World Cup, Weapons & Wegovy

0:00Will Bain:This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Whole Foods Market. Make your summer sizzle. Odoo. Providing tools for businesses across industries into one fully integrated platform. Whatever your business needs, Odoo is committed to providing it. Learn more at odoo.com.

0:48BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.

0:51Will Bain:Wake Up To Money with Will Bain. Hello, morning. Welcome to Wake Up To Money on Monday the 6th of July. Hi, Will, with you this morning. Great to have your company. We're not live just for you, our podcast listeners, this morning. And as a result, the BBC has been doing spoiler-free World Cup news across our platform. So if you are one of those waiting, storing up, perhaps to watch with the kids a little bit later on, the England-Mexico World Cup game, then I would advise skipping forward about 10 minutes or so through the podcast because we are going to kick off this morning talking about that because it will have just finished finished right before us here on the podcast.

1:29Will Bain:So now's the time. Look away now in the old-fashioned news if you don't want to know the scores and all that kind of stuff, and we will see you in 10 minutes' time. For the rest of you, though, England's men are through to the World Cup quarterfinal after a totally bananas game of football overnight in the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, hanging on for dear life with 10 men through the last 20-plus minutes, plus 11 minutes of added time to win 3-2. against Mexico. Hurricane penalty two from Jude Bellingham. An extraordinary night and began delayed as well because of those much-talked-about thunderstorms in the run-up.

2:10Will Bain:So we will hear from publicans who I think will literally still be cleaning up and cashing up the tills as we speak at just gone five in the morning when we're recording this as well. We'll also hear from the Prime Minister of Luxembourg about proposals for European Defence Investment Bank as the NATO summit gets underway from tomorrow. and we'll look at the lucrative weight loss drug market as Wagovi in pill form is released in the UK for the first time today. So loads for our panel to get through in this sort of truncated wake up to money. This morning Peter Shrevesman is back with us, the co-owner of Hotel Anfield in Liverpool and commercial director at Hotel Wrexham.

2:44Will Bain:Peter also the co-chair of Liverpool Hospitality Association and Sabitha Subramaniam is back in the studio with me, Sabitha the chief economist and head of investment strategy at Saracen and Partners. Hello both. Sabitha, you said you heard every single goal from the pub near your house overnight. It was very difficult to not hear them. I mean, I think as I came here this morning, the streets were totally crowded. I am a regular viewer of the streets in the three o 'clock in the morning hour coming in and doing this. I have never seen so many lights on on my street and tellies on on my street as I left.

3:20Will Bain:And then the pubs, as you say, absolutely packed. Peter, was it the same in Liverpool? Liverpool historically a little bit less excited about England than other parts of the UK but no it was busy around where I live Did you do anything for it? No in all honesty I mean our place is in Anfield and as there's also no Liverpool players in the squad this year the enthusiasm is even lower than usual plus I'm German Yes, perhaps we'll leave that, we'll save that although you can tell us all about your thoughts on Jurgen Klopp maybe a little bit later on as well Taya Barrett is the general manager at the Crampton Sports Bar in Broadstairs in Kent.

3:58Will Bain:And have you just finished clearing up, Taya? We haven't even started. Well, let's hear a little bit of your pub as the final whistle went.

