Hunt To Get £17m Payout From Hotcourses Sale

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, is in line for a windfall worth more than £15m from a company sale that would propel him to the top of the Cabinet rich list.

Sky News can exclusively reveal that Hotcourses, an education listings service set up by Mr Hunt 17 years ago, is in detailed negotiations about being sold to Inflexion Private Equity, an investment firm, for about £35m.

Mr Hunt is understood to own 49% of Hotcourses, meaning that his shareholding would be worth just over £17m if the takeover is completed.

News of the prospective windfall for Mr Hunt, the MP for South West Surrey, may cause embarrassment for the Government at a time when a debate about the cost of living is dominating Britain's political discourse.

With the NHS expected to face a strain on resources during the winter, Mr Hunt is likely to face a tough few months in Westminster.

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has frequently sought to portray the Conservative-led coalition as an out-of-touch millionaires' club, and Mr Hunt is far from the only independently wealthy Cabinet minister.

Prime Minister David Cameron, Chancellor George Osborne, Foreign Secretary William Hague and Defence Secretary Philip Hammond are all said to have amassed multimillion pound fortunes.

Jeremy Hunt set up the company after working in Japan

However, a £35m sale of Hotcourses would also cement Mr Hunt's status as one of the most successful entrepreneurs to have forged a parliamentary career in recent times, during a period when politicians are frequently accused of having inadequate experience of the business world.

Private equity insiders said that Inflexion had outbid a number of other buyout firms to win a period of exclusivity in which to finalise an agreement. The roughly £35m price-tag is higher than previous estimates of Hotcourses' value.

It was unclear on Friday when the exclusivity period ends, but a source close to the transaction said it was unlikely to be announced for at least a few weeks.

"It could still fall through. It's not a done deal," they said.

Hotcourses was set up in 1996 by Mr Hunt and his business partner, Mike Elms, and provides listings information about evening, training, university and other courses.

Now employing more than 200 people, Mr Hunt established the business when he returned to the UK after two years in Japan teaching English and learning Japanese.

It now claims to be the world's largest course database, advertising more than 700,000 courses and 33,995 scholarships from more than 27,000 institutions.

According to accounts filed at Companies House for the six months to July 31, 2012, the company had a turnover of £6.5m, generating pre-tax profits during the period of just under £2m.

The Health Secretary, who turned 47 last week, has received several million pounds in dividends since Hotcourses was founded.

An aide to Mr Hunt refused to comment on the deal or on the size of his shareholding, but a person close to him insisted that he was not playing any role in the sale negotiations.

The latest Register of MPs' Interests confirms that the Health Secretary remains an investor in Hotcourses but does not disclose the size of his interest.

The company's website lists Mr Hunt as a member of its management team but states that he "stepped aside from all management responsibilities at Hotcourses Ltd in order to focus on his parliamentary duties, and is no longer involved in the running of the company".

It is unclear when Mr Hunt would receive the money from the sale of the company or whether he would remain as an investor under new owners.

Mr Elms is expected to continue running Hotcourses if Inflexion succeeds in acquiring it.

Inflexion, whose other investments include the retailer Ideal Shopping Direct and On The Beach, an online holiday business, declined to comment on the talks.

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Mobile Spending 'Could Be Worth £23bn' By 2018

By Poppy Trowbridge, Business and Economics Correspondent

This year has been dubbed 'The Mobile Christmas' and with 48% growth in mobile shopping, retailers are increasingly targeting shoppers through digital devices.

British retailers will spend nearly £400m on advertising during the last three months of 2013 and consumer spending via mobiles and tablets is worth about nearly £8bn a year, according to research firm Verdict.

But over the next five years, the spread of smartphones and tablets will see our spending on these devices triple to £23bn.

Spending via mobiles and tablets is expected to triple over five years

Two thirds of that shopping is done at home, as buyers often wait until they are logged in to a secure network before purchasing items.

Matthew Rubin, retail analyst with Verdict Research, said: "While we are expecting growth in successive years, we are expecting this year to be the highest level of growth. Retailers really need to invest in their mobile websites now."

