Latest news with #Pask
The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Scots firms 'still on knife-edge' despite fall in failures
Fiona Pask, partner and head of Scotland at the full-service firm, said: 'While the year-on-year drop in Scottish administrations is encouraging, the overall environment remains extremely challenging for many businesses across the country. Distress hasn't disappeared – it may simply be taking new forms or being delayed by short-term fixes.' Ms Pask added: 'Scottish retail and hospitality businesses, in particular, are grappling with evolving consumer behaviours, staff shortages and high energy costs. Even though administrations are down, many of these firms are still on a knife-edge. 'While a drop in administration volumes is a positive signal, it should not breed complacency. Many companies are still struggling with cashflow, limited access to funding, and uncertain demand. Now is the time for directors to act – not when crisis hits. Scots legal giant cites 'resilience and ambition' as latest results revealed 'Deeply concerning': More Scots firms plan to shut than expand 'Early intervention opens the door to more solutions. Directors who engage proactively are far more likely to protect jobs, safeguard value and find a viable route forward.' The analysis found the number of firms across the UK as a whole which entered administration in the first half was down 11% on the same period last year at 783. However, this was 3% higher than in the same period of 2023, which Shakespeare Martineau said highlights the 'fragility of the business environment'. The firm found that retail continues to be the UK's hardest-hit sector, with a 29% increase in administrations year-on-year – rising from 119 to 153. Hospitality filings across the UK ticked up slightly to 80 compared with 78 in the first half of 2024, while construction and manufacturing saw notable declines. Across the UK, the north west of England overtook Greater London as the region with the most administrations, with 165 administrations (up 11% on 2024) compared with Greater London's 158 (down 17%).
Scoop
08-07-2025
- Business
- Scoop
Sound Law-Making Needed
Sound law-making is needed for NZ to attract investment and achieve economic growth, BusinessNZ says. Chief Economist John Pask presented BusinessNZ's submission on the Regulatory Standards Bill to the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee today. He said the Bill was an important step towards improving the quality of regulation and reducing the compliance burden on businesses. "While Parliament is sovereign and can change legislation at any time it sees fit, there is benefit from placing appropriate scrutiny on decision-makers when law is made," Mr Pask said. "This Bill is not a silver bullet, but it is another good tool in the toolbox to improve the quality of regulation in NZ." He said it was important that the Bill more clearly covered regulatory takings, where an individual or business had their property restricted or confiscated by regulation, and provided for the principle of compensation in such cases. BusinessNZ recommends that scrutiny of local government regulation and Private Members Bills should also be provided for in the Bill, as well as scrutiny of central government legislation.
Scoop
23-06-2025
- Business
- Scoop
BusinessNZ Planning Forecast: Improving Forecast For Some Areas
The BusinessNZ Planning Forecast for the June quarter indicates the NZ economy will likely grow at nearly 3% by 2027, however it is facing strong headwinds caused by international and domestic issues. BusinessNZ economist John Pask says the uncertain, rapidly-changing international environment is affecting New Zealand's trade and economic prospects. "Not just war and threats of war, but also threats to trade and the international trade rules-based order are bringing uncertainty and caution. "NZ is a trading nation, linked to the rest of the world by key markets, supply chains and global investment flows, and vulnerable to economic shocks and international tensions. Forecasts of future growth will be heavily conditional on world events," Mr Pask said. "Domestically, there is some good news, as statistics indicate GDP improvement, inflation is still contained, lower interest rates are reducing the pressure on businesses and households, dairy and meat prices are positive, and the Government's moves to allow greater deductions on business purchases and address poor regulation are all positive." The BusinessNZ Economic Conditions Index (ECI), a measure of NZ's major economic indicators, sits at 8 for the June 2025 quarter, an improvement of 2 on the previous quarter, and an improvement of 12 on a year ago. An ECI reading above 0 indicates that economic conditions are generally improving overall; below 0 means economic conditions are generally declining. The full BusinessNZ Planning Forecast for the June quarter is on The BusinessNZ Network including BusinessNZ, EMA, Business Central, Business Canterbury and Business South, represents and provides services to thousands of businesses, small and large, throughout New Zealand.
