In the latest setback for the electric car revolution, Stellantis, the parent company of Fiat as well as of Vauxhall, Peugeot and Citroen, said it is halting assembly of the Fiat 500e at its Mirafiori complex in Turin.

• Electric car chiefs look to Labour for new sense of direction

The company said it is pausing production for a month because of poor sales and demand. The company said its decision was “linked to the deep difficulties experienced in the European electric vehicle market by all producers”.

Citing industry data, the Autocar website reported that there had been a 24 per cent decline in Fiat 500e sales in the year to date.

The Fiat 500 is the modern take on the famed original Cinquecento model which became an automotive icon — much like the first Minis — and made the name of the Fiat brand. The Fiat 500e had initially been a runaway success and just earlier this year the company was boasting that it was Europe’s favourite electric city runaround in its class.

However, electric car sales have stalled as a proportion of all new registrations across the Continent as governments withdraw incentives to make the zero-emission switch and wobble on when the ban of petrol cars will come in.

While the Fiat 500e, at a little over £20,000, is relatively cheap for an electric car it is still 50 per cent more expensive than its petrol equivalent.

The electric car market has taken a few knocks in recent days. Volkswagen is preparing to announce large redundancies because electric car demand is not as big as hoped. Volvo, a pioneer in the sector, has scrapped its plan to be an all-electric brand by 2030. Northvolt, Europe’s only gigafactory producer of batteries for electric cars, announced the mothballing and closure of some of its facilities.

The decision by Stellantis on the Fiat 500e also highlights the particular problems that the French multinational is having. Behind rivals in its zero-emission transition, Stellantis has been vocal most notably in Britain about government support and consumer demand — or lack of on both counts — for the electric revolution. Under the UK’s quota scheme it faces heavy fines if it does not either increase its delivery of electric vehicles or reduce its supply of petrol and diesel vehicles.

Other companies like BMW and Mercedes-Benz have had no such problems, plugged as they are into the demand for electric vehicles in the company car sector. The two German manufacturers are, for instance, supplying up to 30 per cent of their vehicles to the UK in full-electric mode.

The employee-owned partnership behind the upmarket Waitrose grocery chain and John Lewis department stores said that total revenue rose 2 per cent to £5.2 billion in the period to July 27, helping losses before tax to fall from £59 million to £30 million year on year.

Stripping out exceptional items, losses fell from £57 million to £5 million.

Nish Kankiwala, chief executive of the John Lewis Partnership, said the “results confirm that our transformation plan is working” and that the retailer is “well set up for a positive peak trading period” over Christmas.

The partnership is reviving its fortunes after suffering mounting debts, falling profits and competition from online retailers and a resurgent Marks & Spencer.

Dame Sharon White, the partnership’s outgoing chairwoman, is due to formally hand over on Monday to Jason Tarry, the former Tesco UK boss, having sought to generate greater profits from non-retailing activities, such as housebuilding and financial services.

A cost-cutting strategy focused on reducing staff, closing stores and streamlining operations was criticised for weakening the partnership’s prized customer service.

In March, when announcing a return to profit, the partnership vowed to focus “unashamedly” on investing in its retail business.

There was no statement from White included in Thursday’s results announcement, but bosses later said she “remains exceptionally supportive”.

The partnership, which made “pre-exceptional” profits of £42 million in the year to January 7, reiterated a profit target of £400 million by 2027, which it delayed by two years last September.

Kankiwala said the board would decide in March whether to pay a bonus for the current year. Staff did not receive a bonus this year for only the third time since 1953 and the workforce has reduced from 81,000 when White took over in 2020 to about 69,000, mostly through “attrition”.

The recovery was led by Waitrose, where sales rose 5 per cent, including volume growth of more than 2 per cent, lifting adjusted operating profit to £113 million, up from £38 million last year. New initiatives included an in-house Gail’s bakery.