4:13Will Bain:I'm glad to see your punters were traditionalists, Taya, rather than go for Wonderwall this time around. Yes, we stick to the classics. We always do. it's coming home and we always do sweet carol how was it then so when it got close to uh the game you know the will they won't they what was it late friday about when this was going to kick off how were you planning for all of this yeah i mean i redid my rota kind of preps everyone 7 p.m it's looking like 7 p.m and then woke up to the news the next morning and very quickly changed it back to how it was um luckily my team you know from day one we've said to them it's subject to tech change i've got a really good team that get it and were really accommodating which was very kind of them um luckily it didn't make too much of a difference in terms of staffing we knew that they were all going to be in but obviously going from 1am to 2am today was that was a um a tough pill to swallow that again so i had gone to bed long before this point so how was the build-up to that how long in advance did you know that the game was going to be delayed kicking off we knew probably about two hours before i think we got told about 11 p.m but to be honest the whole night was a blur i mean we reached our capacity by 9 p.m oh wow we were completely full with 350 people in from nine and that was just people just turning up or did you ticket it no we didn't ticket we did first come first serve like we always do i wanted to honor what we do for every game um we're a sports bar so you know i don't want to ticket the bigger events when these are old customers all year round you know yeah um so we did first come first serve same rules we always do and then it was great it just didn't stop um we lost a few people when it went to a 2am announcement i was gonna say nine till two is a big hang on as well isn't it good run up you're gonna be warmed up by that point exactly so we did lose a few a few people went home and said you know that that's too long for me um but as a whole most people stayed and yeah we i mean the people we lost we replaced quite quickly there was a queue outside the door which is great yeah it's it's lovely it builds the hype but also it's nice that we're popular and it was great it was such a good atmosphere were there anything sort of practically i mean beyond obviously the fact that you're asking the staff to work slightly stranger out but were there things that you had to do from the licensing point of view that would have been different than if the game had kicked off at 7pm or 8pm.

6:17Will Bain:I just thought it was noticeable when I was coming into London past some of them and it was late in the second half that all the lights seemed to be off in lots of the places. I'm not sure if they were doing that for atmosphere or whether they were going to be in trouble for light pollution at that time of night. I think, I mean, we just dim our lights as standard anyway. For us, our big one is our garden. We can't necessarily stop people going in the garden because it operates as a fire exit. So that was our biggest concern. So what we operated differently this time is we didn't have our speakers on in the garden with the commentary and we had the commentary on inside and the doors were open because naturally people were just going in and out and they could hear the commentary from the garden but we didn't put put the speakers on in the garden which was probably our biggest difference to what we'd normally do and we also operate a table service in the garden as much as we could and just to try and keep people kind of a bit calmer as much as we could.

7:04Will Bain:Shall we hear a moment when they probably weren't very calm? this is Teir's pub when Harry Kane put away the third, that penalty

7:16Tell me what, you've got a career in radio production

7:21Will Bain:or whoever recorded that Boris does coming up as well Yeah, that was me, I think I swiftly got thrown into the air and it was all go that was in the garden, it was a great vibe really, really fun obviously the reaction to the red card was very different to the reaction to the penalty, but great. And that's the good of football, isn't it? The highs and lows. Well, exactly that. And let's bring the guys in on this as well. Because, Sabitha, just before we got going, you were saying, like, great news from just a sort of mood. We've had so much doom and gloom, kind of political madness, difficulty with what's been going on with the economy all year.

7:53Will Bain:And you were kind of saying, you're not a massive football fan, but just like great, that the bandwagon carries on, if you like. I think we're due for some good news. I think there's a huge sort of, you know, pent-up demand for something positive. And spending will go up a little bit and, you know, we've got more to look forward to. Though not all in your house. I hear your poor old husband was in a different part of the United States watching his beloved Brazil not go through. Yeah, no, but he's very excited for next week. Peter, that sort of boost, I mean, we often talk about this, but there's a real kind of sort of spend, perhaps again, as you say, not so much necessarily in the Liverpool region full stop, but a bigger spend with these World Cup events and the fact that that swag is on and that the next game is going to be on a Saturday, presumably great news for hospitality.

8:39Yeah, it's much needed. I think it's been publicised a lot, the pressure that the industry is under, the different facets of hospitality from hotels to pubs, restaurants, bars, nighttime economies. So everybody benefits when England does well. Well, at least everybody in England. So I think it's great. It's great news for the hospitality industry, and it's much needed as well.

