‘This will have a significant impact on the local economy by bringing further new jobs and inward investment’

A County Durham brownfield site is set to be transformed into a landmark development on the back of a £2.5m funding package. Developers Priority Space have sealed the significant support package to aid the completion of the commercial development at Hutton Court on Consett Business Park in Durham.

The company is converting the historic brownfield site into a hub with 14 commercial units for small and medium-sized enterprises to set up base and grow. The Hutton Court development in Consett Business Park development is a scheme of new build units on the site of a former working colliery.

The new hub has been specifically designed to meet the growing demand for new build units in the North East. Sheffield-based commercial property developer Priority Space has led the scheme, adding to its national portfolio of regeneration projects that aim to serve up excellent workspaces for micro and SMEs.

Funding to support the development has been provided using a £2m loan provided by FW Capital under the North East Commercial Property Investment Fund, which is managed by FW Capital and backed by The North East Mayor Kim McGuinness.

An incentive of £500,000 has also been provided by The North East Mayoral Strategic Authority to address the financial viability gap. The inward investment scheme will support new jobs and contribute to local economic growth.

The units are set to be completed this month, offering features such as 5.7 metre eaves, electrically operated insulated sectional overhead doors with protection bollards, electric car charging ports, solar reflective double glazing, shared forecourts and services yards with designated car parking and visitor spaces.

The scheme is based near to the Number One Industrial Estate, which consists of 790,000 sq ft of industrial space providing accommodation to over 106 businesses, including Legrand Electric, CAV Aerospace, Howden Joinery and Wolseley Group.

Lee Buchanan, director at Priority Space, said: “This investment has enabled us to kickstart the Hutton Court development in Consett Business Park and regenerate a previous brownfield site that had been a working colliery in the past. Prior to receiving the funding, we had been struggling to get the site moving, needing a significant working capital injection to support our ambitions.

“Chris and the team at FW Capital have been fantastic to work with. As we near completion, we are already in discussions with SMEs looking to lease or purchase space in this prime location. We also have plans to look at further developments across the North East and hope to work with FW Capital on these too.”

Chris Dixon, fund manager at FW Capital, added: “Priority Space is bringing to Consett quality new industrial units which can be used by a diverse range of businesses. This will have a significant impact on the local economy by bringing further new jobs and inward investment. It’s also fantastic to be able to combine funds with The North East Mayoral Strategic Authority to help get this development started and come to fruition.”

The North East Commercial Property Investment Fund is a £35m fund which provides loans of up to £7m to support both non speculative and speculative developments for new build or refurbished commercial projects.

Like this story? For more news from the commercial property scene around the regions, visit our dedicated section here for the latest news and analysis within the sector.

LONDON — Shares of Vodafone Group jumped as much as 13% on Friday after Emirates Telecommunications Group, known as e&, agreed to sell its entire 16.2% stake in the British telecommunications company to Vega, an investment vehicle owned by the family of French billionaire Xavier Niel.

Vodafone’s American depositary shares were trading at $14.81 in New York on Friday morning, up $1.73, or 13.18%, according to Yahoo Finance data. In London, the stock touched an intraday high near 111 pence and closed the session at 110.10 pence, its strongest finish since mid-June, outperforming a broader FTSE 100 index that was little changed on the day.

The deal, valued at approximately $5.95 billion, or roughly £4.4 billion, will see Vega acquire e&’s full holding of about 3.94 billion Vodafone ordinary shares, representing 16.21% of the company’s issued share capital and 17.13% of its total voting rights. The agreed price of 112.5 pence per share includes about 110.5 pence in cash plus Vodafone’s final fiscal 2026 dividend of 2.02 pence per share, which e& is set to receive on July 30. That price represents a premium of roughly 13% to 15% over Thursday’s closing price of 97.76 pence.

Once regulatory approvals are secured, Niel will become Vodafone’s largest individual shareholder, replacing e&, which had built its stake since first investing $4.4 billion for a 9.8% position in 2022. The shares will be transferred through simultaneous off-market block trades to three financial institutions, with e&’s holding placed in trust pending clearance.

As part of the transaction, e& has terminated its relationship agreement with Vodafone, and its board representative, Hatem Dowidar, has stepped down from his role as a non-executive director with immediate effect. e& described the divestiture as representing the “natural evolution” of its strategic priorities, as it moves to concentrate on its core operations while realizing a return on its investment.

