Making the grade?

26:0085058 is the text number if you want to get in touch. 08085 909693 is the WhatsApp. app if you prefer to get in touch with us that way. Catherine, thanks as always for your time, really appreciate it. Thank you. Catherine Shuttleworth there, retail expert and chief exec of Savvy Marketing. Plenty more to come from Simon and Emma in the second half of the program. We're going to have the boss of De Montfort University joining us live on the program, A-level results day, but also against that backdrop of pretty tough times, isn't it, at the moment in the university sector. So we will hear about how the finance is looking there as well.

26:32And we will hear about another mega deal in global sport. The LA Lakers being sold to the consortium being led by the former boss of Disney, Bob Iger. So why the lake has been sold twice in a year? 85058 to join the conversation on that. Pop quiz. What's in your kid's lunchbox? At Whole Foods Market, they've already done the studying. Over 300 food ingredients are banned from their shelves. No hydronated fats in the peanut butter and no high fructose corn syrup in the cookies. And for sandwiches, there are no synthetic nitrates or nitrites in any of their deli meat. So you can pack lunchboxes with peace of mind.

27:10Get back to school ready at Whole Foods Market. As well. Wake Up To Money with Will Bane. Morning, welcome back to Wake Up To Money on Wednesday the 13th of August. Our panel this morning, Emma Thackeray is in the studio, co-founder of the gut health drinks brand Hip Hop. and Simon French is here with me, Chief Economist and Head of Research at Panmure Liberum. Now, it's a pretty nerve-wracking time of the year, isn't it, for hundreds of thousands of parents and students right around the country. A-levels, T-levels, B-tech results all out later on this morning, which means nervous waits across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

27:48We'll be counting down the minutes, I'm sure, many of them, to see if they've met their requirements to go on to either university or one of their next kind of apprenticeship courses, perhaps. It comes as the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, looks to prioritise technical skills more in education, telling Wake Up to Money's Fliss yesterday that creating a skill system that doesn't just obsess on the university route will help us get the UK economy growing. Helen Cook, head of UCAS advice and post-16 guidance at a large comprehensive school in Cheshire, spoke to us about some of the difficulties facing students who don't want to choose these alternative pathways.

28:22Finding alternatives to university in the current climate is not easy. and while some of our students have secured apprenticeships at different levels I know that others have been applying for apprenticeships for months without any success and those wanting to work through a gap year have also struggled to find the hospitality or retail jobs that our students would normally find it easy to secure and understandably some have found this really dispiriting. We also have a knock-on effect where students do take up university places when they aren't really sure if it's for them but don't want to be without any plans in September and risk becoming neat.

28:57Well here's what Sam, a student at Carmel College in St Helens, had to tell BBC Breakfast about his choice to take up a degree apprenticeship at Sellafield Nuclear Site rather than go down the university route. With the cost of university and then the living costs as well that go along with it, it's definitely I think something people struggle with at my age and struggle to wrap their head around and I think that sort of financial security that comes with a degree apprenticeship is a fantastic offer that you know I wouldn't want I turned out. Perhaps more choices than ever before Emma in terms of for young people in terms of just because of those cost decisions I guess whereas for a long time certainly people my age I guess it felt like it was a very clear route.

29:37Yeah I mean I think we're probably a similar age and certainly when I'd done my A-levels university was the step that everybody should take next so I I think a rebalancing of the system towards more technical qualifications, apprenticeships, is a very good thing for young people and for business. Yeah, Simon, I went, and I'm sure you were just a similar age, you were just probably ahead of me there as well. We were off the back of that sort of blare, real boom push to try and get more people and this boom in universities growing as well. Have we seen the kind of natural ceiling point, I suppose, of that?

30:14Well, I think there's a couple of things there. First of all, the graduate premium that used to be very obvious in the data has deteriorated away. So the returns to going to university relative to not have diminished, but also the changing nature of the labor market and the world of work in a world where increasing use of AI means that knowledge is very, very abundant. and it's the fingertips, actually, is there going to be a pivot? Is this an inflection point back towards vocational skills, manual skills? This is, I think, likely to be a focus. It will be a focus of the new prime minister in terms of putting non-university education at least close to a level playing field.

