In today's business briefing, Robyn and Remy discuss the Everton takeover, a full house at St Michael's, a solar powered aircraft and jobs secured at shipyards.
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00:00Everton Football Club, Gary Neville St. Michael's and Solar Aircraft, that's
00:05what's coming up in today's business briefing, sponsored by Shawbrook Bank.
00:14Hello I'm Remy Greesley and I'm Robin Hewson. Today Robin I want to start
00:20with Everton and obviously the football club in Liverpool. Yesterday it
00:25was announced that they've actually finalised the sale of the club and
00:28they've now been bought by the Friedkin Group, ran by American billionaire Dan
00:34Friedkin and it sort of represents the end of quite a tumultuous two and a
00:38half years I'd say for the club, probably for the fans as well. I know they're...
00:42Are you a fan? I'm more of a blue than a red as someone who lives in Liverpool but yeah I
00:49couldn't, can't say for certain otherwise you know, don't want to start a fight or
00:55anything but yeah so the club's been plagued pretty much by this saga of you
01:01know, is it going to be sold, people trying to buy it, all those questions but
01:05now it's finally been told and the deal's believed to be worth I think about
01:09four hundred million. It was awaiting approval by the Premier League after
01:13being I think approved by the Everton shareholders in September but now it's
01:18all gone through and Dan Friedkin said he takes immense pride in welcoming one
01:23of England's most historic football clubs to the the global family which is
01:28I think the Friedkin Group also owns Roma in Rome. Exciting times then for Everton. Could be very
01:36exciting I think. Robin I think sort of keeping with that football theme, I'll
01:41pass it over to you. Yeah from Everton to Manchester United and so as a lot of
01:47people will know Gary Neville's now quite a prolific property developer in
01:50Manchester and his flagship scheme for a while has been St. Michael's. So it's
01:55200,000 square foot of offices and it's been, it's under construction at the
01:59moment. The news sort of today is that they have reached fully let status
02:05ahead of practical completion. So that's quite significant because it's
02:09believed to be the first time in 15 years that a speculative office building
02:13has been fully let before it was actually finished. So yeah I think that
02:17shows how popular it's been as a scheme and over the last year they've had six
02:21office tenants confirmed as well as three food and beverage operators and so
02:26it's opening in spring 2025 so quite excited to go and have a look around.
02:29Shows a lot of faith in the development in total. It does definitely, I think it's
02:34gonna be a really exciting scheme. And I want to sort of take you to the world of
02:39solar powered aircraft. Okay. So obviously I think in the sort of
02:44aerospace industry it's always been this thing how are we going to make aircraft
02:48not powered by you know jet fuel that type of thing. But BAE Systems
02:54now reached a significant milestone with their project called FASA 35 and that is
03:01an uncrewed aerial sort of system that runs just on solar energy. And recently
03:08they published a video of these test flights where they were able to
03:13send the aircraft you know above the sort of line of the stratosphere I think
03:18for about 24 hours at a time which is quite impressive. And it reached about
03:2466,000 feet before landing in a serviceable condition which is quite
03:29good. And Bob Davison who's the chief exec of BAE, of the BAE subsidiary that's
03:36doing the project said that it was a significant step forward sort of proving
03:41the project capability which is quite interesting and quite exciting I think
03:46especially from a sustainability point of view. Definitely yeah. Yeah and I
03:50believe you've got something in the world of maritime. Yeah we have so final
03:55story today is from Ireland. So a deal has been agreed to secure the future for
04:00Harland and Wolfe shipyards across the UK and that's saving a thousand jobs. So
04:05yeah really good news. So in September administrators were
04:09appointed to Harland and Wolfe group which is a parent company of the Belfast
04:14shipyard where the Titanic was built. Yeah but yeah unfortunately
04:17administrators were brought in in September and but Novantia UK has saved
04:22the day and they have agreed with Harland and Wolfe to purchase all four
04:26of the shipyards and the deal is expected to be completed shortly. And
04:29it's also going to allow the delivery of the Ministry of Defence's contract with
04:33Novantia and that's to build three Royal Navy ships. It's always good to see jobs
04:38saved. Yeah absolutely. Even more than jobs created I think sometimes. But I
04:43think that's all we've got time for today. Thanks everyone for watching. You
04:46can read all these stories and more on insidermedia.com and there'll be links
04:50below to everything. Thank you.