Category: 3. Business

• Arcadis collaboration selected across five lots on new £120m TfGM framework
• Three lots led by Arcadis, two lots secured by strategic partner Steer
• Framework open to contracting authorities in North West, North East, Yorkshire, East Midlands and West Midlands
• Win further strengthens Arcadis’ longstanding relationship with TfGM

Arcadis has been appointed across five lots on the Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) Professional Services Framework (2025-2029), a £120m multidisciplinary consultancy framework.

This significant win positions Arcadis as a key partner in the delivery of critical infrastructure and transport projects across Greater Manchester and beyond. The successful lots include:

• Lot 2, Transport Analysis, Strategic Modelling and Economics;
• Lot 11, Design & Engineering Services – Buildings;
• Lot 16, Multi-Disciplinary Services.

Arcadis has also partnered with consultancy Steer to further strengthen our market offering, for which we were successful in a further two lots that will be led by Steer. These included:

• Lot 4, Quantitative & Qualitative Research;
• Lot 10 Design & Engineering Services – Streets for All.

This success further strengthens Arcadis’ longstanding relationship with TfGM, whilst providing a vital route to market for a broad range contracting authorities over the next four years and beyond, covering the North West, North East, Yorkshire, East Midlands and West Midlands. These include public transport bodies, local authorities, combined authorities, police forces, fire and rescue services, and ambulance services.

Richard Hill, Local Government Sector Lead – Mobility at Arcadis said:

“The TfGM Framework represents a huge leap forward in delivering our local authority growth strategy in the North. Previously appointed to a limited number of lots, our position on the new Multi-Disciplinary Lot now gives us access to the full suite of services required by the client. As a trailblazing Strategic Authority, TfGM/GMCA now has greater powers to deliver across the region, and this framework provides us with the opportunity to improve the quality of life for residents in Greater Manchester. I’m incredibly proud of the team and excited to get started on mobilisation with our local clients.”

Richard Jones, City Executive for the North at Arcadis, added:

“Greater Manchester is at the forefront of the UK’s devolution revolution, with significant planned investment through the TfGM Framework anticipated to exceed £120m over the next five years.

This makes it a strategically critical win for Arcadis in the North. Securing places across five lots, including, for the first time, the Multi-Disciplinary and Architecture Lots, means we are well-positioned to support a diverse range of projects for our key local government clients. I’d like to thank our bid team for their outstanding effort in delivering a complex submission. Their hard work has paid off and we now have a strong platform for future growth across the region.”

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Billionaire Elon Musk and his social media firm X have reached a tentative settlement with former employees who had sued for $500m (£373m) in severance pay.

The parties reported the deal in a court filing on Wednesday, jointly requesting the US appeals court in San Francisco to postpone an upcoming hearing to allow time to settle the paperwork.

Some workers sued the company over their terminations and severance packages, after some 6,000 staff – more than half its workforce – were sacked as part of a cost-cutting measure after Musk took over the company in 2022.

The BBC has contacted X – formerly called Twitter – and the lawyers representing the employees for comment.

“The parties have reached a settlement agreement in principle and began negotiating the terms of a long form settlement agreement,” according to court documents filed by both sides, seen by the BBC.

Details of the agreement are not yet public and will require the courts’ approval.

The lawsuit, led by former Twitter employee Courtney McMillian, says about 6,000 people were wrongly denied benefits under the company’s severance plan.

They argued that the firm had failed to provide payments as high as six months’ worth of salaries, among other terms.

But Twitter only gave sacked workers at most one month of severance pay, while some did not receive anything, according to the lawsuit.

Musk axed thousands of Twitter staff globally, downsizing the platform’s trust and safety, human rights and media teams.

The Twitter layoffs was among the earliest in a series of retrenchments among tech firms to cut costs. Rank-and-file workers were often first to be laid off.

Many companies had gone on a hiring spree during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic when the use of digital tools grew.

Companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft laid off tens of thousands of workers in the years that followed.

Musk, who was appointed for several months to helm President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, made similar moves when he axed thousands of federal workers earlier this year.

The department was tasked with reducing US government spending and cutting jobs.

Additional reporting by Lily Jamali

Sunscreen company Ultra Violette says it will immediately withdraw its Lean Screen Skinscreen product from the market after new tests found a “pattern of inconsistency” in its SPF results.

The company’s co-founders, Ava Chandler-Matthews and Bec Jefferd, on Friday published the test results in a statement in which they apologised to customers, offered them refunds and instructed them to stop using the product.

