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Remember the good old days? When office corridors buzzed with the sound of ideas bouncing between senior executives and junior recruits? And the kitchens! New products conceived in the time it took for the kettle to boil. Not to mention all that learning. In the past, a new starter only had to sit within five yards of an experienced colleague to absorb the entire contents of their brain.

Such pre-pandemic nostalgia infused the vision laid out this week by Andy Jassy, chief executive of retailer Amazon, who ordered a full-time return to the office. In a memo, he said the move would make it easier for staff to “learn, model, practice”. It would also “strengthen our culture” while making things like brainstorming “simpler and more effective”.

I don’t want to rain on anyone’s rose-hued parade. But in ancient times — five years ago — employees would also bitch about silos, poor training and productivity. Remember offices on Fridays? No, me neither. What about off-site meetings because headquarters was too stultifying to produce new ideas? Sadly, yes. 

Of course, coming together in the workplace can spur connections, innovation and learning. My best gossip is usually from serendipitous chats. For some, the commute provides the spring in their step. But let’s not get carried away. The office is not the solution to every single workplace problem.

However, some seem to think it is — even if that view is not backed up by evidence. In her new book, Over Work, Brigid Schulte describes a leadership “echo chamber”. One expert tells her their team “was actually more productive” when working flexibly “not just in terms of hours worked, but literally in output”. They can readily demonstrate this to the CEO, but “can’t get them to listen because instead they’re listening to their fellow CEOs”. Other bosses flex RTO mandates to signal muscular leadership: take Elon Musk, who once described “laptop classes” as “living in la-la-land”.

Who knew something as boring as an office could become the centre of a culture war? But here we are. When UK business minister Jonathan Reynolds said flexible working could enhance productivity and opportunities this week, Kemi Badenoch, candidate to be leader of the opposition Conservative party, condemned his sentiment.

Back and forth we go, distorting statistics, trading insults — shirkers on the one side, dinosaurs on the other. Will it never end?

David D’Souza, director of profession at CIPD, the human resources body, says it is a distraction “from critical conversations about productivity, flexibility, job security, fairness and balance. Organisations should be weighing up the complex factors behind this decision-making on evidence, as opposed to just feelings or what they see [others] doing.” Some human resources chiefs tell him of “pressure from the CEO” to see more physical presence on site “due to personal preference or nostalgia”. 

Yet despite the noise, the reality is leaders are generally pragmatic. Most white-collar employers offer some flexibility over location because it benefits staff and bosses. In the US, 67 per cent did, according to the Flex Index report. In the UK, the CIPD puts it at 83 per cent. A recent study in the Nature journal found that “a hybrid schedule with two days a week working from home does not damage performance” and improved staff satisfaction and retention.

Nick Bloom, one of the authors, told me he is sceptical of Jassy’s performance rationale because it goes against “data from many other studies in other companies showing that once you have three days a week in the office that generates about the same productivity as five”. While two extra days boost facetime, mentoring and culture-building, staff do not have quiet time at home for deep work. Counter to the slacker argument, “we know WFH workers tend to skip lunch and work pretty hard during the day”, he said.

Which raises another explanation for Jassy’s RTO mandate. In his memo, he outlined a future vision of Amazon with “fewer managers [to] remove layers and flatten organisations”. Bloom muses that presenteeism might be the best strategy to make this happen. “Requiring five days in the office will lead to a surge in quits.” 

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but one thing is for certain: Amazon needs home workers. Otherwise, who will be there for the package deliveries?

The UK’s impending abolition of a tax perk for wealthy residents has triggered a pan-European hunt for fiscal havens as the rich cast a wide net from sunny upstart destinations such as Portugal to dependable Switzerland.

Tax advisers across the continent are reporting a rush of inquiries that began when the UK’s previous Conservative government pledged to end its non-domicile tax regime from 2025, and accelerated when the new Labour administration said it would follow through on the plan.

Non-dom status is accessible to UK tax residents whose permanent home or “domicile” is overseas. It enables beneficiaries to avoid paying British tax on their foreign income or capital gains for 15 years, provided they do not bring them to the UK.

For the rich whose commitment to the UK will expire with the perk, there are no carbon copies of the British system but several countries offer similar incentives. Those who put a premium on lifestyle are also considering how other locations match up to London’s strengths (its social buzz) and weaknesses (its weather).

