Peter Simon, the founder of Monsoon and Accessorize, is selling a significant portion of his personal art collection at Christie’s in London, in three sales in October that could fetch up to £126.7m.

Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection comprises nearly 200 pieces and includes works by Francis Bacon, Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and Hurvin Anderson. The collection is estimated to be worth between £86.5m and £126.7m.

It will be the highest-value collection from a single owner offered at Christie’s in London. The auction house said the collection “stands as one of Britain’s foremost modern and contemporary art collections”.

The sale includes two paintings from distinct stages of Bacon’s career. Figure in Movement, from 1978, is expected to sell for between £14m and £18m.

Study for a Figure, which is estimated to have been painted around 1945, is expected to sell for between £4m and £6m.

The collection will be presented in a special exhibition taking over the galleries at Christie’s London from 26 September until 1 October.

The auction will take place online from 1 to 20 October, with the evening sale on 14 October and the day sale on 15 October.

Simon said his early work at Monsoon, choosing prints for its clothing, had helped him to judge colour and composition in paintings.

“In the early days at Monsoon I would sit with fashion and textile designers sifting portfolio after portfolio to select works on paper which we would convert on to fabric for clothing collections,” he said.

“A critical part of the DNA of Monsoon is the colours and the prints. In retrospect, I realise this work happily honed an ability to recognise good composition with colour balance, having developed an eye for a good print, I find it helpful to zero in on the best combination of colour and composition in a picture.”

Simon added that it would give him “great pleasure to now offer part of my collection to others, freeing my mind and my walls to start in a new direction”.

Simon founded his clothing business by selling woollen coats from a market stall in Portobello Road in west London in the 1970s.

Monsoon Accessorize floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1998. Simon took the company private in a £755m deal in 2007.

Outside fashion, Simon has also invested in British homeware brand Loaf, which was founded by Charlie Marshall.

Christie’s is owned by Artémis, the holding company of François Pinault, the French billionaire behind luxury group Kering.

In 2022, the auction house’s sale of the collection of Paul Allen, the late Microsoft co-founder, fetched $1.5bn in New York, becoming the biggest art auction ever held. That collection comprised more than 150 works.

In December 2025, Christie’s said it expected global sales to rise by about 6 per cent to $6.2bn that year, as both it and Sotheby’s reported a recovery in the global art market. Bonnie Brennan, its chief executive, said at the time that “the energy has returned to the salesroom, online and across the market”.

Amy Ingham

Amy Ingham is a reporter at Business Matters, covering UK business news with a focus on breaking news, business policy, late payments and insolvency. She joined the magazine in 2026 after completing the NCTJ Diploma in Journalism at Harlow College’s journalism school. Her recent reporting includes British Steel’s nationalisation and its impact on SME suppliers, the decline in late payments by large firms, and Insolvency Service director disqualifications. Reach her at aingham@cbmeg.co.uk.

Stardust Solutions, an Israeli-American start-up developing technology to disperse reflective particles high in the atmosphere so that less sunlight reaches Earth, has raised $75m from investors and wants governments as customers.

The total includes a $60m round announced in October 2025 and led by Lowercarbon Capital, the climate technology investment firm co-founded by Chris Sacca. Other backers include Exor, the Agnelli family’s investment company and a major shareholder in Ferrari, along with Future Ventures, Future Positive, Lauder Partners, Attestor, Kindred Capital and former Facebook executive Matt Cohler.

Stardust was founded in March 2023 by Israeli physicists Yanai Yedvab, Amyad Spector and Eli Waxman. Yedvab and Spector previously worked as nuclear physicists for the Israeli government.

The company is registered in Delaware and headquartered outside Tel Aviv. It says it is not affiliated with the Israeli government.

Yedvab told Politico that investors were backing the idea that “we need a safe and responsible and controlled option for sunlight reflection.”

How the technology would work

Stardust’s approach is known as stratospheric aerosol injection. It sits within solar geoengineering, formally called solar radiation modification (SRM), which aims to reflect a small fraction of the sun’s energy back into space. Unlike carbon removal, it does not take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

The idea draws on the effect of large volcanic eruptions, which can temporarily cool the Earth when sulphur compounds reach the stratosphere and form aerosols that reflect sunlight. Cooling was observed after Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, and scientists have discussed deliberately reproducing the effect for decades.

