Online fashion retailer Asos has bought the Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge and HIIT brands from failed retail group Arcadia in a deal worth £295m.
Sir Philip Green's Arcadia group fell into administration in November last year, casting doubt over the future of its brands and 13,000 jobs.
Asos is acquiring the stock and the brands. However, it is not taking on the stores.
It is paying £265m for the brands and a further £30m for the stock.
Asos chief executive Nick Beighton said: "The acquisition of these iconic British brands is a hugely exciting moment for Asos and our customers and will help accelerate our multi-brand platform strategy.
"We have been central to driving their recent growth online and, under our ownership, we will develop them further, using our design, marketing, technology and logistics expertise, and working closely with key strategic retail partners in the UK and around the world."
Investment plans
Administrators for Arcadia confirmed the deal, saying about 300 people currently employed by the brands in design, buying and retail partnerships would transfer to Asos.
The administrators added that the deal was expected to complete on 4 February.
Asos said it had acquired "strong consumer-facing brands" and saw "a significant opportunity" to drive further growth for them globally.
It added that the brands would benefit from "investment into customer engagement and brand positioning in line with our existing model".
Asos has seen strong sales in the pandemic and is already one of the biggest wholesalers for the brands that it has acquired.
Other brands in the Arcadia stable that have not yet been sold are Dorothy Perkins, Wallis and Burton.
Also last week, Boohoo sealed a deal to buy the Debenhams brand and website for £55m. However, the price tag did not include any of the retailer's remaining 118 High Street stores or its workforce, resulting in up to 12,000 job losses.
Sir Philip Green is under pressure to use his own money to plug an estimated £350m hole in Arcadia's pension fund, which has about 10,000 members.
Last year, the retail tycoon had an estimated fortune of £930m, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.
Serco, the outsourcing giant behind NHS Test and Trace, has confirmed that it was hit by a cyber attack - but told Sky News its oft-criticised scheme had not been impacted.
The company won several coronavirus-related contracts, including NHS Test and Trace, via a procurement system that came under fire from the public spending watchdog over concerns it lacked a competitive process.
Since then, the scheme - headed up by Baroness Dido Harding - has been regularly criticised over perceived failings to provide quick COVID-19 test results and trace contacts who need to self-isolate.
Image:Serco's involvement in the scheme has been controversial
Sky News can reveal Serco was targeted by criminals operating the so-called Babuk ransomware, which encrypts a victim's networks after the hackers have stolen data.
The malware informs the victim of the breach by creating a note which encourages the victim to negotiate an extortion payment to unlock their computers and prevent the stolen data from being released.
Advertisement
Brett Callow, a cyber security researcher at Emsisoft who specialised in tracking ransomware groups, said the ransomware had only emerged "earlier this month" and that "little is known about their operations".
Sky News learned of the attack on Serco through a sample of the ransomware that was uploaded to VirusTotal, a platform used by anti-virus companies to compare malware.
More from Covid-19
The sample encrypts the victim's files and leaves a note specifically addressed to Serco, which claims: "We've been surfing inside your network for about three weeks and copied more than 1TB of your data."
The note continues to threaten "consequences" if Serco does not cooperate with the hackers "to resolve this situation", warning of risks including the firm's stock value falling, costing it "much more money than the amount we ask".
It continues: "Your partners such as NATO, or Belgian Army or anyone else won't be happy that their secret documents are in free access in the internet."
Sky News did not see any evidence that such documents were stolen by the criminals, who had deleted the page inviting Serco to negotiate the extortion.
Serco spokesperson Marcus Deville confirmed to Sky News in a phone call that the company had been attacked, although he refused to comment on the impact, nor whether the firm had paid the ransom demand.
Mr Deville stressed however that the attack had only impacted the company's mainland European operations, which were "completely isolated" from those in the UK, meaning there was "no impact on UK business" - including NHS Test and Trace.
Sky News has contacted the Department for Health and Social Care and the Information Commissioner's Office for comment.
Melvin Capital, the hedge fund that was wrongfooted by retail traders who drove up shares in GameStop and other companies it had bet against, lost 53 per cent in January, according to people familiar with the firm’s results.
The New York-based hedge fund sustained a $4.5bn fall in its assets from the end of last year to $8bn, even after a $2.75bn cash injection from Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management and Ken Griffin’s Citadel.
Melvin became the target of retail traders who co-ordinated to drive up the share price of GameStop on online message boards such as Reddit, after the firm disclosed its bet against the company in regulatory filings.