9:05Will Bain:How much of a boost that it is a Saturday, Teja, now? It will be a great boost this Saturday, absolutely. But it is a short-term injection of money. I mean, we need long-term investment. We need the government to back the cut, the VAT. VAT is the problem. And this is a great short-term boost. Weeks like this, I don't normally have Sundays that top my New Year's Eve. I took more money today than I did on New Year's. That's mad. Yeah, it's crazy. And look, we had a good New Year's. but it's definitely crazy and Saturday I'm sure we'll top it as well we'll keep seeing it happen but it is short term and we definitely need that long term solutions to the industry because it only takes England and I don't want them to but you know we lose a game and it's all over there's only so much you can build on this we need 10 % VAT Yeah and that campaign we've talked to the chef Tom Kerridge about that you can whiz back through the Wake Up To Money podcast series and find Tom Kerridge talking about that and outlining all of that that campaign ongoing still as well anything change on Saturday then tear again because it's 11 o 'clock at night um not right on that i think it's 10 p.m saturday night yeah yeah i'm not too bad our license goes to 1 30 as standard anyway so i don't need to worry about anything extra for that and we've done a couple of 10 p.m uh previously and they've been really really good in some ways better than the nine o 'clocks um probably mainly because it's that's saturdays as opposed to midweek but definitely a fun night we'll have music beforehand um and yeah hopefully if the weather holds the garden will be full we've installed a port-a-loo in our garden because of how busy we've been we've added extra tvs on the roof of our smoking area so it's all everything we could have done we've done we've got an outside bar put in um because the sun has been shining as well as as england winning so it's been a yes and being near the sea as well yeah absolutely right by the sea so it's been a perfect storm for us um it's really good long long may they continue and hopefully you know get to the final yeah well good luck i hope it does go well thanks so much and good luck with the clear up what have you got to go off and do now um i'm working until two today so i'm gonna do the clear up um i've got a lot of glasses i'm looking at an awful lot of bottles we did plastics all day but i'm looking at a bar top that is covered and my team of i've just sent them all home so i'll finish this off with my lovely cleaner who'll be in soon and i'm sure she'll be thrilled oh gosh well good luck to both of you stick five live on enjoy listening to it and hopefully we'll speak to you next week as well thanks so much for your time thank you take care bye teha barrett there of the crampton sports bar in broadstairs in Kent.

11:21Will Bain:I think bringing, Sabitha, the right level of enthusiasm that you were hoping for, that sort of good vibes this morning. Yeah, I think it's, you know, I think it should sort of lift the consumer a little bit. Yeah, well here's hoping, fingers crossed. And certainly we heard from, as Sean was talking to Alex Baldock, the outgoing TV exec of Curry's about the spend on tellies and tech and sound systems and all that kind of stuff as well. So as the guys say, it might just be a short-term boost, but we'll take those boosts where we can get them right now, can't we? You're listening to a podcast edition of Wake Up To Money.

12:16Will Bain:Wake Up To Money with Will Bain. here in Luxembourg alongside the City of London, one of the big financial hubs of the world. So we spoke to Luke Frieden, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, a little bit more about why he thought the bank was necessary. One of the problems is that commercial banks have very strict rules on how much they can lend and how much risk they can take for certain borrowers. So this would come in support of commercial banks who cannot finance all what they need to finance in the area of defence. And in particular, we want to help the small and medium-sized companies that are part of the supply chain of the defence industry.

12:57The big actors in the defence industry usually get the necessary funding from the banks. For the smaller ones, smaller companies, medium-sized companies, it's much more difficult.

13:06Will Bain:And by their nature, those kind of companies, right, they're working in quite innovative areas. That's right. And some of these equipments can be dual use as well. As we know, warfare today is much more diversified. And so more companies can participate. And that's also good because that creates also jobs in all of our countries. But this bank, we would have a multilateral lending institution, the shareholders, the members of that lending institution are countries. And that bank could either support countries for their national defense and resilience projects, or it can support directly companies such as SMEs, or it can give support to commercial banks by issuing financial guarantees.

13:49And then those banks have the necessary backing for issuing loans to their clients in the defense industry. So it's a rather broad spectrum that this bank can cover to make sure that the necessary funding is there for companies and for countries to invest in the defence area without, again, burdening our national budgets and keeping the national budgets for many other expenditures that we have on many issues.