Switzerland’s reputation as a haven means it is accustomed to attracting a steady level of interest from the well-off, but Stefan Piller, head of tax and legal at BDO’s Zurich office, said: “We’re getting more requests each week — and many more than we experienced last year.”

The alpine nation’s fiscal appeal centres on its low rates of income tax. Most cantons such as Geneva and Zug offer a lump-sum taxation or “forfait” system, based on individuals’ living expenses, for the very rich, which enables them to cut bespoke deals on what tax they pay. Zurich and Basel have abolished the system.

The resulting levies are “not cheap”, said Justine Markovitz, head of Withers’ Swiss practice, but they do provide much-desired certainty. The downside is that people in the forfait system cannot work in Switzerland.

Another option is Monaco, the tiny Mediterranean principality with no income or capital gains tax, although its extremely high living costs deter some.

Many UK non-doms are weighing their options with April 6, 2025 in mind, the day when the old regime will be abolished. It will be replaced with a new residence-based system under which new resident applicants, who have lived outside the UK for at least a decade, will be exempt from UK tax on foreign income or capital gains for four years, not 15.

Concentrating minds is the fact that the Labour government has said it will also remove the ability to permanently shield foreign assets held in a trust from the UK’s 40 per cent inheritance tax.

“It is inheritance tax that is causing most of the upset,” Markovitz said. “I’m finding many people say: ‘I can’t do that for my kids, I can’t sacrifice 40 per cent of my asset base.”

Switzerland does not set inheritance tax at a federal level and its cantons typically charge relatively low or no inheritance tax. Portugal, another place attracting the wealthy’s attention, does not impose an inheritance tax either. Lisbon does impose a 10 per cent “stamp duty” on Portuguese assets passed on after death, but it does not apply to assets overseas.

Portugal has offered more besides: in the past decade it has courted foreigners with golden visas and a generous fiscal regime for tax residents who remained domiciled elsewhere. But rich individuals are discovering much has changed.

Its previous centre-left government scrapped the non-dom regime last year and replaced it with more limited tax incentives for foreigners and returning Portuguese expatriates who have work contracts in certain fields, including technology, R&D and academia. Those incentives include a tax exemption on foreign income, excluding pensions, and a 20 per cent flat tax on Portuguese work or business income from qualifying activities.

Now, crucially, a new centre-right government is drawing up regulations to implement its predecessor’s policy by year-end — and tax advisers expect more people to become eligible for the new system.

“We have received many questions,” said Luís Nascimento, a tax adviser at consultancy Ilya. “[But] until the government publishes the new ordinance, there is still a lot of uncertainty about what the new regime will be.”

Nuno Cunha Barnabé, tax partner at Lisbon law firm Abreu Advogados, said Portugal is also keen to sell its lifestyle. “If you live in London and what you like about it is going to fancy restaurants, the nightlife and the buzz, then Portugal is not for you,” he said. “But if you want a country that is quieter, where the weather is good, where there is outdoor living, Portugal is probably for you.”

A Mediterranean lifestyle is also part of Italy’s appeal, which is set to endure despite Rome’s recent decision to double a flat tax on the foreign income of rich expats to €200,000 a year.

“If you are asking someone to buy a product and the next day it doubles, no one is happy,” said Jacopo Zamboni, executive director for private clients at Henley & Partners. But, he added, “when you assess the pros and cons, clients want a stable legislative framework — they don’t want only a stable tax amount.”

Italy’s regime, which is available for 15 years to new tax residents who invest at least €250,000, was set up in 2016 in a post-Brexit push to lure wealthy people away from the UK. Since 2017 it is estimated to have attracted about 4,000 multimillionaires, including oligarchs and private equity investors. Wealthy individuals who relocated before the recent increase will continue to pay €100,000 a year.

Across the Ionian Sea, Greece boasts a lower cost of living than Italy — though that may be of negligible importance to the very rich — and a similar system. Introduced in 2019, its regime offers a flat annual tax of €100,000 on foreign income for 15 years for individuals who meet residency requirements and invest at least €500,000 in real estate, businesses, or securities.

So far the regime has attracted more than 230 millionaires to the country.

Vassilis Vizas, leader of tax and legal services at PwC Greece, said he had seen a surge in interest in Greece from UK non-doms in recent months, but noted that most of them were rich individuals of Greek descent.

