Concerns have been raised over the City’s influence on Westminster, after a report found financial firms and individuals tied to the sector donated £15m to political parties and gave £2m to MPs during the pandemic. The campaign group Positive Money tallied the gifts, expenses and donations handed to MPs, peers and their parties, as well as the value of income from politicians’ second jobs, saying it contributed to finance’s “oversized influence” on policymaking. – Guardian
Apple is taking on Klarna and ClearPay with a new “buy now, pay later” feature for iPhones, the company has announced at its worldwide developer conference. The company is also redesigning the iPhone’s lock screen, in the most substantial visual redesign the operating system for iPhones has received since the introduction of the iPhone X, and introducing a new version of the MacBook Air built around its M2 chip. – Guardian
A shared office space company founded by former Downing Street adviser Rohan Silva is on the hunt for a buyer amid uncertainty over its future. Second Home, which was co-founded by the ex-aide to David Cameron, is understood to have kicked off an accelerated sales process as a “plan B” option if it is unable to close an emergency cash injection. The process at the company was first reported by City AM, and comes weeks after it began work to raise £6m in emergency cash to stave off a collapse. At the time, Sky News reported that Second Home had hired FRP Advisory, the restructuring and insolvency firm. – Telegraph
UK public companies are trading at a valuation discount totalling about £500 billion since the “scarring impact” of the Brexit vote six years ago, according to research by a City stockbroker. Since 2016, when Britain voted to leave the European Union, the valuation of companies on the FTSE all-share index has settled at a 20 per cent discount to the rest of the world, on an adjusted basis, Panmure Gordon found. It is the largest divergence since the early 1990s. – The Times
Edinburgh Worldwide, Baillie Gifford’s investment fund focused on early-stage companies, has been hit by the broader downturn in technology stocks as it warned that its portfolio was in the “eye of the storm”. The backer of entrepreneurial companies with “long-term growth potential” said net asset value per share decreased by 34 per cent in the six months to the end of April. – The Times