31:01Well, let's expand on some of those challenges. And I suppose the opportunities they throw up as well for our universities, because Professor Katie Normington joined Simon and Emma this morning now as well, Professor Normington, the Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive at De Montfort University in Leicester. Around 20 ,000 students on the roll there. Morning, Professor. Thanks so much for being with us. Good morning. Just first of all, I suppose that challenge, have you found that, you know, when kids and parents are perhaps coming on an open day with you guys? Are they talking to you more about the costs, I suppose, and weighing up that decision in a way perhaps they didn't do so much in the past?

31:36I think cost has been an issue for students for a while actually but we're not really seeing any national drop-off in terms of interest for universities so in fact there's an increase of applications to universities this year and you know it remains fairly constant the percentage of population that are attending I think it's probably also worth remembering that universities offer a lot more than three-year degrees so many of our programs are professional body accredited they're vocational programmes, things like nursing, policing, etc. But also this year we've started a range of higher technical qualifications, which are one or two year qualifications, much more skills based around digital, cyber, etc.

32:18And those are taught in the evening. So I think they're very much fulfilling the new Prime Minister's idea of increased technical skills at a sub degree level. That's really interesting. So what kind of drove that? Was that you guys sort of seeing that there was a mood going that way and you thought you wanted to be in line with that or were you hearing from people in industry kind of around you that it was something they wanted or a bit of both? Yeah a bit of both I mean we work very closely with industries we've got part of IBM based in Leicester so you know we're hearing that from employers about the sort of skills they need and we're responding to that but also you know it is a response to a sense that actually we have a lot of needs, as we know we've been talking about, you know, over the last sort of few months, a lot in the press.

33:05And for those people, it's actually more important that they get further qualifications, not that we put them off getting a qualification. So that's part of what our thinking is behind it. Actually, the market is attracting a lot of mature students who didn't perhaps get qualifications first time around. and the evening teaching is really fitting around their lives where they may already be working as well. I'm sure people, lots of people, very au fait with that acronym at this point, but just in case people are wondering, because we've heard it a couple of times in the clip as well, not in education, employment or training.

33:39Simon, that's quite an important point, isn't it, in all of that, that sometimes perhaps we talk a lot on this programme about we hear from lots of business leaders in different sectors saying they aren't finding people with quite the right skills. Perhaps it's not just pushing all of these people back into the workforce, but actually into the E and the T at the end of NEET, education and training. Yeah, particularly at the time when employers are saying that the skills they're looking for are changing. It's not just people at the very start of their working life, but also potentially, and this may be an area of growth for the university sector, people who are mid-career who are finding some of their skills in a period of technological change become obsolete and therefore they need to reskill.

34:20I think the debating point is whether that should be led by the university sector, led by government or led by employers. I mean, the reality is, I suspect, unless I'm about to be contradicted, is it's a combination of all three. But it's a coordination challenge. Well, go on, Katie. And I'm hoping you'll be contradicting him. I think a lot of that work is beginning to happen anyway. And it is, you're right. I think it's an intersection between employers, between government and policy and between universities and further education colleges. And some of that sits around the introduction of the lifelong learning entitlement, which allows people to draw down a student loan in chunks so that you can, in a sense, hop on to study a module and then perhaps wait some time and get another part of it.

35:05So you're building a qualification over a longer time. And that really suits what we've done at De Montfort University. We've changed to block learning. so it means you'd study for one thing one unit for seven weeks and you get that qualification and then you take the next one so I think it is an intersection between all of those things but just that point about I think you're making about sort of AI I mean we know now the sorts of things it can do but also there are things it can't do and a lot of things it can't do sit around critical skills and judgment and those are entirely the things that we teach in degree level courses.

35:40Emma as the person doing the hiring here in the studio although Simon you do a bit of hiring as well don't you but what are you looking for when someone comes with the CV now and if they've been to university what else are you looking for on top of it I guess we're looking often at what people have done done beyond university how have they put the things that they've learned at university into a more practical context. We actually, in our business, have had a couple of people who've come through the non-traditional university apprenticeship route. So they've worked for big business like Nestle and Unilever and come into our business.

36:19And that mix of traditional academic education but also early exposure to the workplace and to the food and drink industry has been very positive, I think. And for you in financial services? Well, I think that point about critical thought is really, really to the fore at the moment. Knowledge, domain knowledge is increasingly accessible at your fingertips. You don't necessarily need to come in with that. But the ability to look at it and go, can I put that in its context? Is it correct? Am I hallucinating or is it hallucinating for me? that ability to be smart with it not done with it is is one of those skills that whether it is the university sector that provides that or a broader suite of education that that's something that i've had i've over indexed in the way i recruit people in recent years interesting katie does that give hope for people like me who have got arts degrees because there was a period wasn't there where we were told it was the end of the arts degree go and do you know computer programming or whatever But is it actually shifting back a little bit, that kind of critical thinking that you and Simon have talked about?

