Motor finance lenders gear up for ‘forensic test of discipline’ over redress scheme October 8, 2025 The Financial Conduct Authority has softened the motor finance blow for lenders but experts say firms won’t be able to shift into a new gear just yet. The City watchdog has priced the cost of its industry-wide redress scheme at £11bn – a hefty sum but far below the eye-watering £44bn previously floated. Just over [...]
Spotify’s integration into ChatGPT may not be a bad thing October 8, 2025 Spotify’s new partnership with OpenAI brings its music and podcast recommendations inside its LLM bot, ChatGPT, helping its users to discover and queue new music through conversations, rather than search. Listeners will be able to link their Spotify to ChatGPT, asking it to find anything from a specific playlist to a podcast topic. Across 145 [...]
Blavatnik investment in Dazn tops $7bn despite Surj stake sale October 8, 2025 Billionaire Sir Leonard Blavatnik has now invested more than $7bn into sports streaming platform Dazn, having injected an extra $600m in 2024. While revenues increased by more than $300m to over $3bn and losses narrowed from $1.4bn to $936m, according to the accounts filed with Companies House for the year ending 31 December 2024, the [...]
Kemi Badenoch pledges to abolish stamp duty October 8, 2025 Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has pledged to abolish stamp duty on primary residences to help support people moving into their first home as she centred her speech on backing people wishing to “get ahead in life”. In a speech delivered to Conservative Party members at its Manchester conference, Badenoch said the Tories would cut stamp [...]
Bank of England sounds alarm on ‘high risk’ AI bubble October 8, 2025 The Bank of England has warned of the potential for a “sharp correction” in global markets due to the “stretched” stock valuations from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The central bank’s Financial Policy Committee has warned a crash in the roaring value of US tech giants could spark trouble overseas. “A crystallisation of such global [...]
Ministers planning drug pricing shake-up to stem pharma exodus October 8, 2025 Ministers are drawing up a radical overhaul of NHS spending rules in a bid to shore up the UK’s world-leading life sciences industry after a string of pharma giants cancelled major UK investment projects. In what would amount to one of the largest shake-ups of NHS drug purchasing rules in recent history, the Prime Minister [...]
Britain and US win race to launch first Ryder Cup of padel October 8, 2025 First came the America’s Cup in sailing, then golf’s Ryder and Solheim Cups, and more recently the Laver Cup in tennis – now padel has its own transatlantic team competition, the Anglo American Padel Cup, and its inaugural edition begins in London this week. The competition features some of the leading players from two emerging [...]
‘Hard to accept’: Small firms round on energy intensive subsidies October 8, 2025 So-called standing charges are going up by as much as 94 per cent for all businesses bar the most energy intensive come April. Many are up in arms, writes Ali Lyon Even businesses like Michael Morris’s Beachcomber Amusements – a traditional arcade that treats guests in the small Fife town of Leven to games of [...]
JP Morgan beefs up seaside UK office as it backs ‘talent of tomorrow’ October 8, 2025 US banking juggernaut JP Morgan has announced a hefty UK investment as part of plans to beef up its home base in the country. The bank said it will invest over £300m into its Bournemouth campus, which will help facilitate a new building and upgraded facilities for the sites 5,300 employees. The firm – which [...]
Yodel: Losses double at UK’s second-worst parcel delivery firm October 8, 2025 Losses at Yodel, which was named as the second-worst parcel delivery firm in the UK in 2024, have more than doubled as its revenue was slashed. The Liverpool-headquartered business has reported a pre-tax loss of £105.2m for its latest financial year. The total comes after Yodel also lost £48.2m in 2023. New accounts filed with [...]