Tesla, Toshiba, Sainsbury’s, Dyson, house prices: your commercial news round-up
updated on 08 November 2018
To demonstrate the firework-like dynamism of a good candidate and avoid coming across like a damp squib, you need to show commercial awareness. For future lawyers, that involves keeping up with the business news and thinking about how the stories you read might affect law firms and their clients. Read this round-up of commercial stories to catch up on the last week.
- Tesla has named Robyn Denholm as the company’s new chairperson, replacing controversial founder Elon Musk (who remains Tesla’s chief executive). Musk was forced to step down as part of an agreement to settle fraud claims brought by US financial regulators.
- The growth in house prices has fallen to its lowest rate for five years, according to analysis by Halifax. The market might be turning against sellers, who are increasingly finding that offers are limited when trying to offload property. But for the millions of people who make up Generation Rent, the slowdown could be a small step in the right direction.
- Japanese conglomerate Toshiba is planning to wind up its UK nuclear business due to the “additional costs” it would incur from continuing to operate. Toshiba’s withdrawal has thrown into doubt plans for a new nuclear power station in Cumbria and cast some uncertainty over the government’s ambition to build more such power stations in the future.
- The Sainsbury’s takeover of Argos has improved the retailer’s half-year financial results thanks to increased high-street presence and opportunities for cost cutting. However, Sainsbury’s remains cautious about what this could mean for the second half of 2018 and has warned of consumer uncertainty.
- Dyson has won its battle over the energy efficiency ratings of its vacuum cleaners in the EU’s General Court. The company said that lab tests were unfair on its bagless cleaners because rival machines were only tested on empty bags. After years of legal back and forth, Dyson successfully argued that vacuums that use bags lose efficiency as they fill with dust, so the testing regime misled consumers about the efficiency of the products they bought.