37:27Yeah, I think it's something that humanities give. I'm an arts graduate as well, now running a quarter of a billion pound company. But yeah, I think certainly in terms of humanities, that critical thought, that critical judgment, I'm seeing a lot of use of AI to enhance, but in a way that students then working out whether it's effective in design, of course. But the AI will never tell you if you've just created a good image. you've got to have the knowledge and skills to work that one out. And on the finance side then we heard this in the news headlines as well potentially a bigger uptake of students this year kind of across the board because of in part the financial pressures is that something you're seeing across the sector?

38:12I mean I think we're seeing concern about financial borrowing it's partly why we're doing things like our one and two year qualifications that students have to borrow less money. Obviously, the government's considering whether they can do more around some of the loan schemes that were put in place. I think ourselves, like many other universities, have put hardship schemes in place so that there is support there for students who need extra help. And we are, unfortunately, sometimes seeing that being in terms of needing help, in terms of steering to food banks, emergency accommodation, those sorts of things as well.

38:49so I think many of us are putting in place those sorts of support for students themselves and what about the finances of the institutions themselves also in the in the news headlines at the top of the hour there was this suggestion that four in ten universities across England reporting a deficit for the last academic year that was despite kind of the job cuts that I think we've had you on the program talking about before across the sector what's the landscape Yeah, I mean, it remains difficult for universities and that difficulty is really from a couple of things. One is that the student fee, although has gone up the last two years, remained pretty static for a decade.

39:26But inflation obviously continued to grow and our costs continued to grow. And the other part is we're seeing a reduction of international students coming to the UK. And that's really due to home policy, home office policy changes. and you know I think that's probably sort of short-termism because actually it will be costing you know the country quite a lot of benefit international students bring an overall benefit of about 37 billion pounds to the UK we're told that those numbers have dropped by about 20 % already so you know the shift and and hurt that that's bringing to the wider economy is also something I think that needs to be taken into account but you know universities like myself have got very good cash reserves.

40:10So it's not just about running a deficit. It's also about your liquidity and making sure that you can continue to trade. That's probably the important part while you do obviously have to make some adjustments around how you operate. Is that pressure perhaps not going to become on further as well? I mean, there's been a lot of talk, hasn't there, about pushes to try and cut how much European and British students pay. Will that not? Presumably, you could only do that by offsetting it, by ramping up the fees for those fewer foreign students that you've got, as in foreign non-EU students, to do that?

40:45Yes, I mean, I think, obviously, you know, you need to look at all the possible income streams. I think that's partly why we're doing things as well. Like, we've now become one of the top ten providers of education around the world. So we've got our own campus in Dubai. We've got franchise campuses in Kazakhstan, Cambodia. We've got huge dual degrees offered in Kuala Lumpur. so that is part of as well the way that universities are I think you know making sure that they are covering all the bases they can in terms of trading on what is one of the top few international higher education reputations which we've got.

41:22Katie thanks so much for your time this morning really appreciate it going to be a busy day I'm guessing. Yes it will be I'll be getting over there shortly. Good luck Professor Katie Normington there the Vice Chancellor and Chief Executive at De Montfort University in Leicester there. Just interesting, isn't it, Simon? The sort of pressure, I suppose, on our universities to do two things, get people ready for the workforce, but also the government have been pushing quite hard for them to create more companies, create more kind of start-ups as well. Yes, and there is actually a good news story, which is that the commercial spin-outs coming out of the university sector are still some of the UK's most exciting businesses.

41:56it's actually getting the capital into not just our most high profile areas that do that. You can think of the Oxford Cambridge Arc as an area that this government has focused on and is continuing to focus on but actually a broader suite of universities where early stage investment can come in and partner with the university and increasingly it won't be sustainable for the finances and universities to solely go after the student population, either the foreign or the domestic student population, they're going to have to take commercial stakes in some of the intellectual property that they're developing and then have some of that ownership as some of those succeed.