The short squeeze on Melvin has been taken by some as a victory over a broken system they see as benefiting the country’s elite, and the trading strategies used to pressure hedge funds have shot from the fringes of the internet to the heart of the zeitgeist.
On Wednesday Melvin said it had exited its bet against GameStop and repositioned its portfolio. The firm moved to reduce risk in its investments following a turbulent start to January when it lost 30 per cent in the first three weeks. Melvin’s leverage ratio is at the lowest it has been since the firm’s founding in 2014, said a source familiar with the firm. The news of Melvin’s January performance was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The GameStop saga marks a fall from grace for Melvin, which gained 52 per cent last year, ranking it among the best performing hedge funds. Founder Gabe Plotkin was one of Mr Cohen’s most prominent traders at SAC Capital, until it shut down amid an insider trading scandal.
A Melvin spokesperson declined to comment on the firm’s January performance.
The rally in GameStop shares has captivated Wall Street and forced many hedge funds to rethink risk management practices. On Monday and Tuesday last week, other long-short hedge funds cut their exposure to the market by covering short bets and selling out of stocks.
“The market action has been a wake-up call and retail traders are likely to continue to be a force to be reckoned with, which will probably permanently affect the business models of institutional investors,” said Maneesh Deshpande, a strategist at Barclays.
US securities regulators said last week they would review trading for signs of manipulation, as well as restrictions put in place by brokerages such as Robinhood and Charles Schwab to see if they disadvantaged investors.
Shares of GameStop have climbed more than 1,625 per cent this year, and last week both shares and options on the company whipsawed in value as retail investors piled in.
While members of the popular Reddit community WallStreetBets had focused their attention on GameStop, they have broadened their gaze to other down-on-their-luck companies, with shares of apparel retailer Express and cinema owner AMC both more than tripling in value last week.
Reddit users have emblazoned a Times Square billboard in New York with a reference to the recent GameStop stock drama.
The ad, which ran for an hour on Friday (January 30) courtesy of digital billboard maker Matei Psatta, shows symbols indicating vastly rising stock prices with the caption “$GME GO BRRR” – alluding to the stock’s ticker symbol on the NY Stock Exchange.
GameStop’s share price has skyrocketed over the past week, going from well under $100 on January 21 to a closing price of $325 on January 29.
Advertisement
The “movement” was initially organised by those on the Reddit page WallStreetBets, where pirate investors pumped up Gamestop’s price in an effort to financially damage hedge fund short-sellers who bet against the stock and planned to profit from its failure.
Psatta told The New York Post that his Times Square billboard cost him only $18, as it was a one-hour purchase from his own company. “Did it purely to support the movement and make some people smile,” he said. “I’m considering running another but want to see how the sentiment is on Monday.”
A Reddit user paid for this billboard in Times Square, then put it on TikTok.$GME is the GameStop stock symbol. “BRR” is the sound made when money is printed out. pic.twitter.com/bqQD8fRskh
Another digital ad appeared in Oklahoma, reading: “We’re not leaving! GME” along with a string of emojis.
“For the first time, it is almost as if God gave a reason for all us to band together to battle corruption and stand for what is clearly right,” one Reddit user commented. “I have never experienced unity like this before, regardless of where you belong in the political spectrum, everyone is unified in what needs to be done.”
“Yo this is a fucking CRIME what [Robinhood] is doing,” Ja tweeted on Thursday (January 28).
The rapper later told Rolling Stone that he’s been following the Robinhood/Reddit/GameStop saga “for a week or so”, saying that the WallStreetBets Reddit group “have been fighting back” against “the big Wall Street guys”.
The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) said it wants feedback from its members on this expectation gap on the areas of fraud and whether a company can survive for the foreseeable future.
It asks whether auditors should have "enhanced or more requirements with regard to fraud in an audit of financial statements".
Getty Images
But Pirc says that in the UK at least, they already should be spotting fraud, and that Parliament and the courts have said so. Auditors such as the so-called Big Four - EY, Deloitte, KPMG and PwC - should acknowledge this, it says.
"The central premise of this consultation is incorrect because there is no 'expectation gap' under the law of many countries including the UK and other jurisdictions. In the UK, both the Judiciary and Parliament are clear on this," says a letter to the IAASB, seen by the BBC.
The IAASB told the BBC that it is "not making a judgment on whether the expectation gap should be used as a rationale for failures."
