Autonomous delivery robots will hit the streets of Greater Manchester this week as the Co-op partners with the self-driving logistics company Starship Technologies to bring its six-wheeled bots to a seventh British city. Five years after making their first UK delivery in Milton Keynes, Starship has expanded to cover hundreds of thousands of households across the country, offering services in cities including Cambridge, Leeds and Northampton.. – Guardian
The Biden administration has threatened to ban TikTok in the US unless the social media company’s Chinese owners divest their stakes in it, according to news reports on Wednesday. The move, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is the most dramatic in a series of escalations by US officials and legislators, driven by fears that US user data held by the company could be passed on to China’s government. It also comes amid a global backlash to the popular video-based app over concerns about the potential for Chinese spying, with countries including the UK, Canada and Australia recently moving to ban the app from government phones. – Guardian
Credit Suisse has announced that it will borrow up to 50 billion Swiss francs (£44.5bn; $54bn) from Switzerland’s central bank to reinforce the group after its shares plunged. In a statement, the troubled bank said it was also making buyback offers on about 2.8 billion francs of debt. – Telegraph
Business groups have urged the government to make permanent a new £9 billion-a-year capital allowances scheme designed to stimulate investment. The chancellor yesterday announced a new “full expensing” policy for the next three years under which businesses can deduct 100 per cent of the cost of capital spending for certain plant and machinery against taxable profits, cutting their overall tax bill. – The Times
Goldman Sachs is facing scrutiny over its dealings with Silicon Valley Bank in the days before the technology lender’s collapse last week. The Wall Street investment banking group is set to make tens of millions of dollars from its purchase of a vast bond portfolio from Silicon Valley Bank . The California-based lender booked a $1.8 billion loss on the transaction, helping to set the stage for its failure. – The Times