The durability of Greece’s fiscal regime is one issue on the minds of potential residents.

Although Vizas sees no signs of reforms on the horizon, he said “one common question is whether the favourable tax policies will remain unchanged”.

Additional reporting by Sérgio Aníbal in Lisbon

At Provender wholesale plant nursery in Swanley, Kent, employees are unloading the first lorry load of goods into a newly-fitted, large biosecure barn established to carry out checks on products arriving from Europe.

Dysfunction in the post-Brexit border system is prompting a growing number of UK plant and food traders to try to set up their own “control points” where products can be inspected, as an alternative to state-run facilities.

The move is an attempt to lower costs and reduce friction in trade with the EU, while side stepping the delays that have beset the government-run inspection point in nearby Sevington.

“The way it’s going is we’re losing all control,” said Stuart Tickner, head of the nursery and biosecurity at Provender. “By becoming a control point, we bring some of that aspect of control back to us,” Tickner added. 

Issues at the Sevington site, problems with the border IT systems and the slow roll out of a promised trusted trader programme, have piled pressure on businesses both sides of the border, leading some suppliers to give up exporting to the UK all together. 

The trusted trader programme, also known as the Authorised Operator Status was designed to test the possibility of allowing regular importers to carry out checks at their own sites, rather than at a border control post.

The new post-Brexit border checks on food and plant imports from the EU were introduced in April by the previous Conservative government after several delays.

Provender said it hoped to reduce costs for its customers by establishing its own control point and cutting the common user charge (CUC) which companies say is hammering the sector.

However building it was a “high risk strategy” given confusion over the timing of the government’s border implementation plan.

Until a trusted trader scheme is fully implemented, the nursery must use government inspectors to carry out physical checks on arriving goods.

The industry has long argued that traders should be allowed to carry out their own inspections because many already had the expertise needed to meet specifications on fruits, vegetables and plants. 

Nigel Jenney, chief executive of the Fresh Produce Consortium, said traders were being forced to pay millions in charges despite the industry having the infrastructure and personnel needed to carry out controls. 

“They should have used the industry’s facilities and expertise that already existed and we would have readily shared it,” he said. “It’s a problem of their own making.” 

Seafrigo, a refrigerated food logistics company, was the first group to enrol in the pilot scheme and set up a designated inspection point. 

Mike Parr, chief executive of PML Seafrigo UK and Ireland, said the scheme was crucial to ensuring the flow of food into the UK.

But a decision on whether to take it beyond pilot stage had been “pushed down the road” since the idea was first tabled three years ago, he noted. 

Businesses like Seafrigo have invested hundreds of thousands of pounds in building capacity on their own premises but cannot get enough trade coming through to recoup those costs because the government does not provide enough inspectors. Those who do come are unavailable overnight.

“It’s the only way that bringing fruit and vegetables into the UK is going to work. Sevington is too expensive and too slow,” Parr said, adding he heard regularly that hauliers were offered no facilities at the site. “If they come to us, we have everything in place for them.”

Currently 12 consignments of plants are held up at Sevington, many of which have been there for over a week, according to three people familiar with the situation.

No one in the supply chain was informed of the reason for the delays, according to the Horticultural Trades Association. By the time they were told the issues stemmed from an outbreak of pests in Italy, more shipments had arrived. 

“We have made it clear that delays like this with no communication are completely unacceptable. They must ensure that the industry has detailed and timely communication in the future,” the trade group said.

“Drivers don’t want to come to the UK any more, they’ve had enough,” said one customs agent who asked not to be named, describing “inhumane conditions” for drivers at Sevington, who have to wait for hours in a small room, only provided with a bottle of water while their goods await inspection. 

Some in the industry are pinning their hopes on the government agreeing a “veterinary deal” with Brussels that could reduce or remove the need for inspections and paperwork on most plant and animal exports.

A deal could take years to agree and implement, however, and in the meantime the UK’s reputation as a trading partner has been damaged, the sector warned. 

Marco Forgione, director-general at the Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade, said the group had heard from many businesses in the EU who were preparing to stop trading with the UK, because of the increasing costs and uncertainty. 

