22nd April 2022
Bite-sized business news from the UK and beyond
Good morning The days of the 9am-5pm high street bank branch could be numbered. Yesterday Santander announced that from July hundreds of its branches will operate from 9.30am to 3pm on weekdays in response to changing customer habits.Although the pandemic accelerated the use of online banking, Santander said the number of customers using its branches had already fallen by 33% between 2017 and 2019, then dropped a further 50% in 2020 and 12% last year.
Today's stories
Elon Musk – the busiest businessman
Have we reached peaked Netflix?
TECHElon Musk – the busiest businessman
What’s going on?
Why is this important?
A month in the life of the world’s richest month is certainly eventful:
Two weeks ago Elon Musk rocked the world by announcing that he had bought 9% of Twitter. Initially he was given a seat on the board but that was swiftly cancelled.
He’s now made his intention clear that he wants control of the whole business to, in his words, protect free speech on the platform. To that end, last week he put forward a bid to buy Twitter for $43bn which the company did not support saying it undervalued the business.
To protect itself from being bought out, Twitter’s board implemented what’s known as a ‘poison pill’ – which effectively prevents him from purchasing more than a 15% stake.
Yesterday he unveiled he had secured $46.5bn of funds including bank debt to buy Twitter and was exploring making a tender offer meaning he would directly negotiate with shareholders and bypass the board.
While the Twitter saga has been rolling on, Musk’s day job running electric carmaker Tesla has been going well. Despite supply struggles and China’s Covid lockdowns, Tesla beat earnings expectations.Tesla delivered a record 310,000 cars last quarter, with revenue soaring 81% from a year ago. The company is also catching up to traditional carmakers with production numbers close to Mercedes and BMW. It’s already pulled ahead of Volvo and Subaru.
Zooming out
Other stories to keep you in the loop
Nestlé says more price rises are coming after 5% increase
World facing food crisis from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, says World Bank
Work from home to beat Putin, says EU
CNN shuts down its streaming service less than a month after its launch
Lewis Hamilton and Serena Williams join bid to buy Chelsea
Grubhub gave us indigestion, admits Just Eat
MEDIAHave we reached peaked Netflix?
Although Netflix is still the biggest streaming platform with 222m customers, it now faces competition from virtually every entertainment company including Disney, Apple and Amazon.
Households are being more selective with their spending amid the cost of living crisis and decades-high inflation. Around of third of UK and US consumers have either recently cancelled a monthly subscription service or are planning to.
And finally following the start of the Ukraine war, Netflix pulled out of Russia which resulted in 700,000 subscriber loss.
Stat of the day
Netflix estimates that 100m non-paying households share passwords
Interesting links from around the web
12 tips to help future-proof your business
What it would take to make us love our jobs again
Where women earn 120% of men's salaries