42:34Inevitably, some of those things will fail. But if you have a big enough portfolio of ideas, some of them succeed if you have an ownership stake. That can be very, very lucrative. You look across the pond of the US, the US system, the endowment system, the investments. It's an incredibly vibrant financial system, partly because that IP, there's more of a history of commercialising it. And Emma, to your point, just to expand on it a bit that you made during the conversation there, if we're going to tackle the NEATS problem, it just feels like a lot of our sort of political problems, that it's been falling into camps.

43:03You either do this or you do this and they're binary. There's nothing in between. Actually, it's doing, from what you were saying about your hiring, doing a bit of both, pushing people, the right people to go to university, get those skills that they need for that, but also not pushing everybody to one route or the other and also not completely abandoning the university route either. Exactly. It's a balanced approach, a little bit like the approach that Katie's taken in terms of expanding what they're doing at the university, being creative. It's about looking at everything. And that's, in my opinion, that's the government's job to try and bring those different industries, universities and themselves, obviously, in the mix to try and benefit young people and employers.

43:4385058, let us know what you think on the text number. Simon, give us a quick run through overnight. like US inflation. We didn't sort of build out a full item around this today, but it's just something that's been worth tracking, hasn't it, because of the potential knock-on effects from what they do with their interest rate policy and what it means for us. Yeah, there's quite a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace on where US interest rates go next, partly because there's a change at the top of the Federal Reserve, the central bank in the United States. Kevin Walsh has made it a feature of his chairmanship thus far not to try and steer the market on what to expect.

44:18So the data therefore becomes really, really important. Now we saw the data soften a little bit in terms of inflation moving down, still well above target, 3.2%, but perhaps some of the fears over an imminent rate increase from the Federal Reserve next month, those bets being taken off yesterday, there's a big meeting coming up. It's always the great backdrop of Jackson Hole out in Wyoming. It gets everyone very jealous. It's an incredible kind of ski resort. Indeed, yes. It gets everyone very jealous. But the central bankers, actually not just from the US but around the world, converge there.

44:57I think that's the next point alongside the data to try and get clues. It might sound quite remote, but for the UK, looking at its interest rate policy, actually a lot of products do take their cues from where they think global interest rates, particularly the US might head as to where domestic UK interest rates might move next. How important for you Emma, borrowing rates, borrowing costs at the moment, is it something you use a lot of borrowing within the business? Increasingly as the business gets larger then we're able to turn to debt as a form of auto support growth in the business rather than investment.

45:33So yes, we do keep an eye on that and of course listen to Wake Up To Money to get the headlines. Quite right. Good plug as well. Yeah. And Simon, well done for sort of that lead across. I think it's always worth if you sort of hear it in the news or see it and wonder why on earth are we talking about what's going on in inflation in the United States? Hopefully well explained by Simon there for you about the knock on it can have on us. Shall we stay in the US at just gone eight minutes to six here and wake up to money? Because one of the most iconic sports franchises in the world, I think you cannot be interested in basketball at all and know who the Los Angeles Lakers are, has been sold again for the second time in pretty much just over a year.

46:08This time, another record breaking about$12.5 billion, so well in excess of£9 billion. And interesting, who's doing the buying this time? the former Disney boss, two-time chief exec at Disney, Bob Iger, as well as Joshua Kushner, the brother of Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and of course had been involved in looking to get involved in investing in that FIFA spin-out at one point as well. It was one of the names who'd been rumoured to be looking to put his private investment there. It seems he's found somewhere else to put it. Bill Sheikin covers sports business for the Los Angeles Times and has stayed up late there for us to speak to us this morning here.

46:46Bill, morning from us, evening to you. Thanks so much for being on the program. Good morning to you. So why is the Lakers up for sale again then? Well, there's an easy answer and there's a hard answer. The easy answer, which is what was first reported today, was that the two gentlemen who are buying the Lakers, Bob Iger, the former Disney chief, and Joshua Kushner you mentioned, we're looking at buying into a team in Las Vegas. It would be an expansion team, basically a startup. And as the prices approached$10 billion, they said, well, wait a second. If we got to pay that much money for a startup team, it's not going to be any good for a while.

47:32Why don't we just check in and see maybe Mark Walter would sell us the Lakers for not too much more. As the day went on, it became apparent that that may have been part of it, but also Mark Walter's companies have been trying to generate some revenue because for one factor, they're under a government investigation in terms of how they accounted for some money in the companies that Mark Walter runs. Is the investigation going to amount to anything? We don't know. Nobody's been charged with any kind of crime. There's been no allegation that Mark Walter himself has had any wrongdoing. But according to reports from the Bloomberg Service and the Financial Times, Walter's companies have started to line up investments that, hey, if these loans fall through, we've got to have them find a way to pay them.

