Top companies still need to go further in putting women on boards September 22, 2020 As a woman in business and now as a minister at the Department for Business, Environment and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), I know first-hand how difficult it can be to rise through the ranks and establish yourself professionally in the corporate world. My first job was in a shop aged 16. I then went into retail [...]
Entrepreneurship can be taught – so why don’t we teach it more? September 22, 2020 It is hard to think of a tougher task than teaching school children remotely. Until this month’s return to the classroom, schools across the country have been forced to adapt these challenging circumstances. Not everything has worked out, but projects such as Oak National Academy thousands of free online lessons show the potential for innovation [...]
Debate: Has pandemic-induced online shopping killed the high street for good? September 22, 2020 The coronavirus lockdown in March forced the vast majority of high street shops to close their doors, at least temporarily. In turn, online shopping became the new normal for UK consumers. And even as the country eased out of lockdown, many have stuck with the habit. In fact, a recent survey found that two in [...]
Seeing through the fog: Why the UK needs better forecasting during the pandemic September 22, 2020 The Covid-19 crisis has put forecasting in the spotlight. From the chancellor to retailers and every business in the UK, everyone has suddenly been reforecasting growth, revenue and employment as companies made the tough decision to either furlough staff or make redundancies. But one thing the pandemic has also exposed is the lack of science [...]
What the past can reveal about the future of money September 22, 2020 Money is a technology. It may be cultural in nature, but its story is nonetheless one of relentless innovation leading to big changes in society. Today we are in the midst of a change that is as significant as any of the great historical leaps, such as the advent of coins or paper banknotes. The [...]
The digital services tax is targeting the wrong companies September 21, 2020 Cost-pass-through is a well-established economic theory. It describes what happens when a business changes the price of the products or services it sells following a change in the cost of producing them – be that an increase in procurement or production costs, increased demand, or a tax hike. When the government announced its ban on [...]
Japan’s Yoshihide Suga: New Prime Minister, same old problems September 21, 2020 All my life I have been fascinated by island kingdoms with honour cultures off large, unknowable continents. For in both the UK and Japan, things are rarely as they seem, and subtext is all. For example, the key to understanding modern Japanese politics is to know that the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is not [...]
Lord Mayor: Delayed Dragons will shine a light on responsible business September 21, 2020 John Lennon once said: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. That famous quote is more apt now than ever. The Mansion House should have been a hive of activity today, with preparations in full swing for the Lord Mayor’s Dragon Awards ceremony, which was supposed to take place tomorrow. [...]
Does Nvidia’s buyout of ARM signal the death knell for UK tech entrepreneurship September 18, 2020 Earlier this week, it emerged that the UK’s largest technology firm, ARM, was to be sold to US giant Nvidia. The deal, worth £31bn, led to cries from Arm founder Hermann Hauser that it would be an “absolute disaster” and would cost UK jobs. However Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, said the deal would create [...]
The lacklustre FCA is in desperate need of regulatory oversight September 18, 2020 It is unlikely that Juvenal, the first century Roman poet, had the Financial Conduct Authority in mind when he famously asked: “Who guards the guards?” A slew of depressingly similar scandals have, however, brought the question of regulatory oversight into sharp relief. Indeed, such has been the extent of the FCA’s negligence and downright incompetence [...]