"The reality is that there are differences between the levels of expected performance envisioned by auditors and users of financial statements - that is the expectation gap," it said. "The purpose of our consultation is to move beyond the buzzwords and to inform targeted action in terms of fraud and going concern based upon a common understanding of what people want and expect of auditors."
Arguments over who should spot fraud have happened several times before. In 2019, David Dunckley, chief executive of Grant Thornton, which audited failed bakery chain Patisserie Valerie, told MPs that "we're not looking for fraud".
But Scott Knight of audit firm BDO, told MPs that auditors should be on the lookout for "sizeable" frauds.
Critics point out that auditors are meant to spot accounting holes like missing funds. And since funds can only be missing through error or fraud, they are meant to be spotting fraud, even if they don't immediately realise that is the cause of the problem.
Pirc fears that the regulator is trying to re-open an argument that the industry has already lost.
Getty Images
In its 2019 report on auditing, Parliament's Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee dismissed the idea of gap between what the public expected of auditors and their job.
"We do not accept the attempts of auditors - particularly the Big Four and Grant Thornton - to underplay the role or scope of audit, nor to implicitly blame the public for failing to understand the purpose of audit," the report said.
"Rather, the firms should focus on the poor quality of their audits, and on how they are falling short of what audits are for within the current framework."
Their job already includes detecting "material fraud and making a judgement on a company's future prospects", it said.
In its judgement of a case between auditor Grant Thornton and a company called Assetco, the Court of Appeal said that the auditor "failed in its duty to identify management fraud, particularly dishonest representations and evidence provided to it by senior management in the course of the audits."
Companies above a certain size must be audited, and must provide auditors with everything they ask for. This can include an entire backup of a company's accounting system, plus evidence of deposits from banks and interviews with managers.
If information given to an auditor is knowingly or recklessly false or deceptive in something important, that can land you in prison for up to two years and with a fine.
With such broad powers of investigation, some campaigners ask why more frauds are not being uncovered.
REDDITORS took over billboards across the US to show they won't back down from their investments in GameStop after the stock saga.
The GameStop phenomenon that hijacked US markets is still grabbing the attention of investors all over the world.
A billboard in New York City poked fun at Wall Street investorsCredit: Reddit
A digital ad was seen in Oklahoma reading "We’re not leaving! GME"Credit: Reddit
And the Reddit army that fueled the frenzy is gloating over their stock gains with billboards and even plane banners, paid for by their investment cash.
The billboards show a unified support for the investors who have driven up the price of GameStop - which was at $2.57 at its lowest point last year - to over $483 a share.
"$GME GO BRRR" read a digital billboard in New York City, with brrr referring to the sound a money-printing machine makes.
The West Coast similarly joined in, with an airplane flying over Santa Monica reading "WE ARE ALL GAMESTOP WALLSTREETBETS."
Another banner flying from a plane in San Francisco read "SUCK MY NUTS ROBINHOOD."
Matei Psatta, who created the billboard in New York, said it cost him only $18 since it was a one-hour purchase from his own company.
"Did it purely to support the movement and make some people smile," he told the New York Post. "I’m considering running another but want to see how the sentiment is on Monday."
Another digital ad was seen in Oklahoma reading "We’re not leaving! GME."
"Suck my nuts Robin Hood" was seen in San FranciscoCredit: Twitter
"We are all GameStop" read a banner in Santa MonicaCredit: Reddit
The push to send GameStop's stock from just around $40 in early January to more than 1700 percent its value was an organized effort from investors on the subreddit WallStreetBets.
Investors were able to pump up GameStop's stock prices to mess with hedge funds who were selling the stock short, and wanted to profit from its failure.
Because of the new investors pumping money into the stock, those hedge funds were losing millions of dollars.
"For the first time, it is almost as if God gave a reason for all us to band together to battle corruption and stand for what is clearly right," wrote a user on Reddit.
"I have never experienced unity like this before, regardless of where you belong in the political spectrum, everyone is unified in what needs to be done."
One hedge fund, Melvin Capital, required a $2 billion bailout from its boss and now Mets owner, Steve Cohen.
Robin Hood, the investing app with which many Redditors made their investments, removed GameStop from its platform, setting off a class action lawsuit against the company.
The company has been accused of bowing to Wall Street after amateur traders caused mayhem in the markets and cost big investors a fortune.
Some critics focused on the fact Robinhood sells trading data to the hedge fund Citadel, which injected billions into another fund that racked up huge losses on GameStop short positions.
