Messy motor melee

Afternoon all.

Case management hearings for the billion-pound motor finance scandal began this week - and it is already a scrappy bout to which Fury vs Joshua will struggle to hold a candle.

Lenders, alongside the advocacy group Consumer Voice, will square off with the FCA at the Upper Tribunal in early 2027. But blows have already been traded at the administration stage.

I managed to get my hands on some of the legal filings, which reveal the lenders are accusing the FCA of withholding the details on how they constructed their £9bn redress scheme. Meanwhile, Consumer Voice is demanding the regulator publish all its communications with the Treasury - which it alleges wielded unprecedented influence over the design of the scheme.

It’s a major headache for the watchdog, on a week where it was already fighting off criticism at its annual public meeting over its handling of a sensitive whistleblower case. The FCA branded these disclosure requests “fishing expeditions” - something opponents didn’t take to kindly.

Back in March, the watchdog had hoped to park the issue after publishing the details of its redress scheme, which amounted to an average payout of £830 for motorists. Some of the nation’s top banks were ready to leave the issue in the dust, too. Lloyds, Santander, Barclays - which are on the hook for a combined near-£3bn in the scandal - all said they would not challenge the scheme and were keen to move on.

A banking source told me recently banks had “past experience of mass redress schemes and have done those exercises on a large scale before” but for some manufacturers it will be “their first time and they will need to industrialise the process very quickly”.

And industrialising they are. The finance arms of Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen are not pulling punches in their desperate bid to get the scheme thrown out. Turns out not everyone is ready to put this scandal in reverse, some would rather slam the accelerator.

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Shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith set out his stall to the City this week at the Conservative Party conference.

Griffith is promising “the most ambitious deregulation project in a generation” with a pledge to slash red tape for businesses across construction, supermarkets, and nuclear energy if the Tories win the next election.

In his speech, he also said his party would scrap Labour’s mansion tax, which adds a levy on properties worth more than £2m.

Our politics and economics reporter Mauricio Alencar is up in Birmingham (with a sore head from conference shindigs) and has the lowdown on what the Tories are offering for the economy.

Get in touch with Mauricio at [email protected]

In the UK we’re spoilt for choice with where to go for our weekly shop. Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Morrisons rule the roost as the big four. But Aldi and Lidl have parked their tanks on the top grocer’s lawns and gained market share in recent years. And, of course, there’s your Waitrose and Co-op for those less scrupulous about opening their wallet.

Well this could all be about to change.

My colleague Felix Armstrong has been looking at what lies ahead for the UK supermarket industry after it emerged Sainsbury’s and Morrisons held talks of a possible merger.

News of these talks come nearly a decade since Sainsbury’s boss Mike Coupe was hot mic’ed singing “we’re in the money” as his grocer was in the final steps of a takeover of rival Asda. That deal would go on to be blocked by the competition watchdog.

No other blockbuster deal has yet to emerge and, as Felix reports, Sainsbury’s walked have walked away from those Morrisons talks in February this year. But could that chatter resume in the future and could a mega-deal be around the corner?

Contact Felix at [email protected]

There are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. As we head towards another Budget with bank tax chatter high, some think bankers might have to shift towards step three. 

In my column this week, I took a look at a suggestion from Jefferies analysts about the bargain bankers could make with Chancellor John Healey.

A simple trade-off tax asset could give everyone a piece of the pie. But that’s not to say Healey may find the simple lure of a blanket tax hike too tempting to resist. 

It was hoped the blockbuster flotation of Elon Musk’s SpaceX in June would add rocket boosters to the global IPO market. But four months on, momentum has come crashing back down to earth.

One banker told me earlier this week the pipeline was “looking a lot better” but actually getting the candidates onto the market was the “real challenge”.

Our investment reporter Maisie Grice spoke with top City analysts to gauge their view on how the public market is shaping up for the months ahead.

You can catch Maisie at [email protected]

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