Category: 3. Business

Nov 12 (Reuters) – U.S. trade tensions have slowed opportunities for business jet deals in China, the president of corporate planemaker Gulfstream Aerospace said, in a rare case of demand softening in an otherwise upbeat global market for private aircraft.

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The U.S. is the world’s largest market for business jets.

Burns said he sees broader global strength, but U.S. trade tensions with Beijing have “definitely slowed a number of opportunities” in China, where the U.S. planemaker has about 150 aircraft flying.

“It’s a good market for us,” Burns said. “But you know, obviously the trade tensions do create some slowdown in that marketplace. So I’m hopeful that there’s something that gets done in the near future.”

Gulfstream is also seeing higher demand from Fortune 500 corporate customers, following quarters of strong results, Burns said. As of November 7, more than 82% of 446 S&P companies beat third-quarter earnings expectations, compared with a long-term average of 67.2%, according to LSEG data.

Burns said Gulfstream expected to grow plane production through 2029, following long-term company plans, assuming demand remains robust and its supply chain has capacity.

“Our plans are to continue to grow,” he said. “The supply chain right now is supporting that ability to grow.”

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LONDON, Nov 12 (Reuters) – Marks & Spencer is revamping its supply chain from “factory to floor”, the retailer’s new fashion boss told Reuters, as it looks to double annual online non-food sales to nearly 3 billion pounds ($4 billion).

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He said M&S had done a good job re-establishing its value, quality and style credentials, with FH&B sales up 9% over three years and market share rising to 10.5% in 2024/25, from 9.1% in 2021/22.

It now needs to focus on becoming a truly omnichannel retailer, said Lyttle, in his first interview since joining M&S.

“So from where we make our goods, to how we flow that all the way into our warehouses, how our warehouses operate, and then how we feed those products out to our customers – whether that’s online, whether that’s in our stores,” he said.

Simplifying and cutting supply chain costs has been a priority for many companies after COVID-19, war in Ukraine, Red Sea shipping disruption and broader global trade upheavals, most recently due to U.S. tariffs.

MORE LONG-TERM PARTNERSHIPS WITH SUPPLIERS

M&S, which mainly sources products from China, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Turkey, wants to create more long-term partnerships to reduce the risks to supplies.

While progress has been made in recent years through consolidating suppliers, M&S has “much more opportunity to go after through resetting how we buy, unlocking more margin from our scale, increasing cost discipline and reducing complexity,” said Lyttle.

Dominic Younger, fund manager at Columbia Threadneedle Investments, one of M&S’ top 10 investors, said it had made huge and hard-won strides in fixing the FH&B front-end.

“But one of the most exciting aspects from an investment point of view is that, together with continuing to drive the food division, there is so much opportunity out there in terms of modernising the clothing supply chain,” he said.

With a clothing customer base of 21 million, Lyttle said overhauling M&S’ supply chain can double FH&B’s online sales over the long term from about 1.4 billion pounds in 2024/25, while lifting its online operating margin to double digits.

M&S is also aiming to increase online’s share of total FH&B sales from about 34% to 50% in the medium term, said Lyttle, a former Boohoo CEO who was also an executive at Primark.

Next, an early adopter of warehouse and distribution automation, makes about 59% of its UK sales online.

M&S can increase online sales by optimising the breadth and depth of its product range, encouraging more customers to use its more than 1,000 stores for ‘click and collect’ and returns, and utilising more channels such as lockers, Lyttle said.

It will also introduce more payment methods and relaunch its ‘Sparks’ loyalty programme to drive more frequent purchases.

INVESTMENT IN AUTOMATION

Part of M&S’ plan is a 120 million pound three-year investment in automation to increase capacity, reduce complexity and deliver cost savings worth “multi-millions” of pounds.

M&S is spending 600 million to 650 million pounds on capital investment in 2025/26 of which between 200 million and 250 million is being invested in technology infrastructure, store maintenance and upgrades to its logistics fleet.

In its vast Castle Donington warehouse in central England, M&S is investing in robotic technology that will speed up sorting ‘click and collect’ parcels and extend cut-off times for next-day delivery to nearly midnight.

Further investment at the 900,000-square foot site and another in Bradford, northern England, will increase boxed storage capacity by more than 30%.

M&S is also accelerating the implementation of a new planning platform, with a new merchandising capability already delivered, automating what was previously largely a manual task.