7NEWS
11-05-2025
- Science
- 7NEWS
Tasmanian tiger: Melbourne scientists team up with US biotech and genetic engineering company to bring animal back from extinction
Last month, a US biotech and genetic engineering company worth billions of dollars announced it had brought back the long extinct dire wolf. Featuring in works of popular culture for decades, including in the Game of Thrones novels and then later the hit TV show, dire wolves were bigger than the wolves we know today, with larger jaws and teeth. In April, Dallas-based Colossal Biosciences said it had 'de-extincted' the animal, which died out over 10,000 years ago, using ancient DNA, cloning and gene-editing technology to alter the genes of a grey wolf. The news caused a buzz of excitement within the science community and created a flurry of questions about how the technology worked. Closer to home, scientists in Melbourne, led by Professor Andrew Pask, are on a journey towards a similar scientific breakthrough — this time resurrecting the infamous Tasmanian tiger. With Colossal's backing, Pask is confident we could see the animal roam the island again in the not-too-distant future. What happened to the Tasmanian tiger? Pask has always been enthralled by the Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine, and has spearheaded efforts to bring back the animal for the past 25 years. He currently leads a team of 40 at the University of Melbourne's TIGRR (Thylacine Integrated Genomic Restoration Research) Lab which in 2022 partnered with Colossal to accelerate the process. 'They have a huge set-up, you know, they have hundreds of millions of US dollars to actually build these massive genetic engineering facilities and things that we don't have here in Australia,' Pask told 'So being able to partner with them on this project has actually been a massive game changer, and it's really accelerated the time that we can get this stuff done.' The last Tasmanian tiger died on September 7, 1936 at Hobart Zoo. The species was completely driven to extinction by humans, with European settlers mistakenly blaming the deaths of their sheep on the animals. 'It probably wasn't killing sheep, very rarely. It wasn't its major food source,' Pask said. 'But because it looked like the European grey wolf, it looked like predators that had been problematic for farming practices where they came from. 'The thylacine was, unfortunately, the scapegoat.' Despite many hopeful Tasmanians claiming to have seen the animal over the last seven decades, and Pask's lab regularly sent ziplock bags filled with faeces that people claimed were from the Tasmanian tiger, it was never seen again. But Pask is confident he and his team can change that — and this is how. How is this actually possible? When we think of bringing back animals that have been wiped from the face of the earth, for most of us, our mind goes straight to Jurassic Park. In the book, and film, scientists used DNA extracted from prehistoric insects preserved in amber to clone the dinosaurs. Gaps in the DNA sequence were filled with reptilian, bird, or frog DNA. What Pask and his team are doing to bring back the Tasmanian tiger is a little different, thankfully, as we all know what happened in Jurassic Park. In 2018, Pask and his team published the first genome sequence of the Tasmanian tiger. A genome is the entire set of DNA instructions found in a cell. This DNA was taken from a 108-year-old specimen preserved in alcohol at the Melbourne Museum. 'You cannot create life where there is none. You have to start with a living cell, and you need to edit that living cell to become your extinct animal,' Pask said. 'We can sequence the entire DNA of a thylacine, and we've done that end to end, every single bit of its three billion bases we know every single part. 'Once you've got that, you can say, what is the closest living relative?' In comes the fat-tailed dunnart, a very small, very cute, mouselike marsupial. The animal is the Tasmanian tiger's closest living relative, with the two being over 99 per cent the same. Unlike Jurassic Park, where scientists filled in the gaps of the frog or bird DNA to create a dinosaur, Pask and his team will go in and make edits in the fat-tailed dunnart's DNA. 'We actually just make every single edit so that that final genome is a thylacine genome,' Pask said. 'The DNA from the last (Tasmanian tiger) that died, it's broken up into hundreds of tiny little pieces. 'Though we know exactly what that code was, it's in little bits now, rather than being in whole chromosomes, and so you have to put it back together. 'We can't do that, but we can use an animal that has its chromosomes altogether. 'It's easier to fix that 1 per cent than it is to try and rebuild the whole genome.' While it's not possible to rebuild a complete set of DNA from an extinct animal's DNA, it might be possible one day in the future. When Colossal announced it had brought back the dire wolf, some critics said the animal was mostly still a grey wolf. This will not be the same as the animal that Pask and his team are trying to bring back. 'I think they made 20 edits across the whole (grey wolf's genome), but if you were to completely rebuild it, like we do, into the thylacine again, it would be thousands and thousands of edits,' he said. 'For the animal we want to put back into Tasmania, it's got to be complete. So, it'd be 100 per cent (a Tasmanian tiger).' Pask and his team are up to the editing stage, which he says could take another 10 years. In the future, when they've got to the stage of creating a Tasmanian tiger embryo, it will be implanted into a surrogate. This surrogate will be a fat-tailed dunnart, and gestation take up to 42 days. Michelle Dracoulis, mayor of Derwent Valley Council in southern-central Tasmania and chair of the TIGRR Lab, travelled to Melbourne this week for Colossal Biosciences' first annual Tasmanian Thylacine Advisory Committee summit. She said Tasmanians are ready and waiting for the return of their beloved animal. 'The thylacine is a huge thing in Tasmania. Culturally, it's part of the identity of the people down there,' she told 'I think people would just be absolutely over the moon (if it was) out there again, because they dream of it. People think they hear it. People think they see footprints on the beach. It's never gone away.' Dracoulis said the tiger's return would be vital from both a tourism and environmental perspective in Tasmania. 'We're right at the edge of the world. It's nearly pristine parts, and the fact we've taken this apex predator out, protecting that moving forward, especially when the world is changing so much, is vitally important,' she said. Pask said what drives his work is the moral obligation he feels towards bringing back an animal that humans were responsible for destroying. If the technology is available, and it is, then humans have to try. 'It's morally unjust (to) not put everything into trying to bring this species back,' Pask said. 'It's just a matter of going, we owe it (not just) to this species, but to the ecosystem, to bring these animals back. 'I feel very passionate about that.'