But the boss of Robinhood has denied a "conspiracy theory" claiming hedge funds forced it to block users from buying shares in GameStop.
CEO Vlad Tenev rubbished the idea that Citadel or any other firm had twisted his arm.
He told Yahoo Finance: “On that conspiracy theory, I think I’ve over and over again said it’s not true.
“Our decision to temporarily restrict customers from buying certain securities had nothing to do with a market maker or a market participant or anyone like that putting pressure on us or asking us to do that.
"It was entirely about market dynamics and clearing house deposit requirements as per regulations.”
Strict regulations dictate the level of collateral brokers need to cover customers' trades while they "settle" in a so-called clearing house.
WeBull, a Chinese-owned rival platform, gave a similar reason for why it also briefly suspended trades in GameStop, AMC and Koss.
Robinhood's decision to suspend trades sparked angry protests in Wall St and condemnation from politicians in Washington.
Donald Trump Jr tweeted: "I don’t recall the part of the story when Robin Hood sells out and starts to be a mercenary for the crown.
"Apparently everyone has a price."
Lefty congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said: "This is unacceptable.
"We now need to know more about @RobinhoodApp’s decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit."
The Securities and Exchange Commission has said it is investigating the actions of all "regulated partipants" involved in the GameStop row.
Matei Psatta, who created the billboard in New York, said it cost him only $18 since it was a one-hour purchase from his own company.
"Did it purely to support the movement and make some people smile," he told the New York Post. "I’m considering running another but want to see how the sentiment is on Monday."
Another digital ad was seen in Oklahoma reading "We’re not leaving! GME."
As the row over vaccine supplies heated up this week, the UK government stuck to a simple line.
Ministers and officials repeatedly said they do not want conflict over vaccines. Yet, at the same time, they stated their confidence that they would get the doses they needed.
"We're very confident in our supplies, we're very confident in our contracts and we're going ahead on that basis," the prime minister declared on Wednesday. Behind the scenes, the message is the same. As far as it is possible to tell, the confidence is real.
Image:All trials use different criteria for what counts as an infection which can lead to variations in results for effectiveness. However, all vaccines will reduce hospitalisations and deaths
Its source is the UK's largest vaccine order: its agreement with AstraZeneca for 100 million doses of the vaccine developed at Oxford.
Ministers believe this arrangement will keep the supply of vaccines flowing to the UK, even in the unwanted event of a vaccine trade war.
Advertisement
Partly, this is a matter of technology. Unlike the Pfizer vaccine, which is largely manufactured in Europe using specialised technology that would be almost impossible to replicate elsewhere, the process used to make the AstraZeneca vaccine is - in vaccine terms - relatively flexible.
"The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine is based on a more established technology, meaning that there are a wide range of suppliers for all the materials and consumables that go into this vaccine," said Dr Zoltan Kis of Imperial College London's Future Manufacturing Hub, which is investigating how to produce large amounts of vaccines very quickly.
"That means the company is not restricted to one specific supplier. In case they have to not use those [European] suppliers, they would have the option of switching to a supplier outside of the EU."
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Almost four in five over-80s have got COVID jab
Switching suppliers would almost certainly lead to delays as new arrangements were made and certified. (Regulatory checks to bring a vaccine manufacturing facility online can take weeks, if not months) But in a worst case scenario, it would at least be possible.
However, the real source of the government's confidence is its contract with AstraZeneca, which ministers believe commits the pharmaceutical company to delivering UK doses first - a fact confirmed by AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot in an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
Whether that guarantee will hold up under a challenge remains to be seen. Yet, according to a former Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) adviser, the UK nearly missed out on this degree of security.
That is because the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was very nearly the Oxford-Merck vaccine - and under the terms of the agreement with the American pharmaceutical giant, there were no guarantees of supply.
The episode played out against the backdrop of the first phase of the pandemic. During March and April 2020, the University of Oxford negotiated a deal which would allow Merck to manufacture and distribute the vaccine it was in the process of developing.
The arrangement made sense. Unlike British-Swedish AstraZeneca, Merck had experience in making vaccines. Its senior executives had links to Oxford scientist and government adviser Sir John Bell.
Yet when the contract reached Matt Hancock's desk, the former adviser said, the health secretary refused to approve it, because it didn't include provisions specifically committing to supply the UK first.
The fear was export controls - not from the EU, but from the US. Mr Hancock was worried that president Trump would stop vaccines from Merck leaving the country.
