Ditching traditional employment for portfolio careers is making people happier, says MBA & Co November 17, 2015 Quitting your job may be the best career choice you ever make. A new survey of over 750 freelance consultants showed that a massive 91 per cent of them were satisfied with their new lifestyle. Pay and working hours are better, too, the figures released today by on-demand labour specialist MBA & Co show. Two thirds [...]
Golden touch: Global Group founder Johnny Hon talks Kung Fu Panda, the Northern Powerhouse, Glenn Close and human rights November 15, 2015 Did you sell sweets to all your classmates? I ask Johnny Hon, interjecting as he talks about his childhood. “Yes, I did actually,” he chuckles, before moving back to explaining how he never took money from his parents after the age of 18, and ended up selling second-hand cars to fund his education. “They taught [...]
Don’t let runaway FX moves damage your firm – Investec Comment November 15, 2015 It’s been a volatile year for currency markets, with plenty of surprises. In January, the Swiss National Bank abandoned the Swiss franc’s peg with the euro, introduced in September 2011. Within minutes, the franc soared by around 30 per cent against the euro, hitting the country’s stock market as the effect of a much stronger [...]
Value comparison site B.heard targets £4.5m fundraise November 12, 2015 An ambitious startup aiming to transform the worlds of customer service and price comparison websites will kick off a funding round tomorrow following its launch last week. The website, B.heard, wants £4.5m to expand its so-called “value comparison” platform, which compares companies’ levels of service, rather than simply contrasting prices. It is backed by investment banker [...]
Millennials are underestimating their life expectancy by roughly a decade and it’s creating problems for their pension calculations November 11, 2015 Far from thinking they’re immortal, millennials are underestimating their life expectancy by roughly a decade, which is also leading them to underestimate their required pension pot size for a comfortable retirement. According to the latest BlackRock Investor Pulse survey, which was released today, those aged between 25 and 34 predict that they will only live [...]
Almost half of UK millennials can only blindly guess at the amount they need in their pension pot November 10, 2015 Retirement needs seem to be something of a mystery for today’s youngsters. According to a study released today by bank BNY Mellon and students from Cambridge Judge Business School, 42 per cent of UK millennials calculate the size of the retirement fund based on a blind guess. A further 51 per cent admit to employing [...]
Michael Dell talks EMC deal, leadership style, cyber attacks and how to prevent digital fear among companies November 8, 2015 Imagine striking the biggest tech deal of all time. Well, Michael Dell, founder of the eponymous tech company, is trying to do exactly that. Three weeks ago, the giant announced a $67bn bet on digital storage company EMC. “We believe that scale matters,” says Dell. “We believe that converged infrastructure is real. The software-defined data [...]
How the Northern Powerhouse could boost SMEs – Investec Comment November 8, 2015 Critics of the chancellor's ambition to create a Northern Powerhouse often dismiss the idea as a gimmick. The challenge of rebalancing the UK economy is certainly immense. A recent report by the Centre of Cities showed that gross value added per worker in 2013 in the areas covered by the Northern Powerhouse was 13 per [...]
Founder of Indian startup TinyOwl held hostage for two days by workers after he announces layoffs November 6, 2015 It's never easy for an entrepreneur to make redundancies – but the process turned into a nightmare for Gaurav Choudhary and Saurabh Goyal, co-founders of Indian food delivery startup TinyOwl, after their workers reportedly held them hostage for two days. The Economic Times reported that after TinyOwl's founders decided to make 112 redundancies as part of a deal with VC firm Sequioa Capital, which [...]
The right trousers: Tom Cridland on Leonardo DiCaprio, swine flu and the importance of startup loans in the developing world November 2, 2015 Working alone isn’t an issue for Tom Cridland, founder of the eponymous fashion label. “It doesn’t bother me at all. Some people love the office vibe, but I’d just get distracted. Just me and my laptop is fine.” The 25 year-old opened Tom Cridland in January 2014. Starting with just a £6,000 government startup loan [...]