John Lewis announced its £7m Christmas television advertising campaign on Friday. The ad is set to a cover of Keane's 2004 hit Somewhere Only We Know sung by Lily Allen.

Supermarket chain Morrisons launched its Christmas TV advertising campaign during the prime-time slot of ITV's Coronation Street.

Some 20% of home shopping business at Asda is done via mobile or tablet

Asda says 20% of its home shopping business is done via a mobile or tablet, and that figure is growing by 1% each month.

The living room is becoming a key location for retailers to target consumers, as 67.2% of all online shoppers making a purchase from their home do so in their living room.

Wealthy young shoppers currently dominate mobile and tablet expenditure, but with increased access to cheaper, high-specification devices, older shoppers will have a much bigger impact over the next five years, Verdict research shows.

Still, window shopping hasn't entirely given way to digital methods yet.

Around 38% of online shoppers still research goods by viewing them in a store before purchasing them online.

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ECB Cuts Interest Rate To Boost Recovery

The European Central Bank (ECB) has cut its core interest rate in a bid to boost flagging economic recovery in the euro area.

The bank lowered the benchmark refinancing rate to a record low 0.25% from 0.5% at a meeting of its 23-member governing council in Frankfurt.

The move startled many investors while most economists thought the bank would wait to offer more economic stimulus at least until December, when it will have new forecasts from its own staff.

The council was responding to a slump in inflation to 0.7% in October - way below its 2% target and threatening to choke the wider economic recovery.

In addition to the ECB cutting its main refinancing rate to 0.25%, it held the deposit rate it pays on bank deposits at 0% and cut its marginal lending facility - or emergency borrowing rate - to 0.75% from 1%.

Rate correct at 13.32 GMT

The surprise move underlined the bank's newfound flexibility under its president Mario Draghi.

A lower refinancing rate makes it cheaper for banks to borrow from the ECB, in hopes that that lower rate will be reflected in what companies pay for credit.

That would make it easier for them to expand and create new jobs and growth.

The ECB's UK counterpart the Bank of England had earlier confirmed no change to its own monetary policy - leaving the base rate of interest at 0.5% amid no pressure to raise it yet despite Britain's economic recovery gaining momentum.

The ECB's decision had an immediate effect on the markets - with many of Europe's major stock markets hitting fresh five-year highs while the euro was sharply lower.

The FTSE 100 swung from losses on the day back into the black near its own five-year high on the news.

David Bloom, global head of FX strategy at HSBC said of the ECB: "They want the double whammy of a lower euro on growth and (a boost to) inflation.

"We wanted a stronger response to the stronger euro/dollar and we've got it," he said.

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Twitter's Share Price Soars At NYSE Launch

Smooth Sailing For 'TWTR' Launch

Updated: 11:34pm UK, Thursday 07 November 2013

By Hannah Thomas-Peter, New York Correspondent

The "pop" at the beginning of the day prompted some early investors to sell a portion of their shares.

Meridian Equity Partners trader Jonathan Corpina said: "I have a client right now who bought some of the stock on the IPO and wants to sell some of it out right now.

"They like the pricing and they like the gain that they've seen so far."

Public trading began after a prolonged period known as "price discovery", when experienced traders known as "designated market makers" sift through orders, assess new demands, coordinate between Twitter, its investment banks and other traders to try and decide on a fair opening price.

Anticipation built on the floor of the exchange as a large group of traders converged at the trading post, some shouting orders out to the market makers.

It took well over an hour for the price to be agreed and trading to start.

Sources close to the deal told the Reuters news agency that investors were asking for 30 times the number of shares on offer.

As the market makers shouted "we're getting close" to an agreed price, a cheer went out across the floor.

One trader puffed out his cheeks and said to himself "here we go".

Mr Corpina said: "It's a lot of fun, the energy the excitement in the room, the information flow, the trading, it really gets your heart pounding and this is what we do this for."

In the short term, the NYSE seems to have avoided the technical glitches that plagued rival exchange NASDAQ's ill-fated launch of Facebook last year.

