Business News Round Up (17/06/2020)
High growth firms secure support in £230m package
Scotland’s vital high growth companies are to receive part of £230 million reallocated from underspent schemes.
The Scottish government will divert £51m to further business support, including those companies with high growth potential.
It will aim to ease pressure on technology firms following warnings that many, particularly the early stage pre-profit firms, could go out of business.
It is expected that the money will be targeted at firms working at business parks such as Edinburgh BioQuarter and the Michelin Innovation Parc as well as the regeneration project at Ravenscraig.
Finance Secretary Kate Forbes announced the funding in a Return to Work scheme that will also be used to support education and maintain roads. It also covers construction and low carbon projects.
https://dailybusinessgroup.co.uk/2020/06/high-growth-firms-secure-support-in-230m-package/
Local authorities and constituted groups urged to apply for town centre recovery funding
Housing associations are being urged to apply for funding which has been made available by the Scottish Government to support the recovery of local high streets post-COVID.
Phil Prentice, the chief officer of Scotland’s Towns Partnership and programme director of Scotland’s Improvement Districts, issued the plea following an announcement of a £2 million fund by communities secretary Aileen Campbell last week.
The £2m Towns and Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) Resilience and Recovery Fund is in addition to the £1m BIDs Resilience Fund announced in March, and is intended to support localised response activities contributing to town centre and high street resilience and recovery.
Around £1m of this fund is now available for local authorities and towns organisations to apply for, while £700,000 will provide support to business improvement districts when current BIDs Resilience funding expires. The remainder of the fund will support data analysis and communications to support town centre recovery, including running a national “think local” campaign.
Boohoo swoops for Oasis and Warehouse brands in £5m cash deal
Manchester-based online fashion retailer, Boohoo, has acquired the Oasis and Warehouse brands in a cash deal worth £5.25m.
In a trading update covering the quarter to May 31, the group announced the purchase of the online businesses and all associated intellectual property of Oasis and Warehouse from Hilco Capital.
Oasis and Warehouse collapsed into administration in late April, with the loss of 1,803 jobs. The two brandswere sold to the restructuring firm Hilco.
Boohoo said Oasis and Warehouse are two well-established brands in the UK targeting fashion forward shoppers and are a complementary addition to its own portfolio of brands.
In their most recent financial year ending February 2020, unaudited management information shows that Oasis and Warehouse generated direct online revenues of £46.8m in aggregate.
The deal follows confirmation on May 28 that Boohoo had acquired the remaining 34% minority interest in prettylittlething.com Limited.