Auction Technology appoints new finance chief, Chrysalis Investments settles with Revolution Beauty

Stocks to watch

Auction Technology Group announced the appointment of Sarah Highfield as its new chief financial officer on Thursday, succeeding Tom Hargreaves, who was leaving to join a private equity-backed company. It said Highfield would bring over 15 years of senior financial leadership experience, having held roles at companies including Elvie, Costa Coffee, Tesco, and Away Resorts, currently chairing the audit and risk committee at Coats Group. The transition dates for Hargreaves’ departure and Highfield’s start would be confirmed later, the board said.

Chrysalis Investments on Thursday said it had reached a settlement with Revolution Beauty over its claim against the troubled AIM-listed cosmetics retailer. Under the terms of the settlement, Revolution Beauty has agreed to pay the former investor “a non-material sum, being less than 1% of the company's market capitalisation” on Jan 2. All other details of the settlement remain confidential.

Newspaper round-up

The UK lost about 37 shops a day during 2024 in yet another brutal year for the high street, data suggests. Almost 13,500 retail stores closed for good in the last 12 months, a rise of 28% on 2023 – although the losses were below the levels seen each year between 2019 and 2022, according to provisional figures compiled by the Centre for Retail Research. - Guardian

White-collar graduates are earning thousands of pounds less in real terms than before Covid as Britain faces a “brain waste” overqualification crisis. Accountants, civil engineers and scientific researchers are among the graduates earning far less than if they had entered the job market in January 2017, two years before the pandemic struck, according to Telegraph analysis of Indeed data. Many professions regarded as safe bets for young people have suffered big hits to pay over this time, with some set to make scarcely more than the minimum wage next year. - Telegraph

The Bank of England will be forced to cut interest rates at least four times this year to boost flagging economic growth, according to economists polled by The Times. The majority of the 51 economists taking part in The Times’s eighth annual economists survey said the base rate will fall to at least 3.75 per cent in the year ahead, from 4.75 per cent, implying four quarter-point rate cuts. - The Times

Chinese government hackers breached the US Treasury office that administers economic sanctions, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, identifying targets of a cyber-attack Treasury disclosed earlier this week. The Treasury letter earlier this week said hackers compromised third-party cybersecurity service provider BeyondTrust and accessed several employee workstations and unclassified documents. - Guardian

The Post Office has been accused of wasting millions of pounds on lawyers involved in a much-delayed compensation scheme for victims of the Horizon scandal. A total of £136m has been spent on legal fees relating to redress schemes for Horizon, a bug-ridden IT system that resulted in a string of subpostmasters wrongly being jailed for fraud. This is equivalent to more than one-quarter of the £499m so far paid out to victims, according to MPs on the Business and Trade Committee. A total of £82m has gone to just one law firm, Herbert Smith Freehills. - Telegraph

US close

Stocks on Wall Street were red across the board on New Year’s Eve, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 0.07% at 42,544.22.

The S&P 500 lost 0.43% to 5,881.63, and the Nasdaq Composite was off 0.9% at 19,310.79.