Vega, which is fully owned by the Niel family group, said it has no intention of launching a full takeover offer for Vodafone and characterized the purchase as a long-term, strategic minority holding. Under the UK Takeover Code, the company said it plans to engage with the British government regarding the transaction.

Niel is the founder of French telecommunications company Iliad and one of Europe’s most prominent telecom investors. Through companies controlled by his family group, he holds telecom assets spanning 26 countries across Europe and Latin America, serving approximately 139 million subscribers and employing roughly 45,000 people. The portfolio, which includes Iliad, Salt, Monaco Telecom, Eir, Tele2 and Millicom, generates around €24 billion in annual revenue and more than €9 billion in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, after lease costs.

Niel has previously sought a foothold in Vodafone’s operations directly, having made two unsuccessful attempts to acquire the company’s Italian business, both of which were rejected.

Analysts said the scale of the premium Niel agreed to pay, combined with his industry track record, fueled investor optimism that Vodafone’s public market valuation may have been understating the company’s underlying worth. Morgan Stanley analysts said Niel’s telecommunications experience and limited operational overlap with Vodafone’s existing footprint could make him a stable, long-term backer, with market attention now shifting toward the performance of Vodafone’s German business, where the company continues to trail market leader Deutsche Telekom.

AJ Bell analyst Dan Coatsworth said investors reacted positively to the size of Niel’s commitment. “The market has responded favourably to Niel’s latest move, with certain investors possibly believing he might want to buy the whole of Vodafone in time,” Coatsworth said. “That might not be the case, but it won’t stop market speculation.”

Kester Mann, an analyst at CCS Insight, described e&’s exit as an unexpected reversal for the Abu Dhabi-based operator, which had previously positioned itself as a company expanding its global telecommunications footprint through international stakes such as its Vodafone investment.

Friday’s rally pushed Vodafone shares decisively above their 200-day moving average, a threshold that traders often use to gauge whether a stock has broken out of a long-term downtrend. Technical analysts said the stock would need to hold above the 105-pence level, where the recent breakout gap and its 50-day moving average both provide support, for the bullish move to be sustained. A push above resistance near 117 to 122 pence was cited as the next test for the shares, while some technical indicators, including the Relative Strength Index, flagged the stock as overbought following the sharp one-day gain.

Vodafone, incorporated in 1984 and based in Newbury, England, provides mobile and fixed telecommunications services, cloud and edge computing, and financial technology products including its M-PESA mobile money platform in Africa, serving customers across Europe, Africa and other international markets.

The broader London market was little changed Friday. The FTSE 100 rose about 0.1% at midday, while the FTSE 250 and the AIM All-Share index posted modest gains. The British pound strengthened against both the U.S. dollar and the euro during the session. In New York, U.S. stock futures pointed to a mixed open, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average called modestly higher and the Nasdaq Composite indicated lower.

Vodafone did not immediately issue additional public comment beyond confirming the terms of the transaction and the departure of e&’s board representative. The deal remains subject to customary regulatory approvals before Vega’s stake formally transfers.

This is the forum for daily political discussion on Seeking Alpha. A new version is published every market day.

Please don’t leave political comments on other articles or posts on the site.

The comments below are not regulated with the same rigor as the rest of the site, and this is an ‘enter at your own risk’ area as discussion can get very heated. If you can’t stand the heat… you know what they say…

More on Today’s Markets:

Moderation Guidelines:

We remove comments under the following categories:

• Personal attacks on another user account
• Anti-Vaxxer or covid related misinformation
• Stereotyping, prejudiced or racist language about individuals or the topic under discussion.
• Inciting violence messages, encouraging hate groups and political violence.

Regardless of which side of the political divide you find yourself, please be courteous and don’t direct abuse at other users.

For any issue with regards to comments please email us at : moderation@seekingalpha.com.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

Mumbai: SBI Funds Management has raised ₹1,655 crore through a pre-IPO share sale to a clutch of institutional investors and individuals ahead of the launch of its initial public offering (IPO) next week. The country’s largest asset manager’s ₹11,693 crore IPO is the largest public issue so far in 2026.

ET reported on July 4 that SBI Funds Management was looking to raise up to ₹2,000 crore from institutional investors before the public issue.

The fund house sold about 2.88 crore shares to 30 investors. Among the largest investors were PI Opportunities Fund-II and Enam’s Akash Manek Bhanshali, who invested about ₹200 crore each. 3P India Equity Fund I, led by investor Prashant Jain, also participated with an investment of around ₹150 crore.