Rather than releasing sulphur dioxide, Stardust is developing proprietary reflective particles, alongside dispersal and monitoring technology, and is working towards aircraft-based systems.

The company has hired Washington lobbying firm Holland & Knight as it seeks a regulatory framework and potential US government contracts.

Stardust says it is pursuing research and development, not deployment. “Our goal is to turn SRM from a scientific concept into a safe and practical option,” the company said.

It argues that humanity may eventually need an emergency brake if cuts in emissions fail to prevent dangerous warming.

Criticism and other cooling projects

The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) criticised the company’s plans when the $60m financing was announced. Mary Church, CIEL’s geoengineering campaign manager, said: “Solar geoengineering is inherently unpredictable and risks further breaking an already broken climate system.”

In CIEL’s statement on the financing, Church added: “With uneven global impacts predicted, deployment would create winners and losers, undermining the rights of billions of people and raising the central question of who gets to control the global thermostat.”

CIEL also pointed to the risk of termination shock. Because solar geoengineering does not remove carbon dioxide, a pause or halt after decades of artificially suppressed warming could see temperatures rise rapidly.

Stardust is not the only company in the field. Make Sunsets, a small US start-up, launches weather balloons carrying sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere and sells what it calls “Cooling Credits”, under the slogan “Make Earth Cool Again”.

Other research efforts have been dropped. Harvard’s proposed SCoPEx experiment would have studied how tiny quantities of particles behave in the stratosphere. After years of controversy over governance and consent, Harvard announced in 2024 that it would not proceed.

The Arctic Ice Project explored spreading reflective hollow glass microspheres over Arctic sea ice to slow melting, before ending its research amid environmental and deployment concerns.

In Australia, researchers have experimented with marine cloud brightening around the Great Barrier Reef, spraying tiny seawater droplets upwards to make clouds more reflective and protect vulnerable coral.

In the UK, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is running a £56.8m research programme to establish whether climate cooling approaches “could ever be feasible, scalable, safe, and governable”. The agency says it funds a limited number of small-scale, carefully controlled outdoor experiments where questions cannot be answered by models.

Jamie Young

Jamie Young is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, covering SME finance, employment law and Westminster policy since 2016. He has reported on every Budget and Autumn Statement since 2018, helped make sense of the ‘covid era’ and the bounce-back loan scheme from launch through the fraud investigations, and broke the magazine’s coverage of the 2024 late-payment reforms. He joined Business Matters straight from completing his BA in Administration from Exeter University and is NCTJ-qualified. Reach him at jyoung@cbmeg.co.uk

Surging diesel costs are squeezing America’s logging industry, with one industry leader warning that rising fuel expenses are eroding profitability for businesses that depend heavily on diesel to keep trucks and equipment running.

American Loggers Council Executive Director Scott Dane joined FOX Business’ Stuart Varney on “Varney & Co.” to discuss the pressure higher diesel costs are putting on loggers and the steps he wants the administration to take.

U.S. loggers face mounting pressure as soaring diesel costs eat into operating profits. (Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images)

“We’re in trouble. There’s no question about that. I just got a text this morning from a logger… Reaching out saying that they’re dying in Virginia. The fuel costs are killing them,” Dane said.

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Dane said the industry’s dependence on diesel has made the surge especially difficult to absorb, pointing to the cost of filling a logging truck and the growing share of operating expenses now going toward fuel.

“As an example, to fill up a logging truck. You’re looking at $1,350 to fill up the tank. Fuel costs used to be 25% of operating costs. Now they’re 40, 45% of the operating costs, that’s eroded any profitability within the timber industry,” he said.

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The pressure is being compounded by what Dane described as stagnant prices for loggers, limiting their ability to offset higher operating costs with additional revenue.

“On our end, prices have remained flat. We’re getting paid no more today than we were getting paid 10 years ago, roughly speaking,” Dane said.

AMERICANS FACE THE MOST EXPENSIVE LABOR DAY AT THE GAS PUMP EVER RECORDED

Dane said the American Loggers Council has raised the issue with the administration and called for steps aimed at easing diesel costs, including suspending the federal diesel fuel tax and halting diesel exports.

