Here are the business stories making the headlines locally and across the UK this morning.
Premier Inn owner to axe 1,500 jobs
Premier Inn owner Whitbread has said it will axe around 1,500 jobs across the UK amid plans to cut 200 branded restaurants in favour of building more hotel rooms.
The hospitality giant, which employs 37,000 people across Britain, announced the job losses as part of plans to focus on its hotel business, which will see it sell off 126 branded restaurants.
It will also convert 112 lower-returning branded restaurants into new hotel rooms, as part of its goal to offer at least 97,000 open rooms in the UK by the end of its 2029 financial year.
Whitbread announced an adjusted loss before tax of £36m for the year to March, an improvement on its £50m loss the previous year.
St Fittick’s Park campaigners claim early victory in battle with ETZ
Campaigners trying to save an Aberdeen park earmarked for the new Energy Transition Zone (ETZ) say they feel vindicated by their battle going to a judicial review.
The Friends of St Fittick’s Park (FoSFP) today welcomed the ruling by Lord Fairley, in the Court of Session, Edinburgh.
He accepted their petition, which focused on Aberdeen City Council’s “failure to exercise its duties under the Equality Act 2010” and an “apparent interest” of a councillor in ETZ Ltd.
Read the full story here.
HSBC chief executive unexpectedly steps down
HSBC's group chief executive Noel Quinn is unexpectedly retiring after nearly five years in the role.
Europe's largest bank says it is in the process of finding a successor for 62-year-old Mr Quinn, who will stay in the role until a new chief executive is named. HSBC is considering candidates from both inside and outside the firm.
It comes as the UK-based lender reported a 1.8% drop in profit for the first three months of 2024, compared to the same time last year.
The company said that its pre-tax profit for the period came in at $12.7bn (£10bn), which was a little better than expected by market analysts.
FT opens the door to ChatGPT
The Microsoft-backed OpenAI has struck a deal with the Financial Times to allow its ChatGPT artificial intelligence program to access the newspaper’s archived content.
Although details of the tie-up, described as a “strategic partnership and licensing agreement”, were not made public, it is known that the FT will receive an undisclosed sum for its journalists’ work and that the businesses will collaborate on developing new AI features for the paper’s readers.
Users of ChatGPT will be able to see short summaries of the FT’s journalism and links to articles, which will be given in response to queries to the chatbot.
Copyright is a source of contention between the technology and creative industries. Generative AI, which creates content such as text or images from prompts, requires vast tracts of information to power it. The higher-quality the input, the better the output.