But John Lewis sales were down 3 per cent amid “a slower external environment for general merchandise” and it made a £49 million operating loss, widening from £25 million.

• How Sharon White left John Lewis ready to regain its former glory

Fashion sales were hit by the “squeeze on customers’ disposable income and unseasonal weather” and there was lower demand for “big ticket” items, weakening home sales.

Last week John Lewis announced that it was reinstating its “never knowingly undersold” price-match promise to win back customers by matching prices in its 34 stores and online with 25 competitors including Amazon, Next and Marks & Spencer. The first week of the pledge had been “exceptional” and bosses do not expect “a significant challenge” to its margins.

Waitrose announced last month plans to add an extra 100 convenience stores over the next five years in a £1 billion investment. It said that a quarter of its 320 stores would be revamped.

The investments are being helped by savings, a further £78 million of which have helped to deliver £500 million since January 2021, and the partnership said it remained on track to hit a target of £900 million by 2026.

Clive Black, retail analyst at Shore Capital, said: “All in all, it is pleasing to see this British retail institution out of the surgical ward. Culture, manifested in customer service and satisfaction, will, to us, be key to any success.”

However, John Ralfe, a pensions expert, warned about a £356 million pensions deficit. “To plug this gap, deficit contributions — stopped last year — will have to restart in the near future, diverting cash from JLP’s investment plans,” he said.

Robert Naylor and Christopher Mills, the former chairman and non-executive director of the music rights business, will join the board of PRS Reit after the property rental group’s annual results next month. Their appointments come after a partial climbdown by the board to avoid a showdown shareholders’ meeting.

At the end of last month, Naylor, 49, and Mills, 71, disclosed that they had drummed up the support of investors speaking for 17.3 per cent of PRS shares to call an investor vote in an attempt to remove its chairman Stephen Smith, 71, and Steffan Francis, 69, a non-executive director. The pair proposed being appointed in their place.

They are understood to have gone on to amass the support of 22 institutions speaking for more than 40 per cent of the shares, making the board’s resistance increasingly untenable. PRS initially suggested appointing only Naylor, but now it has agreed a compromise where Smith steps down at the next annual meeting but Francis remains, with the duo joining as non-executives.

“You can’t have ‘Scrappy Doo’ Naylor without ‘Megaphone’ Mills,” a source close to the pair said. “They’re a double act.”

On Smith’s departure, Geeta Nanda, 59, the senior independent director, will take the chair for an interim period, while seeking a permanent replacement. Naylor would be expected to throw his hat into the ring for the job.

PRS was floated in 2017, going on to raise £560 million from shareholders to develop 5,400 family homes for rent. However, before the duo showed up, the shares had been trading at an average 35 per cent discount to the group’s net asset value of 123.6p per share. Investors were angry, too, that the board had extended a contract with Sigma, the investment manager, to June 2029 when the estate is almost completely built and the company cannot raise fresh equity to develop more homes because of the discount.

The PRS board will now “review strategy”, with Naylor and Mills expected to push for asset sales and share buybacks to narrow the discount. “They are going to go in, be very nice and try to get a result for shareholders,” a source close to the pair said.

Marcus Phayre-Mudge, fund manager at TR Property Investment Trust, a PRS shareholder, said it was “heartening” to see that the board had “responded swiftly and decisively to the sizeable group of shareholders with concerns about the company’s governance. This matter has ultimately been about the board’s renewed arrangement with its external manager. Shareholders rightly felt that the contract was designed in a way that did not align the manager with their interests.”

The requisitioning investors spanned the Waverton, CCLA and Alder investment management groups, CG Asset Management and Harwood Capital, Mills’ own firm.

PRS Reit’s shares rose 2p, or 2.1 per cent, to 97p at the close.

The owner of The New York Sun, a right-leaning American news website, has expressed interest in taking over the broadsheet and its sister title The Sunday Telegraph.

