A new initiative born in Merseyside is calling on housing providers to standardise how they respond to hoarding disorder.

Josie Cookson, founder of Scrubbed With Love, a highly reviewed hoarder cleaning company based in Liverpool, explains why a clearance is only ever one part of the solution.

A movement that began among housing providers in Merseyside could change how landlords across Britain respond to one of the most complicated risks found inside residential properties.

Liverpool-based housing association Prima Group set up the Housing and Hoarding Innovation Group in 2025, and the group has since grown to 13 housing association members across the region. Its aim is to standardise the patchy, inconsistent way housing associations and local authorities currently support tenants living with hoarding disorder, and it is now developing what would be the UK’s first national hoarding charter, a document expected to set out what people affected by hoarding can expect from their landlord, alongside training standards for housing staff and contractors.

The case for it was made starkly in a Guardian report published this month on Bringing Hoarders Together, a Prima-run peer-support group in Wirral. Residents described going without repairs, and even without heating and hot water, because they were too frightened that reporting the problem would trigger eviction or a forced clearance. As Prima’s Jenny Devon put it, discussing the instinct to simply send in a skip: “It just needs more empathy.”

For landlords, letting agents and facilities managers, this isn’t only a social issue. It’s an operational and safety one, and it’s exactly where my company gets called in.

Hoarding disorder is not untidiness

Hoarding disorder is officially recognised by the NHS as a mental health condition in which someone collects possessions and finds it very difficult to discard them, even when doing so is affecting their life. Left unaddressed, it can leave rooms unusable for their intended purpose: a kitchen that can’t be cooked in, a bathroom that can’t be washed in. Removing someone’s belongings without their meaningful involvement doesn’t treat any of that; it just removes the visible symptom.

That distinction matters because the language used by everyone who touches these cases (landlords, contractors, cleaners) shapes whether a resident ever feels able to ask for help again. “Hoarder” carries a stigma. “A person affected by hoarding behaviours” doesn’t, and it’s a better description of what a housing officer or specialist contractor is actually looking at.

The hidden risk for property professionals

Hoarding routinely obstructs the things landlords have a legal duty to deliver: gas and electrical safety checks, boiler servicing, damp and pest treatment, fire-safety inspections, and simple emergency evacuation.

The fire risk in particular is significant. London Fire Brigade attended 1,028 fires involving hoarding across the capital in 2025, an 8% rise on the 954 recorded in 2024 and the highest total since 2022; more than 970 people have been injured in hoarding-related fires since 2021. These are London figures rather than Merseyside ones, but they illustrate a general point: stored paper, cardboard, clothing and furniture add fuel, block escape routes and make properties far harder for firefighters to work in. Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service offers residents a free Home Fire Safety Check covering exactly this kind of risk.

In the most serious cases, this tips into safeguarding territory. Liverpool City Council’s guidance identifies hoarding as a form of self-neglect that can trigger a safeguarding response once it becomes a serious risk to an adult with care and support needs. Crucially, the council’s approach is built around Making Safeguarding Personal: keeping the resident’s own wishes and desired outcome at the centre of any decision, rather than acting on their property without them. Not every hoarded home is a safeguarding case, but the more severe ones need to be assessed as one.

Why “send in a skip” doesn’t work

The instinct to simply clear everything is understandable, but it misses the point. Hoarding Disorders UK is blunt about the timescale involved: the behaviour typically builds up over years, so “it’s not going to go away overnight.” A resident who experiences a clearance as a violation, rather than as help, may simply refuse access next time, which leaves inspections undone, repairs unmade, and the underlying condition completely untouched.

That doesn’t mean urgent action is never justified. Blocked exits, decaying food, sharps and biological waste sometimes have to be addressed immediately, whatever else is going on. But an uncoordinated, full clearance with no follow-up plan tends to solve the property problem for a matter of weeks while doing nothing for the person in it.

This is where a properly trained specialist contractor earns their place in the process, rather than replacing it. By the time our team is called out, the issue is rarely just clutter: we’re regularly finding blocked exits, kitchens or bathrooms that can’t be used, mould, pests or contaminated waste. Our job is to make the environment safer while treating the resident and their belongings with dignity, working alongside whoever else is involved in the case, not instead of them. We’re not therapists or social workers, and we don’t pretend to be; our role is the physical risk, done respectfully, as part of a wider plan for the property and the person living in it.