14:15Will Bain:I had a bit of a ring round of companies big and small in our defence industry here, Prime Minister. And I think their number one concern, if I could really sub it down, was that if we weren't in at the start, that perhaps our defence companies here in the UK wouldn't be eligible under some of the procurement rules you've got from this, right, that you have to be putting money into the pot for your nation's companies to be able to be on the list of people that you could buy from, that UK companies might miss out if we aren't in at the start. Is that true? Yes, that's true. Companies can only benefit of loans from this bank if the country where they are located is also a member of the bank.

14:52That being said, this is a project that we only start launching now. And so obviously, this will remain open to all those who want to join later.

15:03Will Bain:That's Luke Frieden, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg. Well, Andy Thomas joins Sabitha and Peter now as well. Andy, Chief Exec of the Reading Headquarter Cohort PLC, Group of Small to Medium Defence and Technology Companies. Morning, Andy. Thanks for being with us. Good morning. That last point then is, I guess, the key one that the Prime Minister is making there. I mean, as I said, I rang around a few companies, not yours, because we knew you were kind of going to come on for us. But last week, that seems to be a bit of a concern, not being able to be part of this, companies like yours, should this bank go ahead, as it looks like it might well be ratified at the summit this week.

15:40Will Bain:Yeah, and I think that would be a very positive thing. I mean, the details look absolutely ingenious, and I wouldn't claim to be able to understand them all. But I think if it's a multilateral financial facility that is, I think very importantly, able to support national countries in their defence acquisition endeavours, then I think that could be very valuable. I mean, for instance, it could help the UK fill some of the holes in the current defence investment plan. So I think it would be a very good thing for us to join. The plan, full stop, does it sort of make sense to you as someone who understands the industry?

16:12Will Bain:Does it meet some of the needs that you've talked to us about on the programme before? Well, I think it's fair to say that the situation as far as access to capital is concerned, notably access to debt capital, has become much easier since 2022. I mean, I recall in 2021 going to the Hamburg office of Deutsche Bank to set up a commercial banking account for our new German subsidiary then and being invited to depart when they discovered, and this was not a state secret, that our subsidiary was actually involved in defence technology because they wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. And it has all changed completely now.

16:51Will Bain:I mean, they were amongst many banks who were very interested in getting the term sheet when we recently renewed quite a substantial facility. So, you know, access to capital, certainly for businesses like ours, which is an aim-listed business, about 600 million market capital has got much, much easier. But I'm very conscious that perhaps at the smaller end of the market, it might be difficult. That said, I was at the Eurosaturday Defence Show in mid-June, and there were a large number of companies there with venture capital backing as well. So, there's equity finance available too. So, I think perhaps for these very small startup companies with really brilliant new technology ideas, something like this might be good where, You know, VCs perhaps don't necessarily...

17:39Will Bain:Because it's kind of a bit risky, takes away some of that. Yeah, exactly so. But where I would see the real value is helping nations meet their defence procurement aspirations. Sabitha, elsewhere in that interview with Luke Friedman, we kind of went on to talk about that. It is still basically boring though, isn't it? You can badge it up however you want. It's not actually kind of sort of tackling perhaps the bigger a kind of fiscal issue that we have around the world of governments perhaps needing to grasp the nettle and say to their populations, we might need to spend more on this, the world's more dangerous, and as a result, we're going to spend less on something else and tax you more perhaps to do it.

18:19Yeah, so I think the underlying, the positive part of this is that actually there's now a wholesale recognition that everybody's defence spending has to go up. I think that's a good thing, that we actually are sort of more responsible for our own security needs. That's great. The problem really is that it comes with a trade-off. And today, there's still a lot of magical thinking that, you know, there is no real trade-off, that you can increase defense spending and not really materially change your sort of welfare budget. But today, government spending as a share of GDP in the UK is about 45 percent.

18:54It's five percent higher than it was before the pre-pandemic era. And at this point, if we start to increase defence spending, we have to make tradeoffs elsewhere in the economy. And I'm not sure that, you know, people are really willing to do that because it's politically not particularly favourable.

19:09Will Bain:Andy, is that the issue here that this is from what you're saying as well? It sounds like this is nice to have nice extra on the side, but it's got to be and this. It can't be just this. Yes, I mean, I think that is right. One of the things that the government promised to do at the time of the Strategic Defence Review a year ago was to launch a national conversation on just how important defence is in the current era and the real risks that we face. And I mean, that's been noticeable by its absence. And I think it's really important to have that conversation so that the wider country understands why it's important to invest in defence at this time.