NYSE head of capital markets David Ethridge told Sky News the smooth IPO was in part due to the designated market makers, which are unique to the NYSE and have the power to trade without the computerised system if anything goes wrong, as well as the authority to step in with their own company's money if trading becomes too volatile.

He said: "This is a process that requires judgement and not just a computer algorithm to get it right, because a stock never trades just on valuation when it starts trading.

"It trades on sentiment, and you need a person to figure out what's the sentiment; How do people feel about the stock? How do people feel about the economy? That's all part of the process of getting it right."

Still though, the team of market makers from Barclays Capital looked relieved when it became clear this day at least, had gone without any noticeable hitches.

I asked them if it had been nerve wracking

Team head Patrick Murphy said: "No, it was business as usual. This is what we do. There were a lot of eyes on this and we had to get it right."

But Barclays head of electronic trading William White responded: "Yes. You always have that anxiety about hitting the button. You don't want to be in the position where there are technology glitches, but this one was seamless."

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Twitter Shares Priced At $26 In IPO

Twitter has set a price of $26 for its public stock offering and can begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.

The price values the San Francisco-based micro blogging site at $14.1bn, based on its outstanding stock and options, Reuters reported.

It is offering 70 million shares in the Initial Public Offering (IPO), with an option to buy another 10.5 million.

Twitter had originally set a price range of $17 to $20, but raised the range on Monday signalling an enthusiastic response from prospective investors.

A statement from the company read: "We've priced our initial public offering of 70,000,000 shares of our common stock at a price to the public of $26 per share.

"In addition we've guaranteed the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 10,500,000 additional shares of common stock.

"Our shares are expected to begin trading on the NYSE on November 7 under the symbol TWTR."

Analysts said they expected shares in the company to experience a small rise during the first day of trading.

Investor enthusiasm for Twitter, which boasts 230 million users, is strong even though the micro blogging site has never turned a profit.

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Universal Credit Scheme 'Has Lost Over £140m'

Universal Credit has been savaged by MPs for "shocking" failures that have already wasted at least £140m.

The scheme has been blighted by "alarmingly weak" management, with secretaries allowed to authorise purchase orders worth more than £20m.

In some cases it is unclear what suppliers have been paid for.

The cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) also voiced doubts about whether the project can still be fully delivered by 2017 - branding a pilot "inadequate" and open to fraud.

Universal Credit is due to replace a bundle of means-tested benefits in four years' time, with Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith insisting it can ensure people are always better off in jobs and save £38bn by 2023.

Iain Duncan Smith says Universal Credit can save £38bn by 2023

However, a former Olympics executive had to be drafted in earlier this year to "reset" the programme amid concerns over delays and IT issues.

The PAC report said the Department for Work and Pensions had "neglected to implement basic procedures for monitoring and authorising expenditure".

The MPs said: "We saw evidence that purchase orders with a total value of £8.7m were approved by a personal assistant to the Programme Director.

"In another case, two purchase orders, one for £22.6m and one for £1.1m, were approved by a personal assistant to the Programme Director whose delegated financial authority at the time of approvals was only £10m.

"When the Department made individual payments to suppliers these could not be linked to particular pieces of work that had been delivered."

PAC chair Margaret Hodge said the implementation of Universal Credit so far had been "extraordinarily poor".

She said: "The failure to develop a comprehensive plan has led to extensive delay and the waste of a yet to be determined amount of public money.

"£425m has been spent so far on the programme. It is likely that much of this, including at least £140m worth of IT assets, will now have to be written off.

"The management of the programme has been alarmingly weak. From the outset, the Department has failed to grasp the nature and enormity of the task; failed to monitor and challenge progress regularly; and, when problems arose, failed to intervene promptly."

The MPs said the project would not hit its current target of enrolling 184,000 claimants by April 2014.

As a result the later stages would have to be speeded up to meet the 2017 completion date - but that would "pose new risks".