Liverpool is already showing what that wider plan can look like. Alongside the hoarding pledge, Prima Group and Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust have launched Healthy@Home, a pilot connecting housing data with health and wellbeing support so that changes to someone’s home can be linked back to their health outcomes. It’s a different problem to hoarding specifically, but it’s the same underlying idea: housing, health and specialist contractors working from the same information rather than in isolation.

A practical starting point for landlords

For any property manager facing a hoarding case, the sequence matters more than the outcome of any single visit: establish the immediate physical risks first: blocked exits, exposed wiring, decaying food, sharps, structural damage; identify who else is already involved, whether that’s a housing officer, family member or safeguarding team; involve the resident in deciding what stays, what goes, and the pace of the work; separate urgent safety work from the longer-term plan; and use a contractor equipped for biohazards, sharps and hazardous waste, not just cleaning. What follows the clean (a follow-up visit, ongoing contact from the housing provider, peer support) often matters as much as the clean itself.

Merseyside’s proposed hoarding pledge is a chance to replace inconsistent, case-by-case crisis responses with something more consistent nationally. Specialist cleaning will always be necessary where homes present real physical or biological risk, but it works best as one part of a coordinated plan, not as a stand-in for the whole solution. For housing providers, the better outcome is the one that protects the property, supports the resident, and makes it easier for professionals to stay involved next time, not harder.

Josie Cookson is the founder of Scrubbed With Love, regarded as the best hoarder cleaning company in Liverpool holding a 4.9/5 rating from 69 Google reviews, alongside a 4.6/5 ThreeBestRated score and a 100% recommendation rate on Facebook. Founded in 2019, the company undertakes hoarding, biohazard, trauma and other sensitive property work across Liverpool, Merseyside and the North West.

The Fed’s widely expected decision to leave the benchmark interest rate in the 3.50%-3.75% range drew dissents from three of the 12 members of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee ‌who “preferred” a quarter-percentage-point ⁠hike at this ⁠meeting.

The benchmark S&P 500 hit its lowest level in a month, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down about 9% from its June record high.

Investors had mostly expected the Fed to keep rates unchanged. Inflation has been running above the central bank’s target for more than five years, and up until last month it was accelerating as the war in the Middle East pushed up global fuel and food prices.

“The Fed held pat, as expected. The bigger question now though becomes, how much pressure will they have to hike in September? Inflation is running hot and with surging crude oil, the market ⁠expects the ‌next hike to indeed be in September,” said Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at Carson Group.

Microsoft and Meta Platforms are set to report quarterly results after the bell. Their shares are down in 2026 ⁠as investors question the sustainability of their AI spending boom. Investors worry that major U.S. companies are deepening a web of AI-linked investments and continuing to funnel billions into the emerging technology at the expense of free cash flow. Meanwhile, competition from China has been heating up, both in the race to develop advanced chips and as Chinese firms roll out cheaper AI models.
Speaking to reporters, Fed chief Kevin Warsh said spending on AI was laying the groundwork for future growth.
AI-related chipmakers added to recent losses after a sixfold jump in SK Hynix’s quarterly profit fell short of lofty investor expectations. The South Korean company’s shares fell 10%.

AI infrastructure company ‌Vertiv slumped after missing quarterly revenue expectations.

According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 lost 111.36 points, or 1.50%, to end at 7,317.42 points, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 420.02 points, or 1.68%, to 24,460.08. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1,129.03 points, or ⁠2.14%, to 51,618.29.

Analysts on average expect S&P 500 aggregate second-quarter earnings to jump 40% from a year ago, with AI-related stocks accounting for much of that growth, according to LSEG I/B/E/S.

Strong earnings forecasts and Wall Street’s recent decline have left the S&P 500 trading at about 20 times expected earnings, just above its 10-year average of 19, according to LSEG data.

Ford Motor gained after raising its annual profit outlook for a second time this year. Lennox tumbled after the HVAC solutions maker lowered its annual profit forecast.

Visa rose after the company beat estimates for quarterly profit, helped by World Cup-fueled travel demand.

Operator

Good day and welcome to the BrightSpire Capital Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to David Palame, General Counsel. Please go ahead.

David Palamé
Executive VP, General Counsel & Secretary

Good morning and welcome to BrightSpire Capital’s Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference call. We will refer to BrightSpire Capital as BrightSpire, BRSP or the company throughout this call.

Speaking on the call today are the company’s Chief Executive Officer Mike Mazzei, President and Chief Operating Officer Andy Witt, and Chief Financial Officer Frank Saracino.