With the university and Merck "as close to signing on the dotted line as they could be", he stopped it going ahead, because he didn't want to risk the intellectual property rights for the Oxford vaccine ending up in the hands of a single American company.
"He was just meant to confirm he was happy, and then it would have happened immediately," said the former adviser. "But he wasn't, and overruled officials to block the deal."
Reports have suggested that the Oxford scientists were unsure whether the deal with Merck had strong enough provisions for supplying poorer countries with vaccines. Mr Hancock's objection was more local and political. He wanted to make sure there was enough for UK citizens. The rest of the world could come later.
German MEP Peter Liese said the UK was behaving "like Donald Trump" by trying to guarantee it would receive vaccine doses first. In reality, according to this account, it was fear of Trump - or Trump-like behaviour - that prompted the government to seek additional security.
To see how quickly competition for scarce resources could escalate into conflict, Mr Hancock and his advisers only needed to look at their own recent experience. At the same time as negotiations were developing between Oxford and Merck, DHSC was desperately hunting for ways to replenish its threadbare stocks of Personal Protective Equipment.
In NHS hospitals, nurses were wearing bin bags for protective clothing. Yet the scramble to get hold of PPE was made more difficult by European export controls.
Image:Early in the pandemic Britain struggled to get enough PPE
In early March, Germany imposed a temporary ban on PPE leaving the country; shortly after, the EU introduced a similar measure (as did the UK, which has also maintained restrictions preventing hundreds of medicines leaving its borders without permission).
The PPE crisis grew so serious that one former Downing Street insider says it almost cost Mr Hancock his job. It also gave the health secretary a powerful reminder about the Hobbesian nature of global politics in a pandemic.
The other reminder came from a more surprising source: Steven Soderbergh's film Contagion.
Released in 2011, the film followed the path of a pandemic caused by a SARS-like respiratory virus, which killed millions and caused widespread social unrest, until it was finally stopped by an effective vaccine.
However, when the vaccine did arrive, there was not enough of it to go around, so vaccinations were awarded by a lottery based on birthdates.
The episode stuck in Mr Hancock's mind. "He would keep referring to the end of the film," says the former DHSC adviser.
"He was always really aware from the very start, first that the vaccine was really important, second that when a vaccine was developed we would see an almighty global scramble for this thing."
At other times during the pandemic, it has felt as if the government was scrambling to keep up with events. Former insiders in both DHSC and Downing Street acknowledge that they struggled to find a strategy to deal with a virus that spread so rapidly without symptoms.
Yet from the very start there was a focus on vaccines. According to the former adviser, the DHSC started work on it in January, before there was even a case of COVID-19 in the UK.
Back then, scientists said it was unlikely a vaccine would be developed within 18 months, let alone a year - and that they would probably be around 50% effective when they arrived. Yet, encouraged by Mr Hancock, the Department for Health pushed ahead, in order to make sure everything was ready for the moment the vaccine arrived.
"Every extra day it takes to deliver a vaccine comes with a human cost and an economic cost," Mr Hancock told officials in April. "I don't care if people think it's years away - every day we save now is lives we will be saving in a year's time."
Every process had to be accelerated. At one internal meeting in April, a group of vaccine officials were asked to assume that the vaccine would arrive in a year's time. For that scenario to play out well, what would they need to be doing now?
The replies, said one person who was present, were "mind-blowing". One expert warned that there would almost certainly be a shortage of glass vials. Another said that production would be difficult. A third raised the issue of supply chains.
The normal way of doing things would be to fix these issues once the vaccine was ready. But these weren't normal times - so the government determined to resolve them in advance.
Production lines were worked out. Arrangements were made for vaccine "fill and finish". Suppliers for glass vials were found and contracts were secured.
At the same time, officials realised that although there was a Therapeutics Taskforce, overseeing the search for and deployment of treatments for COVID-19, there was no comparable body for vaccines. The Vaccine Taskforce was set up: a month later, Kate Bingham was appointed as its head, and given the task of ordering the vaccines themselves.
As he pushed his team to go faster, Mr Hancock took inspiration from another early failure. In March, the government bought two million antibody tests from two Chinese companies, paying for them up front. Boris Johnson promised that the upcoming shipment would be a "game changer". In reality, they turned out to be unusable.
But the principle of taking a risk on potential new solutions before they were proven was, Mr Hancock decided, the right approach. That might lead to more mistakes - arguably, it did, most notably with the first contact tracing app - but he believed it would produce the best results overall.