48:27And selling the Lakers could be one of those ways. Interesting. And Mark Walter, an important figure for our listeners. here in the UK, Bill, because of course, alongside Todd Bowley, he's part of the ownership group there at Chelsea Football Club here in the UK as well. Sure. And Todd Bowley is also part of the Dodger group. So they all run in tight circles. What does$12 billion get you then? I mean, I kind of mentioned it at the start. You don't have to be a particularly big sports fan, let alone basketball fan, to know who the Lakers are. Is that why it commands a price like that? it does because the valuation when mark walter and his group bought it was 10 billion dollars so now he's not going to sell at a loss but i think to your point about the story team that's another chapter that a lot of people that i spoke with today who do sports finance for a living were like now why would mark walter want to sell because yes you can buy and sell sports teams and people do and certainly Mark has but there are only so many iconic teams that as you pointed out people around the world know who they are so everybody knows who the New York Yankees are and everybody knows the LA Lakers and you can buy another team but you can't buy another Yankees or Lakers or now I guess you'd say the Los Angeles Dodgers just like back when Michael Jordan was playing you'd say the Chicago Bulls so that's a pretty tough one you know Mark Walter and his group bought the Dodgers 15 years ago.

50:02They've held on. It's not like they buy and sell everything. Mark pretty much keeps a hold of most of the assets that he has. So that makes this one a little bit trickier as well. Simon, we're seeing a lot of kind of M &A activity, if you like, in sports at the moment. Why is it, why are sort of, you know, these are sensible business people, proper business people. We were talking about Jeff Bezos and Liverpool earlier in the week on the program. Why is there this interest, do you think, at the moment? the value of brands and the degree to which brands can provide a halo for a series of other commercial opportunities.

50:35It used to be the ticket receipts and perhaps the shirts, but we've talked about on this program, crypto and financing opportunities and then the commercial rights of distribution, not just with traditional media, but also through streaming channels. And so I think these are, and this frustrates a lot of fans across not just basketball, but football here in the UK. It's the commercialization, the inevitable commercialization of what are incredible platforms on which to get eyeballs, which from a commercial standpoint is hugely attractive. Is that the Bob Iger of this then, Bill, do you think? Is that where the growth might be, selling direct to consumers, your games, that kind of stuff?

51:25that's pretty much done here already by most teams and by the lakers but i think when you mentioned the world cup monetization scheme if you will that blew up in fifa's face that's sort of the difference between i think sports in europe where it is community oriented and fan oriented and sports in america where it's run by people who are trying to figure out how to get every last dollar they can out of this asset. And they can make a lot of money. And I'm not telling you anything you don't know and your listeners don't know. A lot of Americans have looked at Premier League teams, for example, and said not, boy, this is a wonderful community asset, but they're leaving a lot of money on the table.

52:11That's how American owners think. And Mark Walter is one of those and Bob Iger is certainly another. And how is he going to do that then, briefly, Bill? How's he going to sweat it here? we don't know and i don't think he knows this all came together within the last 72 hours so i think it is get the team first fill in the details later interesting one to watch thanks so much for your time bill really appreciate it all right good morning morning to you bill checking in there from the la times big thanks to to emma thackeray who's been in the studio with us this morning the co-founder of the gut health drinks brand hip-hop and to simon french here with me chief economist and Head of Research at Panmure Libram.

52:49And as always, a big thanks to all of you for listening to us this morning here on Wake Up To Money. Wake Up To Money with Will Bain. This goes beyond what the KGB did back in the days. Conspiracy theories and the Football World Cup. Is there ever one without the other? Well, I've been digging into one of the very best back in 1994. Guy from Iraq, it's a red card for a dubious tackle. I'm James Montague, and from BBC 5 Live, this is Sports Strangers Crimes Presents Shadows on the Pitch. Listen on BBC Sounds. With the new Schwab Teen Investor account, teens can gain hands-on investing experience and build positive money habits.

53:37It's an account co-owned by you and your teen, so you can monitor and engage with the account while your teen learns how to invest and manage money. Learn more at schwab.com. We face the greatest challenges of our time. Challenges that test our limits. There is a place where we can find answers. Where journeys break new ground and connections unlock opportunities. Where innovation can spark real change and our actions can push our world forward. Singapore, where business events can create lasting impact.