses of around £104 million against Football Club de Nantes and has given the French football team until 23 September to respond to the claims. The tragic incident happened as the Argentinian striker travelled from France to South Wales to complete a £15 million transfer from the French club to Cardiff City. Cardiff said it was seeking damages to “recover” what it had “paid for Emiliano”, as well as for “additional damages for further consequential losses”. Last year, the Welsh club released a statement, confirming that it had paid the second and third instalments of the transfer for Sala after it was ordered to by FIFA. Prior to this, the club had claimed that it wasn’t liable for any of the transfer fee because Sala wasn’t officially their player when he died. In a hearing in June 2023, Cardiff City Football Club’s lawyer Celine Jones argued that: "If Sala had been able to play, he would inevitably have scored goals between January and June 2019 and Cardiff would have remained in the Premier League. It would be unrealistic to think that he would not have scored any goals.”

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