The attitude matched that of other senior officials, including former Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings. According to one public health official who worked on vaccines and mass testing, the mantra in central government was: "No regrets."
"That's what they all said," the official recalled. "They were drawing up plans for vaccination to start in October. We thought it seemed a bit optimistic, but they kept on saying, 'We don't want to have any regrets'."
Some might say that waiting for a vaccine to arrive is not a strategy for managing a pandemic, and the UK's desperation for supplies of it is indeed a mark of its failure to control the virus by alternative means. It is also true that although the UK is off to a fast start, there is still time for things to go wrong. After all, it got off to a fast start with testing too.
Yet, for now, the government is confident it will have what it needs. This confidence, some say, is precisely what has enabled it to play down the prospect of a vaccine trade war, rather than enflaming it. Another lesson about the nature of pandemic politics: without security, there can be no peace.
Over three nights, Sky News will host a series of special programmes examining the UK's response to the pandemic.
Watch COVID Crisis: Learning the Lessons at 8pm on 9, 10 and 11 February.
How you Brits must be breathing a sigh of relief that your lives are no longer run by bungling European bureaucrats.
For the truth is that EU red tape – the customary mountain of Brussels paperwork that has led to shortages of vaccine supplies across the continent – is literally costing lives.
While a close relative of mine in her 80s has been told by the German government her Covid-19 vaccination has been fixed for late March or some time in April, 8.3 million people in Brexit Britain have already been inoculated.
That means almost everybody in the German woman's age group has received their first inoculation.
The simple reason is that Brexit has allowed Boris Johnson's Government the flexibility to move quickly.
How you Brits must be breathing a sigh of relief that your lives are no longer run by bungling European bureaucrats, writes GUNNAR BECK. Pictured: A Covid-19 vaccination centre at Wembley in London
It acted swiftly to identify which companies were leading the race to create a vaccine. It then snappily signed supply contracts and swept aside any bureaucratic obstacles to give early approval to the jabs.
So much for German efficiency. Instead, Britain has shown the way. And so much for the EU's supposed negotiating power and economies of scale.
In short, the EU is furious to have been beaten at every stage of the vaccine race by Britain – which is why ministers from the 27 EU countries are belatedly trying to force AstraZeneca to give them more doses.
The statistics don't lie. Britain is vaccinating between three and four times the number of people the EU is.
By being agile and adopting a Britain-first policy, it has secured a reliable supply of vaccines stretching into the future, which will, in turn, allow it to save more lives. This has become a nightmare for the EU.
The bloc's slow, dysfunctional approach has been a huge failure for the Commission in Brussels.Someone must take responsibility. In particular, Eurocrats must be held to account for this farce – and the buck stops with the Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
Now that details of how Brussels negotiated with AstraZeneca have been revealed, we can see how amateur the EU has been on crucial issues such as quantities and delivery dates.
It appears that the EU made basic errors by entering into contracts significantly later than Britain, and did not insist on timely or regular delivery dates.
In contrast, Britain held competent negotiations with AstraZeneca and was less sloppy on matters of price and quantity
And despite the EU's claims, the truth is that being a large, multilingual, complex organisation does not favour swift action.
Pictured: A person enters a coronavirus vaccination centre at Westfield Stratford in London
The great fear now for EU leaders, of course, is that a successful Brexit could become a model for other countries which want to leave the bloc. The vaccine row exacerbates that fear.
That is why we are seeing stories in German newspapers that the British vaccines have not been properly tested and that the Oxford AstraZeneca jab is ineffective for elderly people. If so, Brits may ask why the EU is so keen to get its hand on their share?
The central problem is that the member countries of the EU have surrendered their vaccine negotiations to the bureaucrats of Brussels.
Dr Gunnar Beck (pictured) is MEP for the Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) party
The justification is that collective bargaining means better prices and delivery times. In theory. But experience tells us that more, often than not, it actually leads to sub-optimal results.
The EU stuck to its slow, rigid procedures for approving new drugs, even as vaccines were pouring off the production lines – never mind the urgency of the crisis.
Another issue is the inevitable conflict of interests among 27 different countries. Some member states are unwilling to subordinate national interests, and there is too little resistance to business and political lobbying by von der Leyen's Commission.
For example, although the French company Sanofi never gave any indication of being at the front of the game to produce a vaccine, the EU ordered as much from it as it did from Pfizer, which showed it would have an effective vaccine.