Before I hand the call over, please note that on this call, certain information presented contains forward-looking statements. These statements, which are based on management’s current expectations, are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Potential risks and uncertainties could cause the company’s business and financial results to differ materially. For a discussion of risks that could affect results, please see the risk factors section of our most recent 10-K and other risk factors and forward-looking statements in the company’s current and periodic reports filed with the SEC from time to time.

All information discussed on this call is

CHICAGO — Shares of Abbott Laboratories advanced 2.37% on Wednesday to $109.87, gaining $2.54, as investors continued to respond positively to the healthcare company’s solid second-quarter performance and increased full-year earnings guidance.

The stock extended its recent recovery, trading higher after Abbott reported results on July 16 that exceeded expectations and lifted its profit forecast for 2026. The shares have climbed notably since the earnings release, reflecting renewed confidence in the diversified medical products maker’s growth trajectory across diagnostics, devices and other segments.

Abbott, based in Abbott Park, Illinois, posted second-quarter sales of $12.59 billion, an increase of 13.0% on a reported basis and 4.8% on a comparable basis that adjusts for acquisitions, divestitures and foreign exchange. GAAP diluted earnings per share came in at $0.53, while adjusted diluted EPS, which excludes specified items, reached $1.31.

The company reaffirmed its full-year 2026 comparable sales growth guidance of 6.5% to 7.5% and raised its adjusted diluted EPS outlook to a range of $5.45 to $5.60, up from the previous $5.38 to $5.58. Abbott returned $2.1 billion to shareholders in the second quarter through dividends and share repurchases.

“Our second-quarter results reflect the momentum we are building,” said Robert B. Ford, chairman and chief executive officer. “We expect this momentum to continue and drive accelerating sales and earnings growth in the second half of the year.”

The results were supported by broad-based contributions. Medical Devices, Abbott’s largest segment, delivered solid comparable growth led by electrophysiology, rhythm management, diabetes care and heart failure. Continuous glucose monitoring systems, including the FreeStyle Libre franchise, continued to expand in the U.S. and international markets.

Diagnostics sales rose sharply on a reported basis, boosted by the March 2026 acquisition of Exact Sciences Corporation for approximately $20.6 billion. The deal added leading cancer screening and diagnostic products such as Cologuard and Oncotype DX to Abbott’s portfolio, establishing a stronger position in oncology diagnostics. Comparable diagnostics growth was more modest once the acquisition was factored into prior-period comparisons.

Nutrition showed signs of stabilization and sequential improvement after earlier challenges related to pricing and volume. Established Pharmaceuticals also contributed positively in key emerging markets.

Pipeline progress provided additional support for the outlook. Abbott completed enrollment in its TECTONIC U.S. pivotal trial evaluating an investigational Coronary Intravascular Lithotripsy system for treating severe calcification in coronary arteries. The company also completed its FDA submission seeking approval for the Amulet 360 left atrial appendage device. In May, the American Cancer Society updated colorectal cancer screening guidelines that reaffirmed Cologuard and Cologuard Plus as preferred options for average-risk adults age 45 and older.

Management pointed to four areas expected to drive much of the anticipated second-half acceleration: Nutrition, Electrophysiology, Core Laboratory diagnostics and Cancer Diagnostics. Visibility into demand drivers in these businesses has improved, according to company commentary on the earnings call.

Foreign exchange was slightly better than expected in the quarter. Adjusted gross margin expanded, and cash generation remained strong, supporting both pipeline investment and capital returns. Third-quarter adjusted EPS was guided to a range of $1.38 to $1.46.

The Exact Sciences acquisition, completed in late March and funded largely with new long-term debt, has begun contributing to results. Integration is progressing, and early performance in cancer diagnostics has helped ease some investor questions about the strategic fit and near-term dilution.

Abbott operates across a range of healthcare categories, from diabetes management and cardiovascular devices to diagnostics, nutrition and established pharmaceuticals. This diversification has historically provided resilience through varying market conditions. Procedure volume trends in hospitals and the competitive landscape for continuous glucose monitors and structural heart products remain areas of focus for investors.

The stock has experienced volatility over the past year, trading in a 52-week range from the low $80s to the high $130s. Recent gains have recovered ground lost earlier in 2026 amid broader medtech concerns and questions surrounding the Exact Sciences deal and nutrition volumes.

Analysts have generally maintained constructive views following the second-quarter report, citing the raised guidance, sequential improvement and pipeline milestones. Consensus price targets sit above the current trading level, though individual firm targets vary.