Cost savings will not need to come at the expense of the 63,000-strong M&S workforce, Lyttle said, adding: “Growing our business means we’re moving more product, therefore we need more people to help us do that”.

CYBER HACK LESSONS

While the cyber hack, which forced M&S to revert to manual processes, had not changed its strategy or longer-term plans, important lessons had been learned, Lyttle said.

“It’s not just lessons of the actual incident. It’s just general things that we could have done better, or we could have done faster,” he said, without giving away any specifics.

“You don’t want people who impacted us at the beginning to understand in any way,” he added.

($1 = 0.7451 pounds)

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Good afternoon.

There are calls for Labor to force banks to put the brakes on landlord lending after investors accounted for two in every five home loans from July to September.

New ABS data reveals more than 57,000 investors borrowed nearly $40bn to buy homes over the three months, a 17.6% increase in the combined value of the loans on the previous three months. First home buyer numbers rose just 2.3% over the same period.

The Greens senator Barbara Pocock has urged the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority to “urgently rein in” the credit market, and encouraged Jim Chalmers to direct Apra to intervene as house prices surge.

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Music photographer Barrie Wentzell shot the world’s biggest stars between 1965 and 1975. He talks us through some of his favourite moments, from David Bowie (pictured) to the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Freddie Mercury.

What they said …

“I’ve never had a cabin fill with smoke quite like that before.” – Leah Blyth

A group of Liberal politicians including the South Australian senator were headed to Canberra today for a party room meeting on net zero emissions policy – then forced to turn back to Adelaide after smoke was detected on their Qantas flight.

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Over the weekend, a neo-Nazi rally overtly targeting Jewish people took place in front of New South Wales parliament.

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Lauren Farrugia is now in her third trimester of pregnancy. She has also carried a baby she never got to meet. “Both of my babies have changed me,” she writes. “One taught me how to love without certainty. The other teaches me how to hope again.”

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Pune – November 11 th , 2025: Tech Mahindra (NSE: TECHM), a leading global provider of
technology consulting and digital solutions to enterprises across industries, today announced
a licensing agreement with AT&T for its proprietary Automated Network Testing (ANT) and
Open Tool platforms. These applications deliver an advanced platform designed to transform
network testing and certification across Long Term Evolution (LTE), 5G Non-Standalone
(NSA), and 5G Standalone (SA) domains.

Tech Mahindra will integrate the ANT and Open Tool into its suite of telecommunications
solutions, which will empower Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to conduct network
health checks, connectivity tests, and debugging with unprecedented speed and precision,
ensuring a robust and reliable network for the customers. The ANT platform provides a user-
friendly graphical interface, a robust test execution engine, and an automated backend to
simplify test execution and validation of networks. It acts as an orchestrator, seamlessly
integrating with multiple external industry traffic generation tools.

Manish Mangal, President and Head – Americas Communication Business, Tech
Mahindra, said, “Networks have become the invisible lifeline of our digital society, every
innovation, every human connection, every leap forward depends on them. In an era of
unprecedented technological change, maintaining network reliability requires testing at
equally unprecedented speed and scale. Integrating these AT&T applications enables us to
reimagine network reliability in the AI-native era, providing global telecom operators with a
highly automated solution for end-to-end network testing and certification.”

The licensing agreement represents a significant milestone in an ongoing collaboration
between Tech Mahindra and AT&T, showcasing their shared commitment to innovation in the
telecommunications sector. A key component of this platform is the Open Tool, a versatile
data and voice traffic simulation tool developed by AT&T. This tool is crucial for certifying and validating the functionality and connectivity of the mobile packet core network in both lab and
production environments.

Kelly Marlar, Vice President and Managing Director of AT&T Intellectual Property, LLC,
said, “This licensing agreement highlights AT&T’s dedication to innovation and the value of
our technology development. Licensing relationships like the one with Tech Mahindra
transform our investments into new growth opportunities for AT&T, our licensees, and the
industry. By working closely with trusted third parties, AT&T Intellectual Property helps
accelerate innovation, drive new revenue streams, and bring proven solutions to market
faster. This agreement is a strong example of how our technology licensing program is open
for business, and we look forward to collaborating with more companies to deliver value and
advance the industry together.”

As part of this agreement, Tech Mahindra will now offer this proven solution to wireless
providers in global markets where AT&T does not operate. This license aligns with Tech
Mahindra’s focus on enhancing and scaling customer service for global telecom providers
with advanced telecommunication technologies. With a strong presence in the telecom
industry and over 250 customers across 90 countries, Tech Mahindra is a trusted
transformation partner with leading capabilities in network engineering and simplifying
customer experience.