“The true cost of BTOM [Border Target Operating Model] for traders is only just beginning to materialise and will impact the cost of living over the winter months with price increases being passed on to the consumer,” he said, adding that the government should “further assess” the feasibility of the trusted trader pilot.

While moving controls away from the border to the premises of a trusted trader could cut waiting times and improve biosecurity, it would not fix some fundamental flaws in the border system, traders said.

These included a lack of communication from the government on why some goods are flagged for checks and others not. 

“There still could be delays, but at least the plants will be an environment where they are cared for,” said Richard McKenna, Provender’s managing director. 

The government said: “[It is] committed to reducing barriers to trade and cutting red tape by striking a fair balance between business and biosecurity.

“We are piloting a trusted trader approach — the Authorised Operator Status — and full implementation will depend on the outcome of this pilot.”

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Elon Musk has backed down and complied with a Brazilian judge’s orders that he appoint a legal representative for X, according to court documents, paving the way for the restoration of the social media site in the country following a weeks-long ban.

X was banned in Brazil late last month amid an escalating feud between the billionaire and Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes, who had demanded the site remove accounts linked to far-right individuals and groups.

Musk refused to do so and shuttered X’s office in the Latin American country. He then ignored a court deadline to appoint a legal representative to the company — a requirement under the country’s civil code — which led Moraes to ban the platform.

Moraes — a controversial figure who has led a years-long crackdown on misinformation and extremist content online — also froze the bank accounts of both X and Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink, claiming that the companies were part of the same “economic unit”.

Starlink is a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX, in which Musk owns about 40 per cent of the stock but commands 79 per cent of voting rights.

On Saturday the stand-off between the billionaire and the judge appeared to be reaching a conclusion after lawyers for X announced the company had appointed an official legal representative. Rachel de Oliveira Villa Nova Conceição previously served in the role before Musk shuttered the company’s São Paulo office.

Multiple media outlets also reported that X had agreed to remove the controversial accounts that were at the centre of the feud between the two men.

X and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

The developments represent a climbdown for Musk, who has been idolised by sections of the Brazilian right for publicly taking on Moraes.

The billionaire repeatedly mocked the judge on social media, accusing him of being a dictator and posting mocked-up photos of him in prison.

“One day this picture of you in prison will be real. Mark my words,” Musk posted at one point. 

Moraes, however, won the backing of powerful political figures, including the rest of the Supreme Court bench and leftwing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

“The Brazilian justice system may have given an important signal that the world is not obliged to put up with Musk’s far-right anything-goes attitude just because he is rich,” Lula said after the ban was announced.

Prior to the ban, X had some 20mn users in Brazil and was the ninth most popular social media platform, far behind Instagram and Facebook. In the wake of Moraes’s order, millions of Brazilians began using Bluesky, a similar microblogging site.

On Saturday X remained blocked in Brazil pending information requests from Moraes and the calculation of outstanding fines.

Additional reporting by Beatriz Langella and Hannah Murphy

Two days after a devastating sabotage operation stunned Hizbollah and plunged its communications network into chaos, one of the militant group’s most senior military leaders called a clandestine meeting of at least 15 elite officers in southern Beirut.

By nightfall the men were dead, killed along with at least 10 civilians in an Israeli air strike on Friday that targeted the residential building in Hizbollah’s heartland where they were meeting in an underground room. The attack dealt a crushing blow that rounded off probably the most calamitous week in the Iranian-backed, Lebanese group’s 40-year history. 

Coming so soon after suspected back-to-back Israeli attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday that caused thousands of Hizbollah’s pagers and walkie-talkies to explode, killing at least 37 people and wounding thousands, it reinforced the group’s vulnerability to Israel’s intelligence agencies. 

Not only had Israel been able to strike successfully at the heart of Hizbollah’s command and control structures, it also delivered a stinging psychological blow, spreading panic across Lebanon and undermining the credibility of the nation’s dominant political and military force. 

“It’s definitely the hardest moment for the organisation since the 1990s,” said Emile Hokayem, director of regional security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “Militarily, it’s the biggest blow they’ve suffered so far.”

The question facing Hizbollah, battered and humiliated, is how it responds. 

The group has been locked in an intensifying conflict with Israel since it first fired rockets into the Jewish state a day after Hamas’s October 7 attack triggered the war in Gaza. Those clashes, however, have largely been contained to the Lebanese-Israeli border region. Hizbollah has made clear it does not want to be drawn into an all-out war with Israel’s far better equipped military. 