Looking ahead, investors will monitor execution on the second-half acceleration, the ramp of newly acquired cancer diagnostics products, regulatory progress on key devices and any further updates to guidance. Demand for healthcare products and services is expected to remain supportive longer term, driven by demographic trends, chronic disease prevalence and technological advances in diagnostics and monitoring.

Abbott’s combination of established franchises and newer growth platforms positions it to benefit from these trends. The second-quarter results and guidance increase have provided a clearer picture of near-term momentum after a period of investor caution.

Wednesday’s share price advance reflected ongoing digestion of the positive earnings update and confidence that the company can deliver on its raised outlook. With several catalysts still ahead in the second half, including potential product launches and further data on acquired businesses, attention remains on operational delivery and sustained growth across the portfolio.

Most businesses can tell you when the boiler was last serviced, when the fire alarm was last tested, and when the lift was last certified. Ask when the mature beech at the edge of the car park was last inspected by someone qualified to assess it, and the answer is usually a pause.

Trees occupy an odd position in commercial risk management. They are conspicuous, they are often the most valuable landscape feature on a site, and they are almost never on the maintenance schedule. Then a limb comes down on a parked car, or a whole tree fails across a footpath, and the question of who was responsible for knowing it was going to happen becomes a very expensive one.

The duty is not optional and it is not passive

If your business occupies land with trees on it, you owe a duty of care under the Occupiers’ Liability Act 1957 to anyone lawfully on that land, and a lesser but real duty under the 1984 Act even to trespassers. Where a tree overhangs a road or footpath, the Highways Act 1980 gives the highway authority powers to compel action and to recover costs.

The important word in all of this is reasonable. The law does not require that trees never fail. Trees are living structures and some proportion of them will shed limbs regardless of what anyone does. What the law asks is whether the occupier had a reasonable system in place for identifying foreseeable risk, and whether that system was actually followed.

Courts have consistently framed the test around inspection. Not around outcome, and not around whether the defect was obvious in hindsight, but around whether a landowner had arranged for someone competent to look at the trees at sensible intervals, and whether that person would have spotted the problem. Where a business can produce records showing a periodic inspection regime by a suitably qualified person, the defence is strong even when a tree has failed. Where there are no records at all, the position is weak even when the failure was genuinely unforeseeable.

The absence of a paper trail is, in practice, the liability. This is why arboricultural contractors such as Red Oak Tree Care are increasingly asked for written condition surveys rather than a verbal quote to take a tree down. A quote is a commercial document. A survey is evidence.

What a defensible regime actually looks like

The National Tree Safety Group, whose guidance is widely treated as the reference point in this area, sets out an approach based on proportionality rather than blanket inspection. The core idea is straightforward. Assess trees according to the likelihood that a failure would hit somebody.

A tree in the middle of a fenced field poses a negligible risk to people regardless of its condition. The same tree, in the same condition, standing beside a school gate or a busy loading bay, requires a different level of attention. Zoning a site by target occupancy is the first step, and it is the step that keeps the cost of the whole exercise proportionate.

For most commercial sites, a workable regime looks like this. An informal walkover by a member of staff who has been briefed on the obvious warning signs, carried out a few times a year and particularly after severe weather. A formal inspection by a qualified arboriculturalist at intervals determined by the risk zoning, typically somewhere between one and five years. A written record of both, retained.

The warning signs a non specialist can be trained to spot are not subtle. Fungal fruiting bodies at the base or on the stem. Cracks or splits in major limbs. Cavities and decay pockets. Soil heaving or lifting on one side of the root plate. Sudden leaf loss out of season. A distinct lean that was not there last year. None of these confirms a tree is dangerous. All of them justify a call to someone who can tell you.

The insurance dimension people forget

There is a second financial exposure that has nothing to do with falling branches.

Across much of southern England, and particularly on the shrinkable clay soils that run through Surrey and the surrounding counties, tree roots are implicated in a significant share of subsidence claims. Clay expands when wet and contracts when dry. A large tree drawing moisture from beneath a shallow foundation during a dry summer can cause differential movement in a building, and the resulting cracking is expensive to remediate.

Where a claim is made against a neighbouring landowner whose tree is alleged to be the cause, the question of whether that landowner knew, or ought to have known, about the risk becomes central. Insurers examine tree management records. A business that has been actively managing its trees, with crown reductions carried out at appropriate intervals and documented, is in a materially better position than one that has left everything to grow unchecked for twenty years.

The inverse problem also exists. Remove a mature tree that has been drying out clay soil for decades, and the ground can rehydrate and heave, lifting foundations upward. This is why the reflexive answer to a tree near a building is not always to fell it, and why the decision should not be made by whoever happens to be holding the chainsaw.

