'I took a chance on the whisky industry and I haven't looked back'

"Football's Gone Round the Spend!" screamed The People newspaper one Sunday in July 1995. It reported breathlessly that three clubs between them were set to pay out more than £20m on new players. The highlight that summer was the transfer of Stan Collymore from Nottingham Forest to Liverpool for a British record fee of £8.5m. That number might not seem too impressive today, in an age when £100m transfers are almost commonplace. But at the time it was seismic stuff, and it symbolised the conversion of football from sport into big business.

Environmental watchdog Mighty Earth reveals two-year effort to postpone and weaken EU Deforestation Regulation US corporate lobbyists launched a two-year “blitz” to postpone and weaken the world’s most progressive legislation to protect forests, according to a new investigation by the environmental watchdog Mighty Earth. Major US firms and trade associations, including Cargill, Bunge, Mondelēz and the US Soybean Export Council, as well as numerous other US firms and organizations, sought to influence the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) in more than…

Chancellor John Healey has said building a third runway at Heathrow Airport has "always been a case for growth" after Prime Minister Andy Burnham refused to say if he backed the expansion. Healey said airport expansion, including at Heathrow, had been "a big part of jobs and growth" in recent decades, speaking at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Bangkok. His comments came after Prime Minister Andy Burnham was more sceptical, telling the BBC last month it was "a matter for London and Londoners".

When it comes to the future direction of the global economy there is a bit of a tug of war going on. There are starkly opposing forces. On the one hand holding back growth are the familiar, recurring crises from the energy shock, trade conflict and actual war. This is reflected most clearly in the sharply rising interest rate costs for the world's advanced economies. Pulling in the other direction is the boost from massive spending on AI, and the frankly astonishing resilience shown especially by smaller economies, as new routes for trade, including for oil and gas, have been established out of necessity.