You have to wonder why. Meanwhile, freed from the shackles of Brussels, Britain took a calculated gamble and fast-tracked the vaccine approval on the assumption that speed was of the essence.
So far, it seems the UK's more flexible, autonomous approach is more effective. By contrast, the EU's handling of the situation has been an organisational shambles.
Commission president von der Leyen should resign.
Dr Gunnar Beck is MEP for the Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) party. He is also a member of the working group on the Conference on the Future of Europe.
The man known as the Wolf of Wall Street has offered his advice to small investors buying shares in GameStop, saying they should "be careful" to avoid losing money when "it goes bad".
Jordan Belfort, the former stockbroker whose memoir inspired the Hollywood movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, endorsed the actions of people who helped the electronics retailer's share price grow 1,600% over three weeks.
Those swarms of smaller investors, in actions championed on social media platforms including Reddit, saw their assault as directed squarely at hedge funds and other Wall Street titans that had bet the struggling video game retailer's stock would fall - a practice known as shorting.
Those firms are suffering major losses and other larger investors say it is pushing them to sell other stocks they own to raise cash.
And Belfort, who was was jailed for 22 months after admitting fraud over stock market manipulation in 1999, told Sky News he wished he had thought of the GameStop plan himself - while issuing a warning to those involved.
Advertisement
"It's shocking, and really amazing and gratifying, to see a little bit of the pain going on the side of the hedge funds," he said.
"The hedge funds have been beating up little investors since the beginning of time pretty much.
More from Gamestop
"While this will be short-lived… everyone's got to be really careful, because it's going to be like catching a falling knife when it unravels."
He said that while he admired the actions of the smaller investors, the hedge funds would eventually put a stop to it.
"The danger is that Wall Street and hedge funds especially are experts at identifying what we call 'inefficiencies in the market'," he said.
"This is an inefficiency in the market right now and they will look to close that inefficiency very quickly."
One investor posted screengrabs on Reddit suggesting he had turned an initial investment of $53,566 (£39,061) into one worth more than $25m (£18.2m) at one point this week.
Adding to the joy of those investors - which includes another group on the social media platform TikTok - has been the discomfort of those on the losing side of the trade.
Belfort likened the smaller investor's moves to the scheme he was infamously involved in.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
GameStop investor: 'It's about sticking it to the man'
"This is 1999 all over again and that's why I'm begging everyone to please be careful here," he said.
"When the average person gets in, that's the time it's going to actually crash.
"You never know when that moment's going to come. It's going to come, of course, because things will eventually see their fundamental value.
"It's a wonderful opportunity for people to make money - everyone's bored and locked up - but just be careful and make sure whatever you invest in these type of hot stocks, make sure you invest only what you can afford to lose.
"And if you happen to make money, pull the original investment out and play with the house's money. That's my advice to everybody."
The World Health Organization has criticised the EU's risible handling of the Covid vaccine debacle, warning that placing export controls on the jabs risked prolonging the pandemic.
Europe's vaccine drive has been thrown off course by a shortage of supplies that has left member states reeling and leaders in Brussels thrashing out at big pharma.
The European Commission launched a scheme on Friday to monitor and, in some cases, bar exports of vaccines produced in EU plants, amid a row with British-Swedish drugs giant AstraZeneca.
However, WHO vice-head Mariangela Simao said it was a 'very worrying trend' that could jeopardise the global supply chain for vaccines.
Ms Simao, assistant director for access to medicines and health product, said: 'It is not helpful to have any country at this stage putting export bans or export barriers that will not allow for the free movement of the necessary ingredients that will make vaccines, diagnostics and other medicines available to all the world.'
And on Friday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned against 'vaccine nationalism', saying there was a 'real danger that the very tools that could help to end the pandemic - vaccines - may exacerbate' global inequality.
It comes as the EU backtracked on Friday over a threat to restrict exports of coronavirus shots to Northern Ireland in its growing row with Britain.
WHO vice-head Mariangela Simao (left) said that the European Commission's scheme to monitor and, in some cases, bar exports of vaccines produced in EU plants was a 'very worrying' trend. And WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (right) warned on Friday against 'vaccine nationalism', saying there was a 'real danger that the very tools that could help to end the pandemic - vaccines - may exacerbate' global inequality
The UK has streaked ahead of Europe in terms of the number of vaccines administered, and has now jabbed more than 8.3 (pie chart shows January 26)
Brussels has backed down from plans to impose export controls on vaccines that threatened the shipment of 3.5million Pfizer doses to Britain.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made the assurance to Boris Johnson after announcing an extraordinary embargo on jabs leaving the bloc amid dwindling supplies on the Continent.
