Here are the business stories making the headlines across Scotland and the UK this morning.
Ellon craft beer giant BrewDog posts £59 million pre-tax loss
Aberdeenshire’s BrewDog lost £59 million last year ahead of its controversial founder James Watt stepping down as chief executive.
It is the fourth successive year the craft beer behemoth has posted substantial pre-tax losses, with the company last announcing a profit in 2019.
After reporting pre-tax profits of £1.1million that year, BrewDog has had losses of £12.5m in 2020, £9.4m in 2021 and £30.5m for 2022 — with 2023’s figure more than the previous three years combined.
Read the full story in the P&J.
Minister claims most companies are hiring rapists and abusers
The safeguarding minister has suggested that the majority of businesses employ domestic abusers or rapists.
Jess Phillips told hundreds of executives at an event on Wednesday: “Almost every single one of you as an employer is currently employing a perpetrator of domestic abuse and or rape.”
Ms Phillips was speaking at Google’s London headquarters as part of a conference hosted by the Employers’ Initiative on Domestic Abuse (EIDA), a charity that helps companies tackle domestic abuse by providing support to staff.
Click here to read the full story.
Premier Inn owner aims to return £2bn to shareholders
The owner of Premier Inn has pledged to deliver a “step change” in its financial performance as it unveiled plans to return more than £2 billion to shareholders over the coming five years and increase its profits by at least £300 million.
As part of a new five-year plan, Whitbread, which owns the hotel chain along with the Beefeater, Brewers Fayre and Table Table pub-restaurants, wants to expand the number of bedrooms it has in the UK to 98,000 by the end of 2030 and to 20,000 in Germany.
The London-listed company, which believes that in the longer term it can increase that room count to 125,000 in the UK and Ireland, has 86,000 rooms across 855 hotels in the UK and 10,500 rooms across 59 hotels in Germany.
Read the full story in The Times.
Competition for graduate-level jobs has reached a record high
Competition for graduate jobs has reached a record high, with the average employer receiving 140 applications per role, according to the Institute of Student Employers (ISE).
More than one million applications were submitted for just under 17,000 graduate vacancies in 2023-24 — a 59% year-on-year increase, which makes for the highest demand-supply deficit since ISE began tracking this data in 1991.
Contributing factors include AI speeding up applications, economic challenges, and relaxed entry criteria for some roles.