Ultra Violette ordered the additional testing after the consumer advocacy group Choice in June published an investigation into the SPF claims of several popular sunscreen brands, including Ultra Violette.

In Choice’s test, the Ultra Violette Lean Screen SPF 50 plus Mattifying Zinc Skin Screen, a higher-end product that retails for upwards of $50, returned an SPF result of just 4 in Choice’s test. A second test returned a result of 5, Choice said.

Ultra Violette had publicly disputed Choice’s findings. But on Friday Chandler-Matthews and Jefferd said the results of their own additional tests had demonstrated “significant” and “atypical” variability.

In a statement posted on Ultra Violette’s website and Instagram, Chandler-Matthews and Jefferd said they had commissioned eight different tests from multiple, independent laboratories.

“Lean Screen has now returned SPF data of 4, 10, 21, 26, 33, 60, 61, and 64,” they said. “That wasn’t good enough for us, and it isn’t good enough for you.”

Chandler-Matthews and Jefferd emphasised that their announcement “only concerns the performance of Lean Screen”. They said tests of Ultra Violette’s other products had “reinforced our confidence in the rest of our line”.

The Choice chief executive officer, Ashley de Silva, said it had released its sunscreen testing results in June in the interest of the public.

“Today’s announcement from Ultra Violette confirms there is a clear problem with how sunscreen is regulated and tested in Australia,” de Silva said.

“Without Choice’s investigation, Ultra Violette’s Lean Screen would still be on shelves, despite the fact that it does not provide anywhere near the amount of sun protection it claims to.”

De Silva urged the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to provide an update on the investigation into sunscreen testing it began after Choice released its results, saying other brands could also be affected.

The TGA on Thursday published a statement on its website saying its investigation was ongoing.

“Given the complexity and scale of the material involved, this process will take time,” the regulator said.

“Variability in sun protection factor testing results … is a known issue,” it said.

“The TGA is currently reviewing existing SPF testing requirements. In doing so, the TGA is exploring alternative test methods that may be more reliable, including in vitro test methods.”

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is proceeding with the third phase of its “crypto sprint,” a series of accelerated rulemaking efforts designed to implement recommendations from the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets.

“The Administration has made it clear that enabling immediate trading of digital assets at the Federal level is a top priority,” acting CFTC chair Caroline Pham wrote in a statement on Thursday.

The CFTC’s latest sprint expands beyond spot crypto trading to address all remaining recommendations from the working group’s report on strengthening American leadership in technologies such as crypto and digital assets.

The CFTC appears to be “trying to lay a regulatory bedrock by seeking to establish a unified, federal-level spot market for crypto assets,” Andrew Rossow, a public affairs attorney and CEO of AR Media Consulting, told Decrypt.

“It begins to address this state-by-state fragmentation and long-time occupancy of this grey zone,” Rossow said, adding that he thinks the moves are made as part of a “federal legitimacy strategy” to create “foundational reform.”

Still, retail investors would “most likely benefit from heightened protections,” once the “federal handcuffs” are lifted to restore trust in a space “long tarnished by poor oversight,” he added.

CFTC Seeks Feedback on Plan to List Spot Crypto on Registered Exchanges

The report seeks to provide a unified federal framework for digital asset markets, addressing gaps in market structure, custody, stablecoin regulation, and anti-money laundering standards.

Remaining sprints are expected to tackle unresolved issues around DeFi oversight, banking access, tax clarity, and inter-agency coordination.

Thursday’s announced sprint is the third in a four-part series. The first, on August 1, laid the framework. The second, on August 4, launched the spot trading initiative. 

How the Crypto Industry Is Responding to the CFTC’s Call on Perpetuals

The latest expands to broader rulemaking, while a forthcoming fourth sprint is expected to translate stakeholder feedback into formal rules and supervisory guidance.

“The U.S. is asserting control over digital dollars and setting the standards others may follow,” Ray Youssef, CEO of crypto messaging and P2P trading app NoOnes, told Decrypt. “Countries that once hesitated may be pushed to adopt similar frameworks or risk falling behind in the race to modernize finance.”

The CFTC has set an October 20 deadline for comments on the broader set of recommendations. The federal agency did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comments.

Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China Construction Bank Corp., Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. and Bank of China Ltd. probably saw earnings impacted by weaker loan demand amid limited government stimulus and a sluggish economy.

“More mortgages and consumer loans could turn bad on a housing slump, US tariffs and domestic deflation, even as corporate loan quality appears resilient,” according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Francis Chan and Nicholas Ng. First-half results may indicate muted earnings for the rest of the year, they added.