19:48Will Bain:And as Sabitha says, I mean, absolutely, it is to some extent a zero-sum game. I mean, we're already spending a huge amount of GDP on public sector. And we're going to have to either sacrifice some other public spending or raise more money elsewhere if we're going to do that. And this bank can help. I think it's a good idea. but it's not a sort of panacea. Peter, what's your sense? Are people willing, do you think, ready to listen to that or actually do they think they're under, I mean, we just heard Teja talking about it, didn't we? There's a heck of a lot of sectors across the UK economy who all feel they're under pressure at the moment and would like to see their sector perhaps prioritised a bit more.

20:29Yeah, I mean, I have to say that with Andy Burnham poised to take over, it feels to us in hospitality like we are reasonably close to something more workable that will help our industry. But just very briefly putting on a German hat here, it is rather remarkable over the 21 years I've lived in the UK, I think most of Germany's neighbors were always very happy that the topic defense and arming to the teeth, so to speak, hasn't been top of Germany's or in fact anyone's agenda in sort of Central Western Europe. And now it's very, very evident in the last... I mean, I'm really on the outside here.

21:10I'm not an insider, but the people that I'm listening to and diplomats that I've met, the conversation seems to have shifted in the last 18, 24 months in light of the Ukraine war, and it's just coming very, very close to our shores. So I was actually sat next to the deputy ambassador of America to Malta a couple of weeks ago. Very, very odd scenario to happen for me, and I ended up asking him one or two questions. And he said, he smirked at me when I said to him the comment I just met about Germany's role in all of this and said, well, Germany has been, that might well have been the case that our neighbors were happy for Germany not to be fully armed.

21:53But now Europe is relying on Germany and Germany has been hiding behind the past for too long and need to invest more. And in all honesty, the people that I'm dealing with in Germany that are in business, the exports that you see popping up about this they are not just gathering a momentum but also um in in um popularity in terms of attendance of business people and uh finance people so it's clearly it's clearly on the up

22:19Will Bain:and um yeah yeah really interesting andy how important is that then as well kind of more co-working i was talking to someone about that you know sort of shared systems and things like that too complicated at the moment to work across europe do we need to change some of that those sort of things that don't cost money that we could be doing too? Yeah, well, I think one of the things that's really positive about this DSRB, the bank idea, is that it's multilateral. And so, as well as providing practical financial assistance, it's also a clear statement of countries working together for mutual defence.

22:53Will Bain:And I think it's something that we're going to need to do across the whole of Europe. It's very pleasing to see Germany investing so heavily in defence and increasing its defence spending, it's a very clear signal to the rest of us that there is a real risk out there and one that needs to be managed. I was at the Kiel Defence Security Conference a month ago, and one of the comments made by a German speaker then, I think it was Chatham House Rules, so I won't identify them, was that it certainly, you know, German leadership in defence is scary and frightening to only one country, and that country is Germany.

23:29Will Bain:And it seems to be getting over that fear. which is a good thing. I couldn't agree more with you. I mean, again, sorry for Bartin, but if you are, I'm 42, and if you are educated through your childhood in Germany, I have been to every concentration camp there is. I have met many, many people that were affected in different ways by the war and by the Holocaust. And it's a subject that when you go through your early teens and into your early adulthood, I remember going on a school exchange to Northern Ireland when I was 14, and I just felt a little bit petrified what the people think of me purely because I'm German.

24:11And a fun fact, making it a little bit more upbeat, is in 2006, when the World Cup took place in Germany, the most Googled term on Google Germany was the lyrics to the German national anthem. because the Germans of my generation, we have got a very, just like my colleague just said, we have got a very warped view on the world. And then I moved to England, first to Yorkshire, and then now for 19 years to Liverpool, and I realized nobody cares about that as such anymore in terms of your interpersonal relationship. Of course, we have to learn from the history and so on, but there's no question here that we will return to that.