Netflix share price collapses as subscriber growth stalls

Another Friday, another week over for the live blog. But we will see you next Monday! Before you go, have a look at our latest stories:

• Mining titan's bet on fertiliser jackpot under the North York Moors hits trouble
• Czech billionaire who wants to run National Lottery snubs London for $9bn float
• British cloud computing company used by Government rescued from collapse
• Battery factory gets £1.8bn green light to turbocharge UK electric car production
• Antonio Horta-Osorio attended Euros final as well as Wimbledon on quarantine-busting London trip

A plan to make liquid hydrogen from brown coal in Australia and ship it across the Pacific has been criticised as “way worse” than burning diesel or natural gas. Howard Mustoe has more:

A new liquid hydrogen tanker is due to carry the first shipment of the gas, heralded as zero-carbon fuel, from Australia to Japan, which is increasingly using it in a bid to decarbonise its economy.

While the company behind the plan insists that future shipments will benefit from carbon capture, where CO2 is pumped underground, the first batch was made through a process that releases carbon dioxide into the air. 

Brown coal produces almost double the carbon dioxide per unit of energy than natural gas and a third more than diesel.

Read Howard's full story here

The FTSE 100 closed 1.2pc lower at 7,494 as disappointing retail sales figures piled on investors' existing concerns.

Danni Hewson at AJ Bell commented: “Thank goodness it’s Friday. In fact, I imagine there will be more than a few investors inserting the usual expletive into that well-worn phrase when you consider how markets have performed today. 

"Only 11 stocks on London’s blue-chip index managed to end the day in positive territory and most of those were only just clinging on by their fingernails. Today has been something of a rout, with inflation woes, disappointing trading updates, geopolitical unrest and a falling oil price all delivering their own unique brand of pain. 

"Both Unilever and the previous target of its affections, GlaxoSmithKline, made small gains but not enough to recover from the week’s thorny embrace. Burberry continued to tease out investors eyeing a potential life to Chinese consumer confidence following this week’s rate cut decision and over on the FTSE 250 Premier Food’s was still capturing attention following its impressive trading update, and let’s be honest when life gets tough, cake can’t hurt."

Photo booth owner and laundry equipment firm Photo-Me has received a takeover offer from its chief executive as part of a management buyout.

Serge Crasnianski launched a mandatory £283.5m bid for the company via his Tibergest business, set up for the deal. The company agreed to buy 29.1m shares from the Dan David Foundation last week, taking its stake in Photo-Me to 37pc - triggering a mandatory offer under takeover rules.

Photo-Me told shareholders to take no action while an independent committee considers the offer. Tibergest said it does not plan to make any changes to the business or broader strategic plans.

Photo-Me has struggled during the pandemic but has started seeing improvements.

London-listed oil company Lekoil has been told to pay £85,550 to its estranged former chief executive to cover his costs in a UK court case.

The company had been trying to claw back approximately $1.5m (£1.1m) from Olalekan Akinyanmi, whom the business is named after.

He took out a loan from the business several years ago but was ousted last year for not paying the loan back. But the English court said it did not have jurisdiction and ordered Lekoil to cover Mr Akinyanmi's costs.

Lekoil was the company at the centre of a fraud case two years ago when it was conned into thinking that Qatar's sovereign wealth fund would lend it $180m (£133m).

Microsoft’s planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard will come with an unexpected addition: a small group of unionised workers.

The Game Workers Alliance Union would be the first union at a publicly traded video game publisher.

The group is composed of 34 quality assurance testers at the Raven Software arm, a team responsible for ensuring new content for Call of Duty games runs smoothly and without errors. It’s part of the Communications Workers of America, the largest union in the media industry.

For years, people from across the video game industry have proposed organising as a solution to unhealthy work environments. Burnout is a prevalent issue in gaming, brought on by a culture of overwork, sexism and little job security. Employers have not embraced workers’ flirtations with unionising, but last month, employees of a small independent studio called Vodeo Games became the first to organize in North America.

We ask that Raven Software and Activision leadership voluntarily recognize our union and respect our right to organize without retaliation or interference. (7/8)

— Game Workers Alliance