Dovid Efune is bidding after securing financial backing from the investment firms Oaktree and Hudson Bay Capital, and the family office of Michael Lefell, a hedge fund manager, according to Sky News which first reported the bid.

Efune, who has owned the Manhattan-based Sun since 2021, made a presentation to Telegraph management on Wednesday and has been asked to submit a second-round offer at the end of the month, with the deadline for formal bids set for September 27.

The former Telegraph owner Lord Black of Crossharbour is a columnist and founding director of The New York Sun, according to its website. It was reported on Thursday that Black “still loves” the newspaper and may have been sounded out about the prospects of Efune’s bid.

Sir Frederick and the late Sir David Barclay gained control of The Telegraph with the acquisition of a stake in Black’s publishing group Hollinger in 2004.

The Barclay family has now lost control of the newspaper owing to a long-running dispute with Lloyds Bank over outstanding debts of £1.2 billion.

Efune is bidding for The Telegraph after politicians blocked a takeover of the newspaper by RedBird IMI, an Abu Dhabi-backed firm. RedBird’s deal attracted criticism because it was part-funded by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, the vice-president and deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates.

Efune joins other bidders including the hedge fund tycoon and GB News owner Sir Paul Marshall, and National World, a local newspaper group run by David Montgomery.

Redbird, which sold The Spectator magazine to Marshall for £100 million as part of the auction this week, is seeking to recoup at least £500 million from the sale of the newspaper.

In an email to Telegraph staff on Thursday, Anna Jones, the chief executive of Telegraph Media Group, updated staff on the process.

“After the initial receivership in June last year, the sale of The Spectator was run as an independent process to our own,” Jones said. “Both processes have been overseen by RedBird IMI and their external advisers.

“In terms of the TMG sale, myself and some of the executive team have recently met with prospective bidders for the business including National World and a US consortium to give a management presentation which outlines our editorial, financial and commercial position.

“The process continues, and we understand there are other bidders involved in the process that have not yet been disclosed. For now, we do not know how long the next stage will take, but I will update you once I have more information.”

The New York Sun has been contacted for comment.

A 2022 attempt to sell the archive, which includes 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon, one of the bestselling records of all time, and albums dating back to the 1960s, broke down amid personal disagreements between surviving members of the famously fractious group.

The auction attracted interest from music companies and investors, including Warner Music and BMG, the rival record labels, and Hipgnosis, the music rights group, but was said to have been derailed by a feud between Roger Waters, 81, the bass player, and Dave Gilmour, 78, the guitarist. Talks have been revived since then, according to the Financial Times, with the two sides now nearing a deal.

Sony Music has been one of the more acquisitive record labels in securing the rights to classic rock artists, whose music generates income via streaming platforms such as Spotify and can be sold for use in film and television soundtracks and advertisements. This year Sony bought a 50 per cent stake in Michael Jackson’s music catalogue for at least $600 million. Bob Dylan sold his recordings to Sony in 2022, while a year earlier Eldridge, the vehicle of Todd Boehly, the American billionaire co-owner of Chelsea FC, backed its purchase of Bruce Springsteen’s entire discography.

It is also reported to have acquired the back catalogue of Queen at a rumoured £1 billion. Apollo, the private equity group, invested $700 million to assist Sony with funding further music acquisitions in July.

Analysts have warned that the market may have cooled in recent months as higher interest rates weigh on returns. Hipgnosis Songs Fund, which spent more than $2 billion on song assets by Neil Young, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and many others, struggled to recoup its investments and was acquired by Blackstone, the investment group, this year.

Representatives for Pink Floyd refused to comment. Sony did not respond to requests for comment.

There are 24 per cent fewer homes available to rent in the UK now than before the pandemic, according to Zoopla, the property search website, which blamed the shortfall on the reluctance of landlords to either enter the market or add to their portfolios.

