FCA: Banks should prepare for no deal | City A.M. July 19, 2018 Banks should start preparing for a hard Brexit as the deadline to the UK’s withdrawal from the EU looms large, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has said. With just eight months until Brexit day – 29 March 2019 – the City’s watchdog has added its voice to the chorus of groups urging businesses to step [...]
Chinese tech giant Alibaba makes $1.43bn investment in digital advertising firm Focus Media | City A.M. July 19, 2018 Chinese tech group Alibaba has snapped up a minority stake in digital advertising firm Focus Media in a deal worth $1.43bn (£1.1bn). In a statement, the company said it would buy a 6.62 per cent in the firm, and could increase its stake by five per cent in the next year. Alibaba will also invest [...]
Luxury car maker Aston Martin has unveiled a flying car dubbed the ‘sports car for the skies’ | City A.M. July 19, 2018 Luxury fast-car manufacturer Aston Martin has unveiled a futuristic flying vehicle that has been dubbed the “sports car for the skies”. The three-seater hybrid electric vehicle was announced yesterday at the Farnborough Airshow, in a bid to compete with giants like Google and Uber in the race to revolutionise commercial air travel. Formally named the [...]
Banking culture needs to adapt as the algorithms learn to trade | City A.M. July 19, 2018 Financial markets never sleep. The trade in financial instruments has long been a global marketplace, operating round the clock. But increasingly, market continuity is maintained not only by human intervention, but also by algorithmic tools. This has brought with it huge client benefits: executing trades at an unprecedented pace and volume, lowering costs, increasing accuracy, [...]
Time to put your phone down and ask Alexa instead | City A.M. July 19, 2018 A decade ago, if you asked anybody in the customer service game how consumers will interact with their favourite brands in the future, the lion’s share would have told you that actually having to speak to someone is going be unnecessary and uncommon – if not totally extinct. Now it’s becoming clear that the shift [...]
Our productivity problem is one of the biggest threats to the UK’s future | City A.M. July 19, 2018 If the summer of 2018 was remembered by one adjective, surely “hot” is a top contender. Be it the weather, sporting contests, or the latest twists and turns in Westminster, it’s certainly brought some heated discussions and blood-boiling moments. And talking of turning up the temperature, it’s nearly 55 years since former Prime Minister Harold [...]
Demand for London retail space slumps as high street woes deepen | City A.M. July 19, 2018 Demand for retail space in London has dived as woes around high street closures grow, according to a highly-regarded survey out today. Roughly 68 per cent more chartered surveyors in London’s retail sector noted a quarterly fall, rather than a rise, in demand for space in the capital, reaching levels not seen since 2008. The [...]
Brussels fines Google as the war continues | City A.M. July 19, 2018 Google has suffered another casualty in the battle between global tech giants and the EU. The European Commission yesterday fined the company a record €4.34bn for anti-competitive behaviour which competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager deemed “illegal”. The accusation is essentially that Google used the dominance of its Android operating system to promote its other products, such [...]
Why has there been a crackdown on sports ticket touting? A solicitor explains | City A.M. July 18, 2018 Solicitor Ilana Baines explains why a legal crackdown on bots should spell the end of outrageous mark-ups on secondary ticket sales – for now, at least. What are the problems surrounding ticket resales in sport? We have seen a crackdown in the secondary ticketing market, widely known as touting, in the UK. A series of [...]
Amazon (AMZN) reaches $900bn market cap milestone in a race with Apple (AAPL) to become the first trillion-dollar company | City A.M. July 18, 2018 Tech giant Amazon briefly broke past the $900bn (£689.7bn) market value mark today, making it the second company ever to reach the milestone. The company hit $902bn in a session high earlier today, after its share price rose 0.8 per cent at $1,858.88. Apple is the only other company to be valued above that mark, [...]