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VIP Visas Aimed At Drawing Executives To UK

By Anuskha Asthana, Political Correspondent

British visas are to be offered under a "same-day service" in China and a number of other countries in a bid to make the UK immigration service more pro-growth.

The move will be announced by Theresa May, the Home Secretary, who will also unveil plans to offer bespoke visa support to around 100 global business leaders.

They will be invited to join the new "Great" club with access to an account manager whose aim is to make their dealings with the visa and immigration system "swift and smooth".

Britain's priority visa service - between three and five days - will be expanded from 67 to over 90 countries by next spring.

And the one-day offering only available in India will be extended to China and a number of other locations.

Theresa May will offer same day visas to China

There will also be a special mobile visa service starting with a pilot in south India.

Mrs May said she wanted "excellent customer service" to help Britain maintain a "world class, competitive visa system".

She admitted that was necessary for the UK to serve the "ever-changing needs" of business and succeed in the global economic race.

She added: "We will continue to listen and respond to the needs of high-value and high-priority businesses so that we can provide them with a service that supports economic growth, while at the same time maintains the security of our borders."

The move is in response to fears within Government and outside it that Britain's crackdown on immigration is deterring highly skilled individuals from visiting the country.

Businesses and the City say they need to be able to bring in the best talent to help boost economic growth.

The new scheme will operate as a 12-month pilot, starting in the new year.

The issue has caused tensions inside the Coalition, with the Lib Dem business minister Vince Cable being particularly vocal.

He has also spoken out about universities.

They fear that the attempt to reduce net immigration to the tens of thousands - and the rhetoric it carries - is weakening their chances of attracting the best students.

That limits their ability to compete with institutions in other countries such as the US, Germany and Australia.

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Job Losses Feared At BAE Shipyards Amid Review

Defence giant BAE Systems will announce job losses when it releases a report on the future of shipyards on Thursday, Sky sources understand.

It is thought that two facilities in Scotland and one at Portsmouth could be affected.

Unions are to meet company representatives to discuss the future of the three sites amid a review of its business.

The firm has refused to comment on speculation that hundreds of jobs could be axed at Govan, Scotstoun and Portsmouth.

BAE said last year that it was considering closing one of its major shipyards as part of a maritime defence review, which is launched 18 months ago.

Scotland's Finance Secretary John Swinney said: "We have been in dialogue for some time with BAE Systems on the issues surrounding the future of the Clyde shipyards.

"We are awaiting the outcome of BAE's discussions with the Ministry of Defence and are very alert to the situation concerning both yards.

"We are seeking urgent clarity on the future for both Govan and Scotstoun."

A BAE spokeswoman said: "We continue to work closely with the Ministry of Defence to explore all possible options to determine how best to sustain the capability to deliver complex warships in the UK in the future.

"This work is ongoing and we are committed to keeping our employees and trade unions informed as it progresses."

Hugh Scullion, Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions general secretary said: "We have secured talks with senior BAE systems executives early next week to examine the business case of the forthcoming announcement.

"Now is not the time for idle speculation or indeed party political point scoring.

"This is the future of an industry and we need to know from the company and the government directly what their plans for the future of UK shipbuilding are.

"The shipbuilding workforce throughout the UK are working flat out to deliver the aircraft carriers for the defence of the UK and they need to know what lies in store for them, their families and their communities."

A GMB union spokesman added: "Full time union officials and shop stewards will meet BAE next week to go over the detailed business case on how work will be organised once the carrier programme winds down."

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Duchy Of Cornwall 'Not Advantaged' By Tax Break

By Paul Harrison, Royal Correspondent

The Duchy of Cornwall does not possess a "competitive advantage" over other businesses despite being exempt from hefty taxes, a spokesperson for Prince Charles' estate has told Sky News.

The comments come as the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) today publishes its report on the accounts of the 700-year-old Duchy of Cornwall estate.

Under the Duchy, established in 1337 by King Edward III, the heir to the throne is exempt from paying corporation and capital gains taxes on land and property transactions.

The Duchy of Cornwall estate was established by King Edward III in 1337

But while the current Duke of Cornwall, Prince Charles, is technically exempt from paying income tax, he has volunteered to do so since 1993.