“We have an emergency here, and under the Emergency Powers Act, the president should suspend the export of diesel out of the United States. It makes no sense,” Dane said.

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On the other side of the US, Rachel Miller, chef and owner of Nightshade Noodle Bar in the town Lynn, Massachusetts, moved to a tip-free model five years ago when they reopened after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Her motivation was to make it fairer for the kitchen staff.

“The people breaking their backs and minds in the kitchen – often the least visible and the least celebrated – were taking home a fraction of what the front staff made on tips for the same hours,” she says.

Miller says she found it “deeply unsettling” to see higher tips going to white male staff and lower tips to everyone else.

“Tipping lets guests, consciously or not, pay people differently based on gender, race, or sexuality and I was not willing to let that decide my team’s income.”

To pay the staff higher wages, Miller also increased prices at the French-Vietnamese restaurant. Its tasting menus now start from $102 (£75) for seven courses before 18:00, and $126 (£92) for nine courses.

“Our prices are higher than a comparable restaurant’s because they carry the full cost of paying people properly,” says Miller. “That is the trade, and I stand behind it.”

ATLANTA — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a formal health advisory Thursday warning of a sharp nationwide increase in reported human rabies exposures this summer, urging doctors to be vigilant about proper risk assessment and treatment as multiple states reported mass exposure events involving more than one person at a time.

From July through August, the CDC received 17% more rabies-related inquiries than during the same period in 2025, according to the agency’s Health Alert Network advisory, which flagged both a rise in human exposures to rabid or possibly rabid animals and errors in how post-exposure treatment was being administered by some providers.

“During the summer of 2026, reports of animal exposures and rabies post-exposure vaccinations have increased across the country,” the CDC said in its statement.

The scale of the increase was also reflected in pharmacy utilization data. According to weekly pharmacy figures as of Sept. 2, use of the two rabies vaccines licensed in the United States, Imovax and RabAvert, rose an estimated 33% compared with the same period last year, while use of the two licensed human rabies immunoglobulin products, KEDRAB and HyperRab, jumped 76% over that same comparison window. The CDC said at least eight state health departments have separately reported increases in rabies post-exposure prophylaxis use, treatment administration errors, or both, since July.

Despite the surge in demand, the agency emphasized that there is currently no shortage of either rabies vaccine or rabies immunoglobulin in the United States. Even so, the CDC stressed the importance of administering treatment correctly, given the risks tied to both inadequate care and unnecessary overtreatment.

“Proper administration of rabies vaccine and human rabies immune globulin is critical to ensuring patients receive effective protection while avoiding unnecessary treatment, costs, and strain on supplies,” the CDC said.

The agency’s advisory detailed several specific administration errors that have been reported by state health departments in recent weeks, including vaccines being given in the gluteal area rather than the recommended injection site, failure to properly infiltrate immunoglobulin directly into and around a wound, and instances in which immunoglobulin was improperly mixed with vaccine doses in the same syringe.

The CDC’s alert followed a high-profile rabies outbreak at a petting zoo in North Carolina, where baby goats tested positive for the virus less than two weeks before the advisory was issued, an incident that reportedly exposed hundreds of visitors to potential infection. Beyond that outbreak, recent local reports cited in connection with the advisory span a wide range of locations and animal species. Health officials in Suffolk, Virginia, confirmed a raccoon within city limits had tested positive for rabies, while a dog in Mire, Louisiana, also tested positive, prompting a warning from local veterinarians. Elmira, New York, has reported multiple rabid cats and skunks in recent weeks, and a rabies-infected bat was discovered earlier this year inside a shower house at Yosemite National Park.

Rabies is a viral disease that attacks the central nervous system and is almost always fatal once symptoms begin to appear, but the disease is considered nearly entirely preventable if post-exposure treatment is administered promptly, before symptoms start. That treatment regimen typically consists of an immediate dose of human rabies immune globulin, an antibody medication that provides protection while the body’s own immune response develops, combined with a series of at least four rabies vaccine doses administered over several weeks. According to the CDC, the regimen is nearly 100% effective when administered correctly and promptly following a potential exposure.

