Here are the business stories making the headlines across Scotland and the UK this morning.
Former Scottish health secretary Jeane Freeman dies aged 72
Former Scottish Health Secretary Jeane Freeman, who was a key figure in the response to the Covid pandemic, has died at the age of 72.
Her partner said she died in hospital less than four weeks after being diagnosed with cancer.
A former nurse, justice campaigner and civil servant, Freeman entered politics as a special advisor to Labour First Minister Jack McConnell before joining the SNP and standing for the Scottish Parliament.
Shoplifting in Scotland has increased 129% since 2021
Retailers have warned shoplifters are becoming “bolder and more aggressive” after new figures revealed a rise of 128% in the crime over the course of just four years.
Police Scotland said in the year ending September 2025, there were 48,564 recorded crimes of shoplifting - up from 21,175 recorded in the year ending September 2021 and 2024’s figure of 42,271 .
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said the statistics showed there was “chaos on our streets”, while the Scottish Retail Consortium said the situation was “appalling”.
Plans to demolish former Aberdeen police HQ based on ‘complete fallacy’ — as heritage boffins fight to save brutalist blot
Plans to demolish the former Aberdeen police headquarters have been branded “completely ignorant” of their potential impact on the environment.
Heritage buffs are accusing the council of “disingenuous smoke and mirrors” in their proposals to raze the seven-storey 1970s block on Queen Street.
Officers vacated the brutalist police tower in 2020 for Marischal College across the road, making way for long-promised redevelopment of Queen Street.
Apprenticeship clearing system to be introduced
A new clearing-style system will be introduced to match young people who miss out on an apprenticeship with alternative placements, the government has said.
Similar to university and college clearing - a process which matches students with institutions that have unfilled places - the online platform will provide information about available roles in their chosen area of interest.
Ministers hope the pilot scheme will make apprenticeships easier to navigate and more appealing to young people weighing up their options.
Tesco buys Amazon Fresh shops as it expands convenience stores
Tesco is pressing ahead with an expansion of its convenience stores after snapping up defunct Amazon Fresh sites in London.
Britain’s biggest supermarket chain plans to open more than 70 new Express convenience stores by March 2027, building on the 60 it opened last year. It already operates just over 2,000 convenience outlets across the UK and Ireland.
Tesco acquired five former Amazon Fresh stores after the US technology group’s decision to abandon its failed bricks-and-mortar grocery experiment. The stores are due to reopen as Tesco Express branches before the summer.
Ocado mulls scrapping 1,000 jobs in scramble to cut costs
Ocado is preparing to cut as many as 1,000 jobs as part of a scramble to drive down costs.
The struggling online supermarket, which employs around 20,000 staff, is preparing to reduce headcount to save hundreds of millions of pounds.
The proposed redundancies could be approved later this month, with those in its head office most likely to be affected. However, a final decision has yet to be made.
Popular weight-loss jabs ‘rob Greggs of its best customers’
Weight-loss jabs could suppress the appetite for Greggs’s pastries and starve the bakery chain of some of its best customers, City analysts have warned.
The company has been dogged by slower sales since the middle of 2024 which has stoked speculation that Britain might have reached “peak Greggs”.
The chain has pinned its disappointing performance on faltering consumer confidence and unusually hot weather last year which dented demand. Investors have fretted that Greggs’s rapid rollout of shops could have cannibalised like-for-like sales.