Other investors in the placement include Bennett Coleman & Co, Malabar India Fund, Tata AIG General Insurance, Go Digit General Insurance, Anand Rathi Global Finance, Capri Global Ventures and Clarus Capital, among others.

According to SBI’s exchange filing, the bank signed agreements on July 9 to sell a 1.42% stake in SBI Funds Management at ₹574 per share, the upper end of the IPO price band. The transaction is expected to be completed on July 10.

Around 7,210 fish and chip shops operate across the UK, according to industry body Seafish.

In Dorset, Jon operates a couple of those premises as well as working on a tuna fishing boat.

His grandfather and father were both in the industry; “I swore I never would be involved in fish and chips, but of course it’s in your blood.

“We’ve diversified partly because of my passion and love for fishing, but also because of the way the economic circumstances are, you’ve got to have a few strings to your bow.”

Long charges £11.70 for a regular-sized portion of cod and chips.

“Let’s call it £12.” he said as he explained that around £2 of that goes straight to the government in VAT.

The cost of the food itself is typically about 35% of the price, or around £3.50 to £4, depending on the type of fish being used.

Labour costs are about 40% so £4 goes on staffing.

Once food, staff wages, packaging, gas and electricity are paid for, there is around £2 left.

That remaining £2 is not simply profit. It helps pay for reinvestment in the business, future improvements and provides Long with his own income.

Some eBay shoppers and sellers said Friday they were having trouble reaching the online marketplace, with scattered complaints surfacing on social media even as most automated monitoring services showed the platform largely functioning.

Posts on the social platform X referenced possible disruptions affecting eBay users, including in the United Kingdom, though the scale and cause of any problem remained unclear Friday morning. The reports come amid a pattern of intermittent, localized issues that outage-tracking services say eBay has experienced periodically in recent months.

Independent monitoring site StatusGator said its most recent check of eBay’s systems found the service operational, though it logged 44 user-submitted reports of outages in the prior 24 hours. A separate check by the same tracker on eBay’s selling tools similarly found the platform operational, with 34 user-submitted reports in the past day, including at least one complaint describing eBay.com destinations returning a “server not found” error for part of an afternoon.

UptimeRobot, which pings eBay’s servers every five minutes from multiple global locations, reported no anomalies in its latest automated check, saying it detected no unusual response times or error codes as of its most recent scan. The service says it only flags eBay as down after three separate confirmation checks from different global locations all detect a problem, a method designed to filter out issues tied to a single user’s device or internet connection rather than the platform itself.

Other outage trackers described a similar picture of intermittent, low-level complaints rather than a confirmed widespread failure. VeePN’s live tracker, which combines automated checks with crowdsourced user reports, characterizes report volume on a sliding scale, distinguishing a “baseline” of essentially zero reports in a 30-minute window from an “outage signal” that requires eleven or more reports in the same window. The company notes that when reports surge and multiple regions register failures at once, that combination points to a genuine outage rather than a problem isolated to one household or network.

eBay’s own official status page offers only general information and directs users with specific problems to contact customer service, without a live incident log visible to the public. The company had not issued a public statement addressing outage reports as of Friday.

Complaints about the platform are not new. On eBay’s own community forums, sellers have used recent threads to describe unresolved technical issues, including one user who said in a post earlier this week that three separate support tickets had been opened over an ongoing problem, with no clear indication that any progress had been made. That user added that support representatives had told them there was no way to contact IT staff directly, even after a ticket had gone unresolved for two months.

Other recent forum posts flagged unrelated technical complaints, including a request that eBay fix a reports and downloads window that cannot be scrolled, making it difficult for users on laptops or small screens to reach the on-screen buttons.

On the crowdsourced complaint site IsTheServiceDown, recent posts tagged to eBay covered a range of issues beyond a straightforward outage, including at least one user describing a seller account and chargeback dispute that they said had received conflicting information from support staff. The mix of complaints underscores a broader challenge in confirming outage reports in real time: distinguishing a platform-wide technical failure from routine account-specific problems, regional connectivity trouble, or normal customer-service friction.

Consumers who suspect an outage is affecting them specifically, rather than eBay broadly, are typically advised by monitoring services to rule out simpler explanations first. VeePN’s tracker suggests users experiencing trouble try switching between Wi-Fi and mobile data, updating their app, or checking whether the issue appears on multiple devices and networks before concluding eBay itself is down. UptimeRobot offers similar guidance, recommending users try a different browser, device or network, disable any active VPN, clear their DNS cache or restart their router before assuming a confirmed platform-wide outage is underway, noting that if the site loads normally elsewhere, the problem is more likely local than a broad eBay failure.