About Tech Mahindra

Tech Mahindra (NSE: TECHM) offers technology consulting and digital solutions to global enterprises
across industries, enabling transformative scale at unparalleled speed. With 152,000+ professionals
across 90+ countries helping 1100+ clients, Tech Mahindra provides a full spectrum of services
including consulting, information technology, enterprise applications, business process services,
engineering services, network services, customer experience & design, AI & analytics, and cloud &
infrastructure services. It is the first Indian company in the world to have been awarded the
Sustainable Markets Initiative’s Terra Carta Seal, which recognizes global companies that are actively
leading the charge to create a climate and nature-positive future. Tech Mahindra is part of the
Mahindra Group, founded in 1945, one of the largest and most admired multinational federation of
companies. For more information on how TechM can partner with you to meet your Scale at Speed™
imperatives, please visit https://www.techmahindra.com

For more information on Tech Mahindra, please contact:

Abhilasha Gupta, Global Head – Corporate Communications, Tech Mahindra
Email: [email protected] ; [email protected]

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McDermott Will & Schulte is exploring a restructuring that would allow it to sell a stake to private equity groups, a move that would test ethics rules preventing non-lawyers from owning legal firms.

The reorganisation would involve creating a complex structure giving investors a slice of the law firm’s revenues without breaking traditional ownership rules, according to five people with knowledge of the matter.

Such a move, by one of the world’s largest law firms by revenue, could set a precedent for other large players in an industry that — in the US — has been impervious to outside investment.

Zack Coleman, the son of the firm’s chair Ira Coleman, joined McDermott from private equity and venture capital group Odyssey Investment Partners in July and had been sounding out bankers, advisers and private equity executives about the structure, the people said.

However, no agreement had been finalised and no commitments had been made, the people cautioned, with some saying it was at an exploratory stage.

The younger Coleman, who started his career at the investment bank Moelis in 2015 and joined McDermott as senior director of business opportunities, is considering a model in which some of the revenues that lawyers generate will be diverted to buy services from a separate entity in which outside investors could own a stake.

It is similar to models that have already been used to prise open medical practices and accounting firms to private equity ownership in recent years.

“As one of the fastest-growing, most successful modern law firms, we are constantly approached and we always listen to new ideas,” Ira Coleman told the Financial Times. “We’re excited to learn from other leading organisations as we challenge the status quo.”

The Chicago-headquartered firm, formed in a merger of McDermott Will & Emery and Schulte Roth & Zabel this year, has $3bn in revenues, it said in August. That would put it in the top 20 firms globally by revenue.

The structure under consideration would split it into two parts: a business giving advice to clients that is fully owned by its lawyers, and a separate “managed service organisation” that the lawyer-owned firm would buy services from. That could include back-office work, licensing its brand and buying IT services. Investors could buy a stake in the MSO, giving them a revenue stream designed to be attractive to private equity investors.

There has been an explosion of interest in the potential use of the structure in law this year, but no large firm has adopted it and opponents believe it could breach professional ethics rules designed to keep commercial considerations out of the provision of legal advice.

Ethics rules set by the American Bar Association that ban non-lawyer ownership of US firms are being questioned after some states, such as Arizona, have explicitly licensed alternative business structures that can include private equity control. The potentially more controversial MSO structure has so far been used by only a handful of small practices or start-up law firms.

Law is one of the last areas of the professional services sector that has not so far opened up to private equity and some investors sense an opportunity to buy up firms on the cheap by being in the first wave of deals.

Proponents of outside investment say it could give law firms capital to invest in new technology such as artificial intelligence, pay for the expensive hires and help tie rainmakers to them through equity awards in an industry that bans non-compete clauses.

Burford Capital, which pioneered litigation finance, has said it is interested in buying minority stakes in US law firms.

Lawyers at Holland & Knight wrote in a note that MSOs could “assist law firms in innovating and professionalising their operations”, pointing to a Texas ethics ruling in February that indicated support for the structure.

Global oil and gas demand will rise for the next 25 years if the world does not change course, the International Energy Agency has said, in a new scenario that reflects governments’ fading commitment to climate change.

Until this year, all of the Paris-based body’s modelling assumed that fossil fuel consumption would peak this decade, a claim that was hotly contested by the oil and gas industry and the White House.

