Following the ‘Day of Action’ in support of net neutrality, should the US Congress reconsider the move to scrap it? | City A.M. July 13, 2017 DEBATE: Following the ‘Day of Action’ in support of net neutrality, should the US Congress reconsider the move to scrap it? YES – StJohn Deakins, founder of CitizenMe. This is economics 101. Infrastructure and service companies have very different financial models. There’s a rich history of infrastructure firms attempting to raise profits by expanding into [...]
A gay man has won equal pensions rights in a landmark Supreme Court ruling July 12, 2017 The Supreme Court has delivered a landmark ruling giving the husband of a gay man the same pension rights as a wife would receive. John Walker, 66, challenged a Court of Appeal decision to support his former employer Innospec. The chemicals firm said it willrefuse to pay his pension to his husband because Walker’s employment [...]
Hopes for Crossrail 2 get fresh lift as chief secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss gets £31bn rail project added to her brief July 12, 2017 Crossrail 2 hopes were given a boost after it emerged Treasury minister Liz Truss had been given responsibility for Crossrail 2 last week. Marking the first notable mention of Crossrail 2 by the government since the election, the rail project has appeared as part of Truss’ portfolio in her Treasury profile, since moving from her [...]
Pound slides on Bank of England deputy governor Ben Broadbent saying he’s ‘not ready’ to raise interest rates July 12, 2017 The pound dipped this morning after the deputy governor of the Bank of England said he’s “not ready” to raise interest rates yet. In an interview with the Scottish Press and Journal paper, Broadbent gave the first signal of where his thoughts are after three members of the Monetary Policy Committee voted in favour of [...]
Russia emails rock Trump and dollar drops on son’s shock revelations of help with anti-Hillary Clinton campaign July 12, 2017 Markets were jolted last night after Donald Trump Jr released a chain of emails showing he was offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton by a Russian prosecutor. US President Donald Trump’s son was offered a meeting with a Russian lawyer relating to “sensitive” information on Clinton, Trump’s rival during last year’s presidential election, according to [...]
Taylor review: Six major report recommendations for changing employment law with the rise of the gig economy July 11, 2017 The government should introduce new laws for a new world of work. That’s the recommendation of the Taylor Review, a long-anticipated report into the gig economy and how employment is changing in the modern economy. It’s yet to be seen if and how the government might take on such changes. Here are the main points [...]
Hot UK cyber security startup Darktrace raises $75m series D at $825m valuation July 11, 2017 One of the Uk’s hottest startups has millions of pounds in fresh funding, pushing the firm’s valuation surging past the half a billion dollars mark. Cyber security startup Darktrace has raised $75m (£58m) in a series D round of funding, valuing it at $825m, almost double of what it was when it raised $65m this [...]
Are ICOs and new altcoins a solution to Bitcoin woes? July 11, 2017 | City Talk Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) have taken the fintech world by storm the last few months. ICOs are tokens, typically based on the technology underlying Bitcoin’s more versatile cousin Ethereum, that entrepreneurs sell to investors in exchange for cryptocurrency – typically either Bitcoin or Ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network. Interestingly, these tokens do not [...]
Top law firms feel the heat as clients are delaying payment by an average of 130 days, says a study from Edward Drummond July 11, 2017 Top UK law firms are having to wait an average of 130 days to get paid by clients for their work, a new study has revealed. The data, collated by executive search and market research firm Edward Drummond, shows that this payment period for the 100 highest-ranked firms was 19 per cent longer than the [...]
Carillion’s crash shows the value of studying the firms in which we invest July 11, 2017 Fund managers have been under the cosh of late. On this side of the pond the sector faced intense scrutiny as part of a City watchdog investigation which found evidence that “price competition is weak in a number of areas”, with funds often failing to report their performance against an appropriate benchmark. Meanwhile the industry [...]