By its calculations, rents in the UK have risen by 30 per cent over the past three years. The annual pace of rental inflation has slowed to 5.4 per cent, although Zoopla noted that this was still ahead of the 5.1 per cent growth in average earnings over the past year.

As of July, the national average monthly rent currently stood at a record £1,245 — £63 more than last summer. Various regulatory and tax changes in recent years have dented landlords’ appetite to own and rent out property.

Richard Donnell, executive director at Zoopla, warned that any more changes in next month’s budget risked deepening the scale of the issue.

“Any new policy or tax changes that result in a reduction in supply will simply push rents higher, hitting low income renters hardest,” he said. “It is essential that policymakers focus on growing the stock of homes for rent as the primary route to slowing rental inflation and improving choice for renters. As things stand the growing unaffordability of renting is the only route to slower increases in rents.”

The number of people looking for rental homes has dropped from the pandemic peak and supply has increased, albeit from a very low base, over the past year. However, Zoopla said that there remain far more would-be tenants than available homes. On average, there are 21 people vying for every rental property — twice as many as before the pandemic.

There has been a “steady flow of landlords selling homes” since 2016, Zoopla said, although that has been compounded by a dearth of new landlords entering the sector.

With rents typically much more expensive in the big cities, tenants are increasingly looking to smaller towns in the suburbs for cheaper deals. Reflecting that, rents have risen by a double-digit percentage in towns such as Kilmarnock, Wolverhampton and Oldham over the past 12 months.

By contrast, rents in the major cities are up by 5.8 per cent compared with a year ago, while London rents have grown only 2.5 per cent in that time. “Rental inflation is slowing in some major cities where rents are high but they are still increasing quickly in more affordable areas,” Donnell said.

He expects that the “unaffordability of home ownership” will continue to push people towards renting instead, especially in southern England. With supply unlikely to dramatically improve any time soon, Zoopla expects the supply-demand imbalance to persist through 2025.

Tim Warrillow, who launched the high-end mixer brand 20 years ago with Charles Rolls, said that there were no plans to join the exodus of companies from the FTSE to Wall Street.

He said: “We’ve had a number of approaches about that, but we’re British and very proud to be. We’re very happy where we are.”

The commitment to its home market came as the mixers group said that a dismal start to the British summer had taken the shine off sales. Announcing first-half results, the company lowered expectations for annual revenue growth to 4-5 per cent, from a previously guided 10 per cent in March.

Fever-Tree also cut its 2023 annual forecast at the same stage last year by 15 per cent and took a £3.3 million hit on its US division from a production issue.

The update sent shares in Fever-Tree down by 100p, or 11.6 per cent, to an eight-year low at 762½p on the Aim index. The stock remains well below the highs of almost £40 achieved before the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis shuttered pubs and wallets.

Fever-Tree now sells its mixers in 95 countries, with America, Canada, Australia and Germany among its biggest markets. The United States overtook the UK to become the biggest market by revenue last year.

It has more recently branched out into flavoured sodas, adult soft drinks and cocktail mixers, the most recent being a mixer for mojito cocktails. Non-tonic products now account for more than 40 per cent of global revenues, driven by strong growth in sales of ginger beer.

Asked whether the agreed takeover of Britvic by Carlsberg might point to a similar fate for Fever-Tree, Warrillow said: “It’s clearly not what we’re angling for. But what is very interesting for us is the wider distribution opportunities.”

In the first half, Fever-Tree reported a 2 per cent increase in revenue to £170.6 million, with the UK down 6 per cent to £50.9 million and Europe down 12 per cent to £44.5 million. The US was up 7 per cent to £60.3 million, and revenues for the rest of the world were 57 per cent higher at £14.9 million.

Underlying earnings in the first half jumped by 79 per cent to £18.2 million, and the company declared a dividend up 2 per cent at 5.85p per share.

Warrillow, 49, who remains chief executive, said the group had “performed well against a tough market backdrop”, notably in the US and rest of world regions but the first-half performance in the UK and Europe had been affected by unseasonable weather at the start of summer. The on-trade — bars and restaurants — was also hit by low consumer confidence.

