Jonathan Reynolds’ team has written to Gordon Brothers, which bought retailer for £1 last summer, to ‘establish the facts’
The business secretary’s team has written to the owner of Poundland amid fears that the cut-price retailer could collapse into administration, threatening to overshadow John Healey’s budget.
Sources said that Gordon Brothers, the US investment firm that bought the 600-store Poundland chain for £1 last summer, looks set to appoint administrators to the struggling retailer.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is among the most prominent figures in the AI race.
Finn Gomez/Getty Images
Meta is seeking a major cash injection to fund its AI ambitions.
The tech giant said on Monday it is looking to raise up to $95 billion from stock offerings.
Tech firms are spending big on AI infrastructure as they try to win the superintelligence race.
Meta is tapping investors for up to $95 billion to fund its huge AI build-out.
The tech giant said in a Monday filing that it has launched about $35 billion in equity offerings, comprising around $22.5 billion of Class A common stock, and $12.5 billion in depositary shares representing preferred stock.
The parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram also said it was planning a $60 billion at-the-market offering once its Class C shares begin trading in the first quarter of 2027.
In an at-the-market offering, a company sells shares gradually into the market at the prevailing market price, instead of as a large block at a fixed price.
Meta said last week that it would introduce the new share class to help founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg access the liquidity he may need to pay California's proposed wealth tax without having to sell existing shares and erode his voting control over the company.
"AI is creating significant opportunities for Meta across its core business and new products and services," the company said in a press release.
"Meta is investing to expand the infrastructure and compute capacity needed to support these opportunities and to bring personal superintelligence to billions of people and businesses," it added.
Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom have each expressed an interest in buying up to $5 billion of the common stock being offered, but those indications aren't binding, so they might buy more or less, Meta said.
Meta stock swung during Monday's premarket from 2% in the green to 0.4% in the red.
The company said it expects to incur $135 billion to $145 billion of capital expenditures this year. It highlighted $97 billion of operating cash flow for the first nine months of this year, and the roughly $82 billion of cash and other liquid assets it held at the end of September.
Meta's revenue jumped by 26% to around $65 billion last quarter, but its operating income shrank by 37% to $13 billion as costs surged from about $31 billion to $52 billion.
Companies love making grand diversity promises, but actuary Peter Crowley uses basic maths to expose eyebrow-raising targets that were never realistic in the first place.
MEPs are pushing for an EU solidarity mechanism to help patients pay for treatment abroad, arguing that financial barriers are preventing Europeans from exercising rights they have had on paper for more than a decade.
The calls came as Parliament discussed a report commissioned to inform its own-initiative report on modernising patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare. The study found that cross-border care accounts for just 0.004% of EU public health expenditure, despite patients continuing to face upfront costs, complex reimbursement procedures and prior-authorisation requirements.
Tomislav Sokol (EPP, Croatia) called the proposed solidarity mechanism a potential “game changer” for vulnerable patients, but challenged Parliament to spell out how it would work.
“How would it work in practice? How would it be financed? Would this be part of the EU budget?” Sokol asked. “We need to know it now, so that we can also use this in negotiations on the future EU budget, in the next MFF.”
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