Argentex unit accepts UK financial watchdog's restrictions post collapse
June 26 (Reuters) - Britain's Argentex (AGFX.L), opens new tab on Thursday said its unit has agreed to certain trading restrictions imposed by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority following the currency risk manager's collapse amid extended market volatility.
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Times
32 minutes ago
- Times
Ineos hits out at government ‘madness' after green subsidy is pulled
Sir Jim Ratcliffe's chemicals giant Ineos has accused the government of 'madness' over plans to effectively punish it for making one of its major plants more environmentally friendly. Ineos Acetyls, which makes the acetic acid used in food production, medicines and synthetic fibres, spent more than £30 million switching the fuel source at its factory in Hull from natural gas to low-carbon hydrogen. The move has cut its carbon emissions by 75 per cent. However, the Environment Agency has said that, rather than support the move, it would cut Ineos's carbon subsidies, costing it £23 million over the next three years. Ineos Acetyls chief executive David Brooks said: 'We are being punished for doing the right thing. We've delivered on decarbonisation, exceeding our expectations, and this is the response we get.' He added that he was fighting competition from imports from China, which use cheap, coal-fired energy to produce acetic acid with a carbon footprint eight times greater than his Hull plant. 'It feels like, instead of fighting our competitors, we're fighting our government,' he said. The factory is already lossmaking, he said, and the Environment Agency's decision meant he was having to pause all further investment decisions. The site employs more than 300 workers. The facility was opened by Queen Elizabeth in 1981, but the agency had decided to reclassify it as a 'new-build' factory as a result of the improved process. This means it will not receive its allowances from the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) until 2028. Under the ETS, industrial plants are gifted allowances by the Environment Agency to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases, beyond which they have to buy credits. The idea is to incentivise polluters to emit less. However, the agency's stance on Ineos Acetyls means that, for the next three years, it will have to buy all of its allowances on the market, which at present prices will be approximately £23 million. Ineos has been appealing to the Environment Agency, which operates the ETS system and is run under the umbrella of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Officials from the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero, the Department for Business & Trade and the Treasury, as well as the devolved governments, are also involved, Brooks said. 'It's a civil service soup of decision-making and it's very difficult to see who is actually making the decisions around this. 'So we're frustrated to get to the right people to talk to, we're frustrated it's taking so long to get what we believe is a slam dunk, and we're frustrated it's such a battle to get people to see common sense.' He described the Environment Agency's reaction as 'computer says no' because the Ineos technology is new. Ineos shut its refinery in Grangemouth after spending three years trying to obtain government subsidies to keep it open. Its decision to halt further investment in the Hull plant comes as Britain's biggest bioethanol plant nearby, owned by Associated British Foods, is threatened with closure after the US-UK trade deal allowed tariff-free US ethanol to enter the UK. The MP in Ineos Acetyls' neighbouring constituency, Kingston upon Hull West & Haltemprice, where many of the plant's workers live, is Emma Hardy, parliamentary under-secretary at Defra. Brooks said he had written to her and been told the decision is 'in the system'. Brooks has a meeting with officials from the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero and the Department for Business & Trade this week, but Defra and the Environment Agency are not due to attend. The Environment Agency said it was the regulator for the UK ETS Scheme and was supporting the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero in its discussions with company representatives about activities at the site. On Saturday afternoon the Environment Agency contacted The Sunday Times again and said Ineos would continue to receive free allowances. It said that Ineos needed to provide 12 months of activity data under the new, cleaner technology for its allowances to reflect the switch.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Charity donors' anger over 'tip traps' on fundraising websites
Three in four adults are 'frustrated' with the 'tip trap' set by some fundraising websites, fresh research reveals. Some 76 per cent of those polled by advisory firm Strand Partners are annoyed at the way tips are collected on online fundraising platforms and are calling for the Government to tackle the practice. Fundraising websites act as a middleman between charities or fundraisers and donors, making donations to good causes simple. But many now automatically add a 'tip' on to the donation amount, which goes straight to the platform – and not the charitable cause. It's catching out many generous donors, who end up frustrated after unintentionally paying the automatic charges. When a donor reaches the checkout stage of the fundraising platform, the tip is shown on a sliding scale, which is automatically set at 17 per cent on popular website JustGiving. This means on a £50 donation, an £8.50 fee is automatically added. Donors can change or opt out of these tips, which go directly to the platforms, but only if they spot them – and work out how to reduce them to £0. There are two higher options – at 19 and 20 per cent – and two lower options – 12.5 and 15 per cent. However, the sliding scale doesn't allow donors to reduce the tip to £0, as they must instead manually enter this by clicking an 'enter custom amount' button. Almost two thirds of Britons want it to be easier to remove tip options when donating online, Strand Partners found. Scores of annoyed users have vented their frustration on social media and review websites. One user says 'any tip should be opt in, not opt out', while another says they were 'disgusted' to find a donation had been automatically added. One review of JustGiving says: 'What an insult. I did not want to leave them a tip.' If you leave an unintended tip, you can ask the fundraising platform you used if you can get a refund. It's not just donors who are feeling frustrated. The research comes as MPs are piling pressure on the Government about the sliding tipping scales. Cross-party MPs including Annaliese Dodds, MP for Oxford , and Saqib Bhatti, MP for Meriden and Solihull East, have recently pushed the Government on its plans to take any action on the sliding tipping scales. One of these MPs, Jo Platt, MP for Leigh and Atherton – and a member of the Culture Media and Sport Committee – says: 'Fundraising platforms play an important role in facilitating giving. But concealed tipping options and hidden charges are unnecessarily diverting money away from charities and misleading donors.' The tip system means websites don't levy a platform fee on donations to charities or personal fundraisers anymore in order to run their service. Instead, it is these tips which now pay for the running of the platforms. The UK Fundraising Regulator has long maintained the importance of transparency in online donations. In April, it updated its Code Of Fundraising Practice to specify that all voluntary tips must be clearly presented and on equal footing to free donation options. This is due to take effect in November. A JustGiving spokesman says: 'In order for us to continue to support fundraisers, it is essential that we operate as a for-profit organisation. In recent years we have seen growth in the volume of donations which in turn has naturally increased our profitability. 'Following consultation with some of the UK's leading charities, in 2019 we moved to a voluntary contribution model, so that as much money as possible could go directly to charities and good causes. This is now standard practice across the industry. 'Today, anyone using our platform has the option to leave a tip on top of their donation to support the running of JustGiving and this is not compulsory. 'When people do choose to add a tip, this goes towards investing in and maintaining the technology that helps our site continue to securely raise funds on a global scale, 24/7.'
