Marks and Spencer (M&S) continued to advertise on GB News even while the broadcaster’s boss was betting against the company, DeSmog can reveal.

Since the start of the year, Marshall Wace – the hedge fund owned by GB News’ proprietor Paul Marshall – has been shorting M&S, one of the UK’s most trusted brands.

Shorting is the process through which hedge funds bet on the fall of a company’s share price.

M&S, which suffered a cyber attack in April, is one of the few remaining large firms that has advertised on GB News this year. The broadcaster, which employs Nigel Farage to the tune of more than £300,000 a year, is renowned for its radical right-wing content. It has broadcast homophobia, anti-climate conspiracy theories, anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, while one of its guests recently suggested starving benefits claimants.

Most other corporations have stopped their adverts from being shown on GB News, resulting in the broadcaster losing more than £100 million in the four years since its launch.

A version of this article was published by Private Eye.

While M&S is proud of its sustainability policies – pledging to be a net zero business by 2040 – GB News is a leading source of climate science denial and broadcast 1,000 anti-climate attacks during the 2024 general election period.

These attitudes are echoed by Marshall, who also owns The Spectator magazine. Speaking at the 2025 Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference – another project that he bankrolls – the hedge fund manager claimed that the West has been infected by a “climate derangement syndrome” through which we seem willing to “sacrifice our economic prosperity and our people’s livelihoods all for the sake of making some fractional changes to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere”.

According to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the UK’s net zero economy grew by 10 percent in 2024, employing almost a million people in full-time jobs with an average wage of £43,000 – £5,600 higher than the national average.

DeSmog previously revealed that, as of June 2023, Marshall Wace held shares worth £1.8 billion in 112 fossil fuel companies, including in Shell, Equinor, and Chevron. Paul Marshall is the chairman and chief investment officer of Marshall Wace, which is part-owned by the U.S. private equity giant KKR, which also has an extensive fossil fuel portfolio.

“Clearly advertising on GB News was always going to be a PR disaster for Marks and Spencer,” said Richard Wilson, director of the campaign group Stop Funding Hate.

“Many M&S customers – and shareholders – will have been surprised that a company which markets itself as being strong on sustainability, equity and inclusion would support a toxic TV channel that so obviously clashes with its core values. 

“They will be even more surprised to learn that a hedge fund run by the GB News co-owner began betting against the M&S share price just weeks before that advertising began – and may well have questions for the company’s CEO and board about this.”

M&S adverts have not been seen on the platform since March, although GB News has written up glowing articles about the retailer in recent months. GB News insists these are editorials and that the broadcaster has not received any money to produce them.

GB News and M&S did not respond to DeSmog’s requests for comment. Marshall Wace declined to comment.