Small businesses must be equipped with cyber security training or we could lose post-Covid innovation March 9, 2021 The pandemic has changed many things about the way our economy operates. While some of these changes may be passing, others will no doubt stick. A successful recovery will take the best of both, recognising the way the economy is, and the way we want it to be – not how it was. One positive [...]
As China signs the final death warrant for Hong Kong’s democracy, there must global condemnation March 9, 2021 This week, China sounded the final death knell for Hong Kong’s democratic aspirations. New proposals which significantly reduce the number of democratically elected seats, to be signed-off later in the week by China’s rubber-stamp parliament, mark the onset of full-blown totalitarianism. Commenting on the proposed reforms, Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, [...]
UK’s finance hubs can work together to power a levelling-up agenda March 8, 2021 The Government last week renewed its commitment to creating a level playing field for the UK’s nations and regions in the Budget. It also announced support for a new independent review by Lord Hill, recommending reforms to UK listing rules to boost growth and our capital markets. The two should not be viewed separately but [...]
IWD Mea Culpa: I haven’t done enough for gender diversity, but I will March 8, 2021 I’ve mostly worked in large corporations, like Amex, where diversity as a human resources concept has just poked its head into the boardroom. Now, I’m steering a high-growth fintech where we have an opportunity to make diversity a principal focus embedded in our growth. Across our 300+ employee base in London, Bristol, New York City [...]
Covid was the final lever for the creative destruction of the high street: it’s not gone, just changing March 8, 2021 If you believe some of the gloomier predictions, the high street is on life support and will breathe its last when the government eventually pulls the plug on the comprehensive Covid relief package that has kept it alive. Last week’s budget offers another lifeline but is, in effect, a stay of execution in a process [...]
The office must now sing for its supper: making the workplace about the individual, not the collective March 8, 2021 One striking feature of the pandemic has been the volume of ink spilled debating the future of the office. The huge and rapid shift to working from home for large sectors of the economy made not only individual employees but companies as well look around themselves and say, “This seems to work: should we have [...]
Mastercard vice chair: We can’t let Covid crisis hold back female entrepreneurs March 8, 2021 In Q3 of 2020, venture funding for female founders hit its lowest quarterly total in three years. Whilst the current Covid-19 pandemic stands as one of the greatest disruptors to our way of life in living memory, when we have disruption and crisis we also have opportunity to do more, and to do better. There [...]
Brits must ditch ‘do as I say, not as I do’ mentality to tackle climate change March 7, 2021 People are full of contradictions. We find ourselves wrestling with competing views held simultaneously. We sometimes act in ways out-of-step step with our best intentions. This matters because the small choices that we make every day impact the future of our fragile planet. The British public need to shed their ‘do as I say, not [...]
Electric cars will lead to a design transformation on the scale of iPhones & Apple laptops March 6, 2021 There was a golden age of car design that ran from the mid 1950’s to early 1970’s. Cars like the Jaguar e-type, Ferrari Dino, or Pontiac Firebird emerged; they were not only engineering miracles, but objets d’art. During this time, the imagination of the auto industry was running wild, setting out ambitious visions of the [...]
Finance need an overhaul to price in climate change risk and push green agenda forward March 6, 2021 Why did the credit and wider financial system only take off in the last 400 years? Despite money and lending being around for millennia, financial services only truly got going alongside the Enlightenment. According to the writer Yuval Noah Harari, the fundamental shift was to be found in humanity’s belief about the future. In previous [...]