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
TONY HETHERINGTON: All 12 cheques I deposited at the Post Office have disappeared
Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday's ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below. M.H. writes: I am a director of a small agricultural supply business, contacting you in desperation. My firm deposited 12 cheques for Barclays bank – totalling £6,212 – at the local Post Office. They were never credited to our account. I have spoken to the bank every week for the past month and had no support. Tony Hetherington replies: The Barclays branch in your town closed its doors three years ago. Account holders were told to use branches in two nearby towns. Alternatively, Barclays advised: 'Cheques can be deposited at the Post Office. Please allow an extra two days for cheques deposited using a pre-printed paying-in slip to reach your Barclays accounts.' I asked the bank what had gone wrong, and staff told me: 'We're really sorry that a number of cheques paid in by Mr H's company were lost in transit by Royal Mail.' It offered you £200 after acknowledging that you would have to contact the dozen people and firms whose cheques were lost and ask them for replacements. However, a bad situation became worse. You deposited a further 11 cheques at the same Post Office, with a total value of £6,593, and they also failed to reach your Barclays account. I began making inquiries again, and a day later ten of the cheques turned up, leaving just £27 missing. Barclays raised its offer to you to £300, and the bank will also meet any expenses faced by your customers who have to ask their own banks to cancel the missing cheques. I do hope procedures at that Post Office branch are tightened up as well. Vinted and Mangopay keeping my cash Ms T.J. writes: Vinted and Mangopay are refusing to release £27 – the proceeds from items I have sold using their services. I have been asked to complete a Politically Exposed Person questionnaire, which I already did months ago. I am now being asked to supply photographic evidence such as a copy of my passport or driving licence. I refuse to do this, as I don't know why they need such personal information. It seems they are thinking of any way not to release my money. Tony Hetherington replies: For those who do not know it, Vinted is an online business based in Lithuania which acts as a middleman for anyone wanting to sell or buy secondhand clothes and similar items. And Mangopay is a money transfer company based in Luxembourg. I contacted both companies but Mangopay, which is allowed by the Financial Conduct Authority to operate in the UK, failed to offer any comment or explanation at all. Vinted, though, replied quoting a 2004 Luxembourg law dealing with money laundering and terrorist financing! It referred to this as a 'Know Your Customer' procedure that Mangopay must apply. But hang on a moment – surely Mangopay's customer is Vinted, not you? Well, apparently you are really a Mangopay customer. Before putting anything up for sale on Vinted, it seems you should have studied the Lithuanian company's 20 pages of terms and conditions. These reveal that it uses four money transmission firms, all based in different countries. And when you use Vinted, you are automatically enlisted as a customer of one of these firms. This, in turn, means you have to abide by Mangopay's own 21 pages of terms and conditions, which give it every right to cling on to your £27 until you jump through a series of hoops. One of these hoops is that if Mangopay suspects you are a crook, an arms dealer, an international diplomat or a high-flying politician, it can investigate you as a potentially corrupt Politically Exposed Person, rather like a Russian oligarch whose assets might be frozen. The pages of questions issued by Mangopay include asking you whether in the past 12 months you have been a head of state, a supreme court judge, or a general in charge of an army. And even if you answer no to every question, Mangopay warns that simply by returning its questionnaire you are accepting that it can demand further information and documents from you. So, are you as corrupt as a villain from a James Bond movie? And just what did you sell on Vinted to spark Mangopay's suspicions? You told me: 'I'm retired and trying to downsize, selling a few things.' You sold a pair of men's loafers for £8, a dress for £4 and a vintage-style trench coat for £15. As for being a Mangopay customer, you protested: 'I never signed up to be one. If I had been given that option, I would never have signed up to Vinted in the first place.' The Trustpilot review site is full of protests from people in your position. And, just a few weeks ago, my Mail colleague Sarah Vine publicly ditched Vinted after struggling unsuccessfully to get money owed to her. She wrote: 'Well done, Vinted: you've wasted several hours of my few remaining years – and swindled me out of £62.50.' Surprisingly, the online barrier to your account suddenly vanished after I started questioning it. You grabbed your £27 while you could. But it was 'a really quite appalling way to operate a business', you told me. I can hardly disagree.
