Source: Sharecast
The cost of keeping the UK’s last remaining blast furnaces going at British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant could exceed £1.5bn by 2028 if it continues at its current rate, according to the government’s spending watchdog. Ministers took the plant into public control in April last year, after its Chinese owner – industrial firm Jingye – threatened to shut down the loss-making site. The National Audit Office (NAO), which monitors state spending, said the intervention saved thousands of jobs at Scunthorpe and prevented a “serious impact” on UK industry, including Network Rail, which buys steel for the railways from the plant. – Guardian
Nvidia is on the hook for $860m (£650m) owed by the British data centre company Nscale, in the latest of a string of deals that has raised fears of an AI bubble. Nscale, which this week hit a $15bn valuation and recruited former Meta executives Sir Nick Clegg and Sheryl Sandberg to its board, revealed that Nvidia has guaranteed five years of rent payments at a data centre in Texas. – Telegraph
A co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream has hit out at the increasing “grip” of Nelson Peltz’s hedge fund on Magnum, the group that owns the brand, in a fresh row over a recent board appointment. Ben Cohen, who founded the socially conscious ice-cream company with Jerry Greenfield in 1978, said the New York activist fund Trian had a “track record of stripping out the values and governance that built the brand” and urged investors to “take notice”. – The Times
Britain’s factories have suffered a “collapse” in domestic demand and rising costs, according to a grim warning from the sector that comes as hopes of an interest rate cut this week have been dashed by war in the Gulf. Manufacturers said that British orders had dropped sharply in the first quarter of the year and firms had been forced to raise prices at the fastest pace since 2023, in the latest snapshot of the sector from Make UK. – The Times