However, he said that the situation had improved strongly “as summer belatedly arrived”, adding: “Whilst the first half was challenging, we are controlling the controllables. We’re optimistic of an acceleration of growth across the second half of the year and have seen a much more positive trading performance in July and August.”

“Fevertree is doing the right things, gaining share and delivering on gross margin recovery, in a difficult market,” Investec analyst Matthew Webb said.

The first cap of its kind at JP Morgan Chase comes in response to an outcry about working conditions in finance following the death of a 35-year-old banker who was said to have been clocking 100-hour weeks.

Leo Lukenas III, a Bank of America employee and former Green Beret, died after allegedly working up to 15 hours a day for several weeks in a row while assigned to a $2 billion merger completed just before his death. The New York Office of the Chief Medical Examiner cited “acute coronary artery thrombus” as the cause of his death on May 2.

Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JP Morgan, said in May that it was a priority for the bank to understand “what can we learn from” Lukenas’s death.

JP Morgan declined to comment on the new cap on junior bankers’ working hours, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. It is understood that the cap will be lifted in some circumstances, such as during a live deal.

The 80-hour cap is the same as the limit for hours of medical residents — the equivalent of junior hospital doctors in the NHS — in New York state.

Junior bankers at JP Morgan are protected from being called upon to work from 6pm on Fridays to midday on Saturdays. They are also guaranteed one full weekend off every three months. The bank monitors bankers’ hours using self-reported time sheets.

At Bank of America, human resources is alerted when junior bankers’ hours exceed 80 a week.

HR will intervene to mandate time off if an employee works beyond 80 hours per week over an extended period, it is understood.

The bank has introduced a new tool requiring US-based junior investment bankers to log more details about their work, including daily hours, deals they are working on and which senior bankers are overseeing the assignments, the Wall Street Journal reported. Bank of America was contacted for comment.

China’s finance ministry said that PwC had failed to identify that Evergrande had overstated its sales by almost $80 billion between 2018 and 2020, before its high-profile collapse a year later. It said that “severe flaws” in auditing work meant that “many false conclusions” had been made about Evergrande and its prospects.

The penalty is the harshest to have been imposed on an audit firm by Beijing, surpassing the $31 million fine and three-month business ban handed to Deloitte last year for its work as the auditor of China Huarong Asset Management.

PwC China had expected a fine and ban and had been cutting staff in anticipation. Hemione Hudson, one of the most senior partners in PwC’s British business, was sent out to China this week to lead a recovery mission.

Mohamed Kande, the global chairman of PwC, said that the China division’s audit work of Hengda Real Estate, the name of Evergrande’s mainland unit, had fallen “well below our high expectations and was completely unacceptable. It is not representative of what we stand for as a network and there is no room for this at PwC. That is why, following a thorough investigation, we ensured that actions were taken to hold those responsible to account and a comprehensive remediation programme will build a stronger PwC China firm for the future.”

PwC confirmed that Daniel Li, who started as PwC’s senior partner in China as recently in July, had stepped down. He had been head of audit for five years before his recent promotion. He will remain in the business as chief accountant.

The Big Four firm has dismissed six partners, while five other staff who worked closely on the Evergrande account have left the firm. Financial penalties have been issued to present and former staff “who were responsible for the business”.

China is PwC’s third largest network, employing about 18,000 people, behind only the United States and Britain. It had been the auditor for Evergrande for 14 years between 2009 and 2023.

Evergrande was once China’s biggest property developer and took on debts of more than $300 billion, defaulting on repayments in 2021. Its problems spread panic through financial markets and preceded a wave of defaults at other struggling Chinese property companies.

This year Chinese regulators said that Evergrande had committed fraud, overstating its sales by tens of billions of dollars between 2018 and 2020. The group has been ordered to be liquidated.