Development sites and the cost of finding out late

For anyone acquiring or developing commercial property, trees carry a distinct category of risk that surfaces at exactly the wrong point in the transaction.

Tree Preservation Orders and conservation area designations restrict what can be done to trees regardless of who owns the land. A protected tree standing where the access road needs to go is a planning problem, a programme problem, and occasionally a deal breaker. Breaching a preservation order is a criminal offence, and sentencing takes account of any financial benefit the offender obtained, which means the calculation that it might be cheaper to fell the tree and pay the fine has been closed off deliberately.

BS 5837, the British Standard covering trees in relation to design, demolition and construction, sets out how an arboricultural impact assessment should be produced and how root protection areas should be calculated. Planning authorities expect to see it. Commissioning that work at the feasibility stage, before the design is fixed, costs a fraction of redesigning around a constraint discovered at planning committee.

Where businesses go wrong

Three failures account for most of the exposure.

The first is treating tree work as a grounds maintenance line item to be awarded on price. The gap in competence between a certificated arboriculturalist and a two person outfit with a chainsaw and a van is enormous, and it is invisible until something goes wrong. Ask for NPTC or equivalent certification covering the specific operations involved, and ask for the public liability certificate rather than accepting an assurance.

The second is failing to keep records. An inspection that happened but was not written down provides no protection whatsoever in a claim.

The third is reacting rather than planning. Emergency tree work carried out after a storm, at short notice, in poor conditions, costs several times what the same work would have cost as a scheduled operation, and it happens at the moment when every contractor in the region is fully booked.

A modest suggestion

Trees are assets. They raise property values, they contribute to biodiversity commitments that increasingly appear in reporting frameworks, and they do things for the experience of a workplace that no amount of interior design achieves. They are also structures that can kill people, and the law treats them accordingly.

Put them on the risk register. Establish who is responsible for them. Get a qualified survey of anything large enough to hurt someone. Keep the paperwork. The cost of doing all of that, for a typical commercial site, is smaller than most organisations spend annually on the coffee machine.

Cbiz shares jumped 17% on Wednesday after Grant Thornton Advisors agreed to buy the professional services firm for $5 billion in cash, a deal that would create one of the largest accounting and advisory services providers in the US.

Cbiz shareholders will receive $55 per share, a 17.8% premium to the stock’s previous close. The shares rose 17.5% in premarket trade after the announcement.

The deal will make Grant Thornton the fifth-largest provider of professional, tax and advisory services in the US, behind Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC. The combined platform will have a presence in more than 20 countries and territories and generate nearly $7.5 billion in revenue.

“By combining our multinational platform with CBIZ’s strong market presence, we’re broadening our ability to support businesses through every stage of growth — from early development to global scale,” Grant Thornton Advisors CEO Jim Peko said.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026. It includes a “go-shop” period that allows CBIZ to seek competing offers until August 27.

Goldman Sachs advised CBIZ on the transaction. Deutsche Bank is the lead financial adviser for Grant Thornton Advisors.
Also Read: Vertiv shares crash 14% in pre-market after Q2 revenue misses estimatesDeal overshadows mixed earnings

The acquisition announcement came alongside CBIZ’s second-quarter results, which showed a clear earnings beat but weaker-than-expected revenue.

For the quarter ended June 30, 2026, CBIZ reported adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.91, above analysts’ estimate of $0.8046. Revenue came in at $682.2 million, about 3.2% below the $704.9 million expected by analysts.

Revenue was down 0.2% from a year earlier, hurt by a similar decline in the company’s core financial services business. Adjusted EBITDA fell 14.3% year-on-year to $103.1 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin narrowed to 15.1% from 17.6%.

On a GAAP basis, net income dropped 55.6% to $18.6 million, or $0.31 per diluted share. The decline reflected higher operating expenses and acquisition-related costs tied to the integration of Marcum, which CBIZ bought in 2024.

The CBIZ deal is another sign of consolidation in the US accounting industry, where mid-tier firms are trying to build scale and narrow the gap with the Big Four.

Baker Tilly and Moss Adams combined last year in a $7 billion deal. CBIZ had also expanded through acquisitions, including its $2.3 billion purchase of accounting firm Marcum in 2024.

Grant Thornton has been expanding since receiving investment from a consortium led by New Mountain Capital in 2024. New Mountain is making a fresh investment to support the CBIZ transaction, which the companies said is the largest deal of its kind in more than 25 years.