The row blew up spectacularly when Eurocrats overrode part of the Brexit deal to create a hard border on the island of Ireland to stop doses getting into the UK through Northern Ireland, which is still in the Customs Union.
The European Commission's export monitoring scheme has risked stoking conflict with the UK just weeks after London and Brussels sealed a trade deal.
Brussels has backed down from plans to impose export controls on vaccines that threatened the shipment of 3.5m Pfizer doses to Britain. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (right) made the assurance to Boris Johnson after announcing an extraordinary embargo on jabs leaving the bloc amid dwindling supplies on the Continent
'We paid these companies to increase production and now we expect them to deliver,' EU Commission vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis said.
'[Today's] measure has been adopted with the utmost urgency. The aim is to provide us immediately with full transparency.... And if needed, it also will provide us with a tool to ensure vaccine deliveries.'
EU officials said the emergency measure is initially for six weeks but is intended to then continue until at least the end of March.
The EU's plan applies only to those coronavirus vaccines that are covered by advance purchase agreements between drug companies and the European Commission.
Vaccines expert shoots down Macron's claim that AstraZeneca jab is ineffective in over-65s
A top scientist with Oxford's vaccine team has accused Emmanuel Macron of demand management' after casting doubt on the AstraZeneca jab's efficacy.
Professor Sir John Bell slapped down the French President's baseless claims that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is 'quasi-ineffective' for the over-65s.
He said: 'I suspect this is a bit of demand management from Mr Macron... if he didn't have any vaccine the best thing you could do is reduce demand.'
Macron stoked tensions by questioning the efficacy of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab in older patients, despite it being approved by the EU regulator.
Sir John today told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I'm not sure where he got that from.'
He acknowledged its original study only had small numbers of elderly people, with many shielding themselves from the pandemic, but added: 'The numbers still pointed toward a very highly effective vaccine but the numbers were small, in fairness, we always accepted that.'
He said other studies proved 'elderly people responded just as well in other age groups' and that 'there's really persuasive evidence that this is a protective vaccine in those populations'.
Advertisement
Those firms in the EU will have to apply for an authorisation to export doses meant for countries outside the bloc, and show their export records for the previous three months.
A response would normally be given within 48 hours, though that could be extended if necessary.
Most non-EU countries in and around Europe, such as Switzerland, those in the Balkans or micro-states like Monaco, are exempted from the measure.
But Britain, which last year left the EU amid much acrimony, is not.
Brussels has been in a furious dispute with AstraZeneca this week, accusing it of breaching its contract by delaying deliveries to EU governments while maintaining those under a deal it signed earlier with the UK.
But Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides insisted: 'We are not protecting ourselves against any specific country. And we're not in competition or in a race against any country.'
The prior three-month reporting period would presumably reveal whether or not AstraZeneca did indeed - as has been alleged - send vaccines to Britain from its vaccine plants in Europe, which it says have since been hit by production glitches.
Belgian authorities on Thursday searched one AstraZeneca plant in southern Belgium at the European Commission's request. Data seized is being analysed.
The EU-Britain tussle has highlighted the impact of shortages on ambitious mass vaccination programmes, even on wealthy nations, and fears are growing that the developed world is hogging doses, leaving poorer nations behind.
Meanwhile, WHO chief Mr Ghebreyesus warned on Friday against 'vaccine nationalism', saying there was a 'real danger that the very tools that could help to end the pandemic - vaccines - may exacerbate' global inequality.
Parts of Africa and Asia have only just started securing and rolling out vaccinations.
The global scramble for shots comes as more troubling data emerges on new variants of the coronavirus, which is known to have infected more than 101million people worldwide.
Variants first detected in Britain, Brazil and South Africa are believed to be more contagious.
Scientists are concerned that the South African variant may elude some vaccines, a potential stumbling block in the global effort to defeat Covid-19 through mass inoculation.
New data on Thursday and Friday showed average effectiveness of 89 and 66 percent for shots from Novavax and Johnson & Johnson.
But while Novavax's jab was highly effective against the British variant, both were less effective against the South African strain.
Pfizer and Moderna have said their vaccines are effective against the variants.
WHO experts continued their closely watched scientific mission Saturday in Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus first emerged in late 2019, hoping to uncover more clues about the origins of the pandemic.