The CDC also noted an important distinction in its guidance regarding who should receive the immunoglobulin component of treatment specifically.

“People who have been previously vaccinated or are receiving pre-exposure prophylaxis for rabies should not receive human rabies immune globulin,” the agency said.

According to the CDC, roughly 100,000 people receive rabies post-exposure prophylaxis in the United States each year following a potential exposure, out of an estimated 1.4 million people who seek medical evaluation annually after some form of animal contact. Given the disease’s near-total fatality rate once symptoms develop, the CDC has continued urging anyone bitten, scratched, or otherwise potentially exposed to a wild or unusually behaving animal to take the situation seriously rather than dismissing what might initially appear to be a minor scratch.

Recommended immediate steps following a potential exposure include thoroughly washing the affected wound with soap and water for a full 15 minutes, followed by contacting a health care provider or local public health department the same day to determine whether post-exposure treatment is warranted, rather than waiting to see whether symptoms develop before seeking medical attention.

The CDC’s advisory was distributed through its Health Alert Network, the agency’s primary communication channel for disseminating urgent public health information to doctors, hospital networks and state and local health officials nationwide. The alert cited research published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association examining national rabies surveillance trends in 2024, alongside earlier research published in JAMA Network Open examining rabies risk and post-exposure prophylaxis administration patterns across the United States.

With rabies-related inquiries and treatment utilization both climbing sharply compared with last year, the CDC’s advisory underscores the agency’s effort to balance two competing public health priorities heading into the fall: ensuring that anyone genuinely exposed to a rabid or potentially rabid animal receives prompt and properly administered treatment, while also working to prevent unnecessary or improperly administered doses that could strain existing rabies vaccine and immunoglobulin supplies as reported exposures continue to rise across multiple states nationwide.

The stock has now surged nearly 287% from its IPO price of Rs 429, delivering a stunning return to investors within just six trading days of listing.

The sharp rally continued after a blockbuster debut on the stock exchanges and growing investor optimism around India’s expanding data-centre and digital infrastructure opportunity. ESDS Software Solution made its market debut at Rs 757 on the NSE, a premium of around 76.5% over its issue price. The stock gained further momentum on its first day, closing at Rs 908.40, representing a gain of nearly 112% over the IPO price.

Piyush Somani, Chairman and Managing Director of ESDS Software Solutions Limited, told ET, “We believe India can realistically bring 30-40 GW of new data centre power online over the next ten years, supported by a rapidly expanding generation base, renewable capacity additions and a policy environment that views digital infrastructure as strategic.” He added that, compared with today’s installed base of roughly 1,545 MW, this represents a significant structural shift.

IPO demand was exceptionally strong

The stock’s explosive post-listing performance follows equally strong demand during its public issue. The ESDS Software Solution IPO was subscribed 136 times overall, highlighting aggressive investor interest across categories. The qualified institutional buyer (QIB) portion was subscribed more than 261 times, while the non-institutional investor and retail portions were subscribed around 193 times and 40 times, respectively.

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The IPO comprised an entirely fresh issue, with the company setting a price band of Rs 408-429 per share. Before the public offering, ESDS raised Rs 216 crore from anchor investors, allotting 50.34 lakh shares at Rs 429 apiece.
A substantial portion of the funds raised through the IPO is earmarked for strengthening the company’s digital infrastructure capabilities. Around Rs 576 crore is proposed to be invested in the purchase and installation of cloud-computing equipment and other data-centre infrastructure. The remaining proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes.The investment comes at a time when demand for cloud computing, data storage, cybersecurity and digital infrastructure is accelerating, potentially creating a favourable operating environment for companies such as ESDS.

ESDS Software Solution operates across the digital infrastructure ecosystem, offering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Managed Services and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. The company caters to customers in India and international markets, with key clients spanning banking and financial services, government and enterprise segments.

The company’s financial performance also showed a significant improvement in FY26. Total income rose 28% year-on-year to Rs 480.65 crore in FY26, compared with Rs 376.64 crore in FY25. More notably, profitability surged. Profit after tax (PAT) more than doubled to Rs 120.82 crore, marking a 117% increase from Rs 55.61 crore in the previous financial year.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times.)