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WH Smith is considering cutting 1,500 jobs - 11% of its workforce. Most of the jobs being lost will be at the company's travel sites, situated at airports and railway stations. The firm said the impact of the coronavirus outbreak meant it expected to report a loss of £70-75m for the year to the end of August. WH Smith is the latest High Street name to consider job cuts amid the disruption caused by the pandemic. The company has 575 High Street shops and employs more than 14,000 people. Revenue at its travel division, which includes stores at airports and rail stations, fell 92% in the first month of lockdown. At its High Street division, sales were still 25% down in July after lockdown eased.
TikTok has said it plans to build a $500m (£375m) data centre in Ireland. It will store videos, messages and other data generated by European users from the short-form video-sharing app. Until now all of its users' records were stored in the US, with a back-up copy held in Singapore. The announcement comes at a time when President Trump has threatened to ban the app in the US on the grounds its Chinese ownership makes it a national security risk. TikTok's Beijing-based parent company Bytedance denies the charge. However, it is in talks to sell its US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand operations to Microsoft.
The automotive industry has recorded this year's first monthly increase in sales, following the reopening of dealerships. Some 174,887 cars were registered in July, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). This is up 11.3 per cent compared with the same month in 2019. July was the first time dealerships across the UK were open for a full month since February, due to the coronavirus lockdown. The SMMT said pent-up demand and special offers led to 'a reprieve for the sector'. But despite the monthly increase, registrations for the first seven months of the year are down 41.9 per cent.
#ukjobloss #TikTok #UK #Kalkine
