Here are the business stories making the headlines across Scotland and the UK this morning.
Scottish state workers handed biggest pay rise across public sector
Public sector workers in Scotland have been awarded bigger pay rises than anywhere else in the UK, driving up Holyrood’s wage bill after the SNP Government hired thousands of new staff.
Pay for state employees in Scotland has risen by 5pc above inflation since 2019, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), compared to an increase of 0pc for public sector workers across the rest of the UK.
Combined with the ballooning public sector headcount, the think tank said that “higher pay poses an increasing financial challenge for the Scottish Government”.
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UK wages continue to outpace inflation
Average wages are continuing to outpace inflation with pay packets rising for both the public and private sector workers, official figures show.
Pay, after taking into account the pace of price rises, rose 3.4% between October and December compared with the same period a year ago, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The UK's unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.4%, although the ONS has advised that its jobs figures should be treated with caution because of low response rates to its employment survey.
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Barclays and NatWest drop climate targets from executive pay deals
Two of Britain’s biggest banks are to remove climate targets from their annual bonus schemes for senior executives, reflecting a wider shift in the business world to drop environmental and diversity measures linked to pay.
Barclays and NatWest are to abandon sustainability metrics as performance measures from annual awards in revamps of executive pay and instead move climate targets into long-term share-based incentive schemes that pay out according to the banks’ rolling performance over three years. Both lenders argue that the changes better reflect the long-term nature of climate-related goals.
Six of America’s biggest lenders, including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, have pulled out of the global banking industry’s largest net-zero alliance amid an American backlash against climate measures.
Council reveals slow progress on faulty concrete homes
Negotiations to buy and demolish homes blighted by faulty concrete in Aberdeen are making slow progress, the council has admitted.
Only four out of 138 homeowners have indicated they will accept purchase deals, and the authority would like to be "further on", according to a senior official.
More than 500 properties, most of them council-owned, were found to contain reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) in 2023.