But Israel said this week that it was entering a “new phase” of the conflict as it launched the audacious attacks in Beirut and pounded the border region with the heaviest air strikes of the conflict. 

Analysts said Hizbollah is facing mounting pressure from its supporters, whose sense of security has been severely diminished, to change tactics and more forcefully repel Israel in a bid to restore its deterrence. 

Yet at the same time it is grappling with the aftermath of its most serious security breach in recent history, a severely disrupted communications network and the loss of some of its most senior commanders. 

“Hizbollah’s flank is exposed and they know it,” said a person familiar with the group’s thinking. “I don’t think they’ve ever been in such a vulnerable position before and it’s sowing enormous fear and panic. Everyone is wondering at all times, ‘what does Israel have in store for us next?’”

Hizbollah’s response has been muted, with its leader Hassan Nasrallah vowing a familiar refrain of retribution and ordering only a slight uptick in rocket fire at Israel. 

The group has acknowledged that two top commanders — including Ibrahim Aqil, the founder of its Radwan Force — were among those killed on Friday.

Israel said it killed the “senior chain of command” of the Radwan, the arm of Hizbollah responsible for cross-border operations into Israel and defending southern Lebanon against a ground invasion. 

Aqil’s death means that there are now only two out of the seven original members of the jihad council, Hizbollah’s top military body, left alive, according to two people familiar with the group’s operations. 

On top of that, hundreds of their fighters were maimed by the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies.

Experts said that Hizbollah would probably need time to recuperate and therefore may not significantly immediately escalate the conflict.

The group, Iran’s main proxy and one of the world’s most heavily armed non-state actors, still boasts a vast arsenal of rockets and increasingly accurate precision-guided missiles, and tens of thousands of fighters.

During the past 11 months of conflict, it has only deployed a fraction of its capabilities, experts said. 

But Israel has spent months targeting its fighters and rocket and missile launchers along the border.

“Hizbollah may be battered and weakened but it is not dead,” said Hokayem. “It’s still a disciplined, motivated organisation with an ethos and an ideology. They can survive.”

The choices facing the group includes raising the stakes with Israel to restore its credibility

“The other option is to suck it up, but Nasrallah was very clear about it, he’s not going to let go of the linkage between [supporting Hamas in] Gaza and Lebanon, because he knows it’s about his political perception and credibility,” he said.

“There’s an additional element, essentially all your detractors no longer see you as all powerful.”

In a front-page story on Saturday, Al Akhbar, a pro-Hizbollah Lebanese newspaper that often reflects the group’s thinking, said the militants would be forced to change tactics.

“What the enemy did yesterday was like closing the curtain on any political chapter related to the ongoing war in the region, and opening the door to a new level of confrontation that will force the resistance [Hizbollah] to adopt new methods,” Al Akhbar wrote. 

However, Amal Saad, an academic and Hizbollah expert, said: “No response will restore deterrence, that ship sailed a while ago”.

“The next phase will now be about denying Israel its strategic objectives,” she said, by preventing some 60,000 Israelis displaced from their country’s north from returning home.

“We’re talking about a new way to fight now because it’s a new paradigm, and a new stage in the war,” Saad said, adding that Hizbollah doesn’t have the intelligence capabilities to do respond in kind. “They will probably do something qualitatively different than what they’ve done before.”

That would involve keeping up the tempo of daily cross-border attacks, while trying to avoid mass civilian casualties to avoid giving Israel a pretext to trigger a full-scale war, she said.

Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli intelligence officer, said he believed Israel wanted to push Hizbollah to accept a diplomatic settlement that would force them back from the Israeli border. But he added that it “seems Israel is preparing itself for a broader escalation”.

“Israel really wants to cause damage to the functional and military sphere in Hizbollah,” Milshtein said. 

But there are also risks for Israel, particularly if it slid into “a broad escalation, even a regional one, not only in the north, without a strategy”.

“We have already seen in Gaza, the war started well by occupying almost half of Gaza, but now we are in a war of attrition,” Milshtein said.

“I am afraid that without a strategy, we will find ourselves in an unclear war, with heavy prices, a lot of crises with allies, and without very concrete goals. This would be a catastrophe.”