Even confirmed eBay outages in the past several months appear to have been short-lived. One outage tracker noted that over a recent 90-day period, eBay experienced three incidents with a median duration of roughly eight hours and 50 minutes.

As of Friday, no major outage-tracking service had escalated eBay’s status to a confirmed, large-scale disruption, and the company’s status page did not reflect an active incident. The situation illustrates how quickly reports of technical trouble can spread on social media even when the underlying evidence remains mixed or inconclusive.

eBay did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Users experiencing persistent issues are encouraged to check eBay’s official status page and the company’s customer service channels for updates, as any confirmed disruption would typically be reflected there once acknowledged.

This is a developing situation, and further details may emerge as eBay or independent monitoring services provide updates.

Mumbai: A glitch at Groww, India’s largest brokerage, prevented clients from withdrawing their funds from their accounts during equity market trading on Friday. Some users took to social media, claiming they were also unable to deposit money into the account.

In response to an email query, a Groww spokesperson said the issue was caused by an “incident” at its cloud service provider, Google Cloud Platform. “We experienced a temporary disruption that prevented a very small fraction of our customers from making withdrawals. However, the incident was promptly resolved, and customers were able to withdraw their funds before market close,” the spokesperson said. An email sent to Google went unanswered till the time of going to print.

Apple accused OpenAI on Friday of telling Apple employees interviewing for jobs to bring confidential prototypes, engineering artifacts and hardware components to interviews as part of an effort to accelerate the artificial intelligence company’s push into consumer devices.

The allegation is among the most explosive claims in a sweeping trade secrets lawsuit Apple filed in federal court against OpenAI, former Apple executives and engineers, accusing them of systematically misappropriating confidential information to build OpenAI’s hardware business.

“At Apple, our teams are constantly developing breakthrough technologies to create the best products and services in the world, and protecting their work and intellectual property is something we take very seriously,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement to FOX Business.

“Recently, significant evidence has emerged suggesting individuals employed by OpenAI wrongfully took Apple’s secret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies, processes, and products. We will always defend our teams’ hard work and innovations, and we are taking all appropriate steps to do so.”

APPLE TO INVEST $30 BILLION IN US CHIP MANUFACTURING

An OpenAI spokesperson did not immediately respond to FOX Business’ request for comment.

According to Apple’s complaint, OpenAI instructed candidates to prepare “Technical Deep Dive” presentations on their Apple work and to bring “CAD/design artifacts,” “prototypes” and “Actual parts” to interviews. Apple alleges candidates were specifically asked to bring batteries, systems-in-package, multi-layer logic boards, shields and other hardware components for “show and tell” sessions with interviewers.

Apple also alleges Tang Yew Tan, Apple’s former vice president of product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch who is now OpenAI’s chief hardware officer, used confidential Apple project codenames during interviews to question candidates about unreleased Apple products.

One Apple employee allegedly responded that he “didn’t even know we could take those from the office,” according to the complaint.

OPENAI UNVEILS CHATGPT WORK TO AUTOMATE WORKPLACE TASKS AS AI RACE INTENSIFIES

The iPhone maker alleges the recruiting practices were part of a broader strategy to obtain Apple’s trade secrets as OpenAI races to develop its own consumer hardware. Apple says OpenAI now employs more than 400 former Apple workers, including engineers involved in hardware development.

The lawsuit includes additional allegations that former Apple engineer Chang Liu improperly accessed Apple’s internal systems after leaving the company, downloaded confidential engineering files while employed by OpenAI and coached another Apple employee on how to avoid Apple’s security procedures before joining OpenAI. Apple also alleges OpenAI used confidential knowledge of Apple’s supplier relationships in its efforts to build a competing hardware business.

CLICK HERE TO GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO

Stocks In This Article:

Apple is seeking damages and court orders preventing any further use of its alleged trade secrets, along with the return of confidential materials and preservation of evidence. The company also alleges former employees breached the confidentiality agreements they signed while working at Apple.

The lawsuit marks a dramatic escalation between two companies that remain business partners through Apple’s integration of ChatGPT into Apple Intelligence, even as Apple accuses OpenAI of unlawfully exploiting its confidential technology to compete in the emerging AI hardware market.