Here are the business stories making the headlines across Scotland and the UK this morning.
Maintenance train derailment blocks Aberdeen to Inverness line
Rail travel between Aberdeen and Inverness has been disrupted after a track maintenance train derailed.
The low speed incident happened between Huntly and Insch during the night, blocking the line.
ScotRail said the re-railing team was now onsite, but disruption was expected until the end of the day. Inverness to Aberdeen services will terminate and start back from Huntly.
Car park firm NCP collapses with nearly 700 jobs at risk
National Car Parks (NCP) has gone into administration, putting 682 jobs at risk.
The administrator, PwC, said demand for parking had not recovered to pre-Covid levels, pointing to "shifts in commuting and customer driving patterns".
It said NCP could no longer afford to pay its creditors after consistently losing money and was unable to scrap "long-term, inflexible" leases on loss-making sites.
Rachel Reeves bets on closer ties with EU to boost UK economy
Rachel Reeves will pin her hopes on growing the economy through closer links with Europe as she pledges to undo the damage caused by Brexit.
Officials are working on a major audit of all sectors of the economy to identify industries that could benefit by aligning themselves more closely with European regulations to reduce red tape for exporters.
The chancellor will make her case in her Mais lecture at Bayes Business School, University of London, after she told The Times at the weekend that it was one of three “bets” on economic growth, alongside investment in artificial intelligence and bolstering regional growth.
Meta plans sweeping layoffs to offset heavy spending on AI
Meta Platforms is reported to be cutting at least 20% of its workforce to offset heavy spending on artificial intelligence.
The owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which employed about 79,000 people worldwide at the end of 2025, has spent heavily in recent years to catch up with rivals by building data centres and waging a talent war. It expects a capital outlay of up to $135billion in 2026 — roughly double of last year’s spending.
If Meta settles on the 20% figure, the cuts will be the biggest since a restructuring in 2022-23 dubbed the “year of efficiency”, which eliminated about 21,000 jobs.
Fuel rationing looming unless Hormuz supply resumes, experts warn
Britain faces a “significant shortfall of supply” in oil and gas within the next two months that would force ministers to “ration” supplies as long as the war in the Middle East continues, industry experts have warned.
The UK consumes approximately 1.4 million barrels of oil every day, of which only about half is produced domestically in the North Sea.
With a fifth of the world’s oil and gas stocks affected by the war in the Middle East, senior figures in the sector have warned that the UK will not be immune from a global supply shortage if the conflict continues.
Nvidia boss forecasts $1trillion AI chip revenue by 2027
Nvidia has said the revenue opportunity for its artificial intelligence chips could reach at least $1trillion through 2027, as the company outlined a strategy to compete more aggressively in the fast-growing market for running AI systems in real time.
Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive, unveiled a new central processor and an AI system built on technology from Groq — a chip start-up from which Nvidia licensed technology for $17billion in December at its annual GTC developer conference in San Jose, California.
The moves are part of Huang’s attempt to boost the company’s position in so-called inference computing, the process of answering queries, where its graphics processors face greater competition from central processing units and custom processors built by the likes of Google. Nvidia chips have dominated the process of AI model training, which has been the focus of recent years.
Wick-Aberdeen flights to get up to £663,000 in funding
The Scottish government is to provide up to £663,000 to help fund subsidised flights between Wick and Aberdeen until 14 August.
The future of the public service obligation (PSO) route was thrown into question after the previous operator, Eastern Airways, entered administration in November.
Air Charter Scotland (ACS) took over the service in January, offering a six-days-a-week service.
Companies House admits security breach that exposed directors’ details
Companies House has apologised after admitting a security flaw that exposed the personal details of millions of directors and risked allowing unauthorised third parties to make bogus company filings began five months ago.
The UK’s corporate registry said the issue with its online filing system meant people’s dates of birth, residential addresses and company email addresses “may have been” visible to third-party users. It admitted it may also have been possible that “unauthorised filings — such as accounts or changes of director — to have been made on another company’s record”.
It said the issue was caused during an update to its online filing system in October 2025 and told all companies “to check their registered details and filing history to make sure everything appears correct”.