The Duchy spokesperson told Sky News: "We do not believe we have a competitive advantage.

"The Duke of Cornwall's income is taxed at income tax rates. The Duchy is not subject to corporation tax and the Duchy is not a corporation... any capital gains have to be reinvested in the business and cannot be distributed."

But the PAC's Margaret Hodge MP wonders whether the Duchy's unique tax arrangements allow for a level playing field when the estate stands alongside other businesses.

She said: "If you're letting property to a Holiday Inn in Reading or to Waitrose to run a big depot on an industrial estate, are the terms of that enabling other competitors in that market to compete on an equal and level playing field?

The estate owns property including the Kia Oval in south London

"What started off 700 years ago as a medieval estate, today demonstrates all the features of a modern big corporation, yet it hangs on to old habits such as exemption from corporation tax."

The Duchy's main activity is the management of land and properties which make up its estate, providing an income for the present and future Dukes of Cornwall.

Its portfolio is made up of 131,000 acres of land, properties spread across 24 counties and more than 3,500 individual lettings.

All together over the last financial year it generated £28.8m and the Prince received an income of £19m, up 4% on the previous year.

The money is partly used to fund his and his family's public, charitable and official duties and the Prince voluntarily pays income tax on the cash left after costs, around £9.2m last year, according to the PAC.

Margaret Hodge believes the Treasury falls short of proper scrutiny when it comes to the Duchy's finances.

She said: "It [The Treasury] relies on the Duchy to provide it with accurate information without carrying out its own independent checks.

"Details of the Treasury's approvals for the Duchy's proposed land transactions over £500,000, of which there are around 15 a year, are not published.

"Greater transparency is needed."

In answer to the PAC findings, the Treasury said: "HM Treasury's role is to ensure that the Duchy of Cornwall is managed in a sustainable way and that the strategic choices made by the estate's managers are in its long-term interests and those of current and future dukes.

"The Treasury has a constructive working relationship with the Duchy, and challenges decisions where appropriate."

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Water Bills: Minister Urges Firms To Rethink

The Environment Secretary has urged water companies to "look closely" at whether price increases are necessary and urged them to introduce special tariffs for hard-pressed households.

In a letter to suppliers, Owen Paterson MP said they should recognise the financial strain that people were under.

The intervention came with Ofwat expected later this week to reject an application from Thames Water to increase bills by £29 in 2014-2015.

The regulator has questioned the profits being made by firms, and suggested its next Price Review could ease the upward pressure on bills by up to £750m after 2015.

Owen Paterson has urged water companies to reconsider price hikes

Mr Paterson said: "We know that household budgets are under pressure, and keeping water bills affordable is a crucial way we can help hardworking people.

"That is why we are pressing hard to make sure customers get a fair deal, by encouraging water companies to look closely at any price increases, introduce social tariffs for vulnerable customers and crack down on bad debt."

Water bills have risen by more than 60% in the last decade and the average household bill is now £388.

Since 2009, average increases in water and sewerage bills have been in line with inflation, but this has still outstripped increases in household income.

Water companies have blamed the price increases on the costs of environmental improvements including replacing ageing Victoria water pipes.

It comes after the cost of living has become increasingly important on the political agenda after Labour leader Ed Miliband pledged to freeze energy prices if his party wins the 2015 General Election.

Mr Miliband will accuse the coalition Government of "shrugging their shoulders" about low wages and rising prices this week and will challenge Conservative and Lib Dem MPs to back his policy of freezing energy bills in a Commons vote on Wednesday.

During a speech at Battersea Power Station, he will say: "The cost of living crisis isn't just an issue for the lowest paid, it affects the squeezed middle just as much.

"This is not just an issue facing Britain. It is the issue facing Britain. It is about who our country is run for."

Prime Minister David Cameron last week said he wanted to "roll back" environmental taxes that bump up energy bills, and promised more details in Chancellor George Osborne's Autumn Statement on December 4.

:: Read the full letter here

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