B&Q owner eyes warm weather boost as sales fall May 26, 2026 B&Q’s FTSE 100 owner will be hoping for a heatwave boost after it blamed poor weather for falling sales at the start of the year. Kingfisher, which also owns Screwfix and home improvement retailers in France and Poland, saw total like-for-like sales dip by 0.9 per cent to £3.3bn in the first quarter of the [...]
‘Delighted to be wrong’ – Sam Altman changes tune on AI job apocalypse fears May 26, 2026 OpenAI boss Sam Altman has softened his warnings over AI wiping out white-collar work, saying the feared “jobs apocalypse” has so far failed to materialise despite the tech rapidly reshaping business decisions and operations. Speaking on Tuesday, Altman admitted he had expected AI to eliminate far more entry-level office jobs by now following the launch [...]
London makes up more than a third of UK corporation tax receipts May 26, 2026 London accounts for more than a third of total corporation tax receipts across the UK, new data analysed by City AM has shown. Data shared by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has shown that London makes up around 36 per cent of total corporation tax income generated each year, highlighting the capital city’s dominance [...]
David Lammy rejects higher pay rise for judges amid recruitment crisis May 26, 2026 David Lammy turned down an independent recommendation for a higher judicial pay increase, instead approving a 3.5 per cent rise amid government efforts to tackle recruitment challenges for senior judges. The Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB) report, published last week, recommended a 3.8 per cent pay increase across the judiciary, estimated to cost taxpayers around [...]
Top City law firm slammed for ‘misleading’ AI letters sent to court May 26, 2026 A well-known London-headquartered law firm has been criticised by a High Court judge after a lawyer sent the court AI-generated letters containing false legal information. A judgment handed down on 22 May found a junior solicitor at Pinsent Masons used AI to draft two “misleading” emails containing so-called hallucinations sent to the High Court [...]
Embassy officials praise Arsenal ahead of ‘Visit Rwanda Champions League final’ May 26, 2026 The High Commission of Rwanda this week congratulated Arsenal on their Premier League title days before a Visit Rwanda partnership concludes at the Champions League final. The Gunners won their first domestic title in 22 years and lifted the Premier League trophy on Sunday. This weekend they have the chance to add a Champions League [...]
London AI jobs boom as Anthropic salaries hit £630k May 26, 2026 London’s AI hiring race is accelerating at dizzying rates, with Anthropic offering some engineers in the capital as much as £630,000 a year as Big Tech firms battle for AI talent. The US AI giant, backed by Amazon and best known for its chatbot Claude, is currently hiring for over 40 London roles as it [...]
Mia Drennan: I was selling Macks in Debenhams – now I run a unicorn May 26, 2026 It took Mia Drennan 400 meetings to get her loan agency off the ground. Over 15 years later, she speaks to Ali Lyon about the recent investment that took the firm to fabled unicorn status, and what lies next. It is half-past-five on a balmy Thursday evening and in a cavernous central London office, a [...]
Next boss slams Labour’s zero-hour contracts crackdown May 26, 2026 The boss of Next has slammed the government’s crackdown on zero-hour contracts and called on Labour to unwind its “employment taxes”. Lord Simon Wolfson, chief executive of the FTSE 100 retailer, said the government’s plans to force employers to offer guaranteed hours to those on flexible contracts will make it “much harder” for Next to [...]
Poor investor communication is holding back Britain’s listed companies May 26, 2026 UK-listed companies are losing the confidence of retail investors, as shareholders complain of weak communication, poor transparency, and limited access to chief executives, according to new research from InvestorHub and ShareSoc. More than half of investors surveyed said transparency was missing from company communications, while almost half said listed businesses failed to provide sufficiently clear [...]