But in its latest World Energy Outlook, published on Wednesday, the body, whose research helps to shape global energy policies, said if the world continued on its present trajectory, oil and gas demand would continue to rise and there would be no meaningful fall in CO₂ emissions.

It laid out a scenario taking in countries’ changing stance on climate goals, as well as a growing desire for secure and affordable energy and a slowdown in the growth of electric vehicles.

“Climate change is declining — and declining rapidly — in the international energy policy agenda,” Fatih Birol, the head of the IEA, told the Financial Times. “And this is happening while 2024 was the hottest year in history.”

The report, released as leaders gather in Belém, Brazil, for the COP30 climate change summit, states it is now “all but certain that 1.5 degrees of warming will be exceeded within a decade or less, and that pathways that limit this overshoot to low levels have now slipped out of reach”.

The IEA said it had not introduced its new scenario in response to pressure from the US, which has strongly criticised the notion of “peak oil” as it attempts to boost its fossil fuel industry and achieve “energy dominance”.

In July, Chris Wright, the US energy secretary, told Bloomberg that the IEA’s modelling of peak fossil fuels was “total nonsense”, that he was in contact with Birol and that the US would either reform the IEA or withdraw its support. The US contributes 14 per cent of its budget.

The IEA said there was a “wider range of uncertainty around the outlook” this year, and it had discussed its approach with “all our member governments and they expressed their interest in multiple scenarios”.

Major oil and gas producers such as the US, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have insisted the world needs all forms of energy, including oil and gas, in order to meet the surging demand for power from artificial intelligence and rising living standards.

Under the new scenario, called Current Policies, energy and climate change policies that are in force “remain as they are for the next 25 years and no new policies are introduced”, said Birol.

Traditionally the Current Policies scenario was included in the watchdog’s World Energy Outlooks but it was dropped from 2020 after campaigners said it had understated growth in renewable energy sources. However, the decision drew criticism in the US, where the House committee on energy and commerce pushed for its reintroduction last year.

“For some people it is very optimistic, for some people it is very pessimistic,” Birol said, adding that the IEA did not assign any probabilities to each of its scenarios. “We just put the scenarios on the table.”

The Current Policies scenario envisages the share of EVs reaching a plateau of about 40 per cent by 2035, and oil demand growing from 100mn barrels a day in 2024 to 113mn b/d by 2050, underpinned by the aviation, trucking and petrochemical industries.

Under the IEA’s Stated Policies scenario, which reflects energy and climate policies that have been proposed, if not yet put into law, oil demand peaks at 102mn b/d by 2030 with half of all vehicles sold in 2035 being electric.

Both scenarios also assume strong growth in gas, but that the use of coal peaks this decade before declining.

At the heart of all of the IEA’s projections is a huge growth in electricity demand, which rises roughly 40 per cent by 2035 in both the Current Policies and Stated Policies scenarios and 50 per cent in a more ambitious Net Zero scenario.

By 2035, 80 per cent of energy consumption growth would come in regions that were well suited to solar power, it said.

The IEA said this demand growth was driven by the increasing penetration of white goods and air conditioners, as well as advanced manufacturing and data centres.

While investment in data centres was concentrated in advanced nations, the energy sector would be increasingly shaped by emerging economies led by India and south-east Asia and including the Middle East, Latin America and Africa, it added.

Representatives of the renewable energy industry noted all of the scenarios the IEA suggested show continuing huge growth in clean energy.

“Nearly all new electricity demand — driven by manufacturing growth, AI, cooling needs, and the shift to electric cars — will be supplied by renewable energy,” said Bruce Douglas, chief executive of the Global Renewables Alliance. 

Data visualisation by Ella Hollowood in London

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Over the past four years, the IEA has worked to develop a new integrated modelling framework: the IEA’s Global Energy and Climate (GEC) Model. This model is now the principal tool used to generate detailed sector-by-sector and region-by-region long-term scenarios across IEA’s publications, including the World Energy Outlook series and Energy Technology Perspectives series.

In 2021, the IEA adopted for the first time a new hybrid modelling approach relying on the strengths of both models. The integrated framework of the IEA’s Global Energy and Climate Model (GEC Model) is now the principal tool used to generate detailed sector-by-sector and region-by-region long-term scenarios across IEA publications, including the World Energy Outlook series and Energy Technology Perspectives series.

Download the GEC Model Methodology document for an in-depth description of the overall approach and features of the model, and download